[tptacek]

There's a lot of good stuff here. I'm surprised about their take on speaking engagements (they're OK as long as they don't involve multi-day travel obligations). I get that you don't want team members touring talks or becoming conference tourists. But a lot of companies want their employees doing speaking engagements; Matasano/NCC, my old employer, pays a pretty substantial cash bonus for every time you do that.

[1337biz]

> pays a pretty substantial cash bonus for every time you do that

Super smart move - probably the cheapest but most personal marketing effort a small firm can create. Did they have an upper cap on the speaking gigs or available time?

[tptacek]

Not really explicitly, but implicitly they won't pay you to travel to conferences nobody has heard of (there was a list of acceptable conferences for the benefit at one point --- it covered pretty much all the well known conferences in our field, and there were a bunch of them).

Part of the idea is, the good conferences do some of the vetting for the bonus for you. They discourage "touring" talks, and have a high bar for inclusion, so if you're speaking at e.g. Black Hat, CanSecWest, Recon, and Toorcon, there's probably a reason that's happening and NCC is probably very happy about that reason.

[ryandrake]

Is "doing speaking engagements" really a big thing in tech? I've been in the industry for close to 20 years and have never felt the need to (or been asked to) go drone on about something at a conference somewhere, or even to go attend one for that matter. I couldn't even tell you what any major software conferences are, although I'd probably recognize the names of some of them.

[tedmiston]

It seems like speaking and even attending conferences varies a lot by a developer's personality type. I've always been a fan and find it the most effective way to take in info on a large variety of topics I might not otherwise find in a very concentrated period of time. The networking and whatnot can be useful too. At PyCon it was neat to meet GvR for instance. Anecdotally I'd say maybe 20% of the devs I know pursue conferences regularly.

[sotojuan]

No, it's just one of those things that us popular among HNers, like blogging or being on Twitter all day. Of my team only me has ever attended a conference.

[SwellJoe]

For companies that are growing rapidly, it's a pretty common recruiting tool. You may notice that a lot of speakers begin and/or end their talk with, "I work on X at Y Company, and we're hiring!"

I've done contract work for companies at both extremes; there are many companies that consider speaking or participation in conferences as a part of the job, and there are those that don't even discuss it and would never consider sending employees to conferences.

[tptacek]

I don't know about the rest of the industry, but it's a big thing at Basecamp, or at least it was when they were still 37signals.

[barrkel]

Indeed; it increases the thought leadership halo around the company brand. And it's good for hiring, not just sales.

[stinkytaco]

I wonder if they make a distinction between taking a speaking gig for money, and speaking on behalf of the company (i.e. traveling on the company dime and getting paid by the company whilst speaking)?