I have had a number of jobs that mentioned training as one of the benefits. The reality has always been quite the opposite; the IT training budget is one of the first things off the table when business is slow or the future is uncertain.

So, necessity being the mother of invention, I have had to develop new ways of learning things, this site being one of my primary sources. While I don't get the formalized classroom training and the books and the certificate, instead I get an opportunity to explore various possibilities for how to do specific tasks, and then time to think about how those possibilities could be applied in other situations.

Sure, I would love to have some more formalized training, but I guess at this point, I just no longer expect it. The eternal optimist am I.