To Bill: What if they don't care about you as a person? That seems to be a tall order in today's "people are just interchangeable as servers" IT workplace.

I work for a medium-to-large company that used to have what I felt to be a positive training budget/environment (one conference a year plus books and magazines), but the last few years have been hard for us just like so many other companies - and as is so often the case, training was one of the first things out the window.

How do you justify sending your remaining staff to training when you have cut people? Logical answers like "The remaining staff still have to be able to do their jobs" are not valid to our management unfortunately.

The answer we get back is "use the free training from the vendor" - SQLSaturday's and prerecorded webcasts are nice, but they are still nothing compared to the knowledge and other experiences available at PASS or Connections.

Other than looking for another job - HELP!

AndyG