Skills Matter... sadly, so does cash flow: 15-year-old London dev events biz enters administration London-based events and training business Skills Matter has gone into administration. Investment company Resolve Group was appointed as its administrator on 31 October 2019, it announced yesterday in a statement. Skills Matter coordinated a variety of tech workshops, lectures, seminars and peer events within a dedicated venue …
Damned if you don't damned if you do.
The old location IIRC somewhere around Old Street was a bit cramped and in need of some refurbishment - rent would have been a fraction of the new place just round the corner from Liverpool Street station. My first thought when I went to the new place was "can they afford this place...", but the better location and facilities may be what they needed.
Best of luck/hope it works out
Lovely folk and I'm sad to see them go, but I have to agree with the above poster - I can't say I'm surprised. The new place looked well pricey, and an organisation that spends a huge fraction of its resources on running nearly-at-cost events for user groups and meetups simply cannot sustain running with 53(!) staff. That's more people running the place than many of the events had attendees.
Yeah, pouring investor cash into loss-making feelgood stuff probably won't go well.
Better to join a giant company with a guilty conscience, like a bank, and get them to run loss-making stuff, while constantly advertising that the loss-making stuff is actually better for the company. You know, Chief Diversity Officer stuff.
Might this also be an indication of how poor many UK companies are at the continuing education of their staff?
Lots of places I've worked take the view that the employee is responsible for their continuing education. They simply clear out during the annual culling anyone who doesn't continually upskill themselves.
That's not to say I agree its solely the employees responsibility, but really, if you aren't looking after your education, who exactly should be? So it's definitely mostly the employees responsibility.
The bank I work for will spend a (very) small amount of money on certs/training, but that's dwarfed by the amount of money thrown into the diversity or health & safety holes.
Perhaps also how seriously that staff believe they might even need continuing education?
Not continuing to upskill yourself is a very time limited concept. Literally everyone I know who took the view that their employer had to do it or they wouldn't has had patchy employment over the last 10 years (which has been tech boom II). Come the recession next year they're really going to struggle - the era of more jobs than coders is all but over for this cycle, competition for roles is going to come back in a big way over the next few years. If you're not ready now, make yourself ready ASAP.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
