Training & Personal Development at Xero New Zealand

I have found that some of the grad program training feels very basic and like we are being babied such as "Core engineering practices" where we spent hours on very basic concepts that could've been covered quickly and spent a whole afternoon have to build lego. I have found the technical training to be an ever growing process and personally I learn best on the job through tickets which both my teams have supported me through. On the job training best suits me and I plan to carry on my learning development this way

AWS Developer Cert. Multiple training sessions on different technology tools, well being skills, presentation and soft skill courses.

training is largely watch and learn through joining a project than any particular program. This means this is largely dependant on the wider team capability to teach you or the demand for research at the time. Too flexible.

The graduate program has so far helped me to grow, and I am truly appreciated the experience that I've gained from the program. We have had many trainings (both technical and non-technical such as AWS training, soft skills training...) Being able to rotate to different teams and being involved in lots of different tech stacks help maximising my learning experience - both from technical non-technical areas.

There is lots of on the job training with 3 rotations within one year where you can try different stacks in different teams and can with work with either your assigned buddy or other team members. The company also offers other training such as AWS and also provide a learning budget to purchase other learning content.

The graduate year itself is just for learning - they keep reiterating that they don't expect us to deliver any work. There is a dedicated grad training budget that we can use to buy books or courses. We do multi-day AWS training to get certified. Teams have a "Jog Day" every two weeks, where we work on personal learning projects. We have dedicated grad soft skills training days, e.g. on how to have courageous conversations, presentation skills, etc.

Workshops for grads are under the assumption that grads are people coming straight out of university and have no corporate experience. This can be fine but for some others this is not the case and there is already work experience which means there is no need for workshops about how to work in a corporate environment. AWS development is helpful but also adds pressure and feels like studying at uni again, on top of all the other learnings grads have to do.

Lots of available time to complete courses and training. Has an allocated training budget for the year that you can spend any training or courses.

Mainly on the job training, given work, feedback and shadowed people in my team.

In my opinion some of the trainings haven't been a good use of time and often most the content is just common sense, I've had good onboarding experiences in my team so that training was good.

AWS Training, I've worked in infrastructure, backend and frontend. Hoping to work in another area for my final rotation as well! You can do a lot of different things as a grad.

The training for design roles is not very formal so a lot of it has been quite ad hoc. The support and mentoring I have gotten from my buddies has provided good training, though.

Crucial Conversation, AWS Solution Architect Associate

The formal training we've received (AWS workshops, Critical Conversations, etc.) have been really good and great opportunities to develop our technical skills and mindset. However, the way the workshops are delivered are not good and make it difficult to actually retain the content or even enjoy what we're being taught. This is usually because the workshops are too long making it too difficult to pay attention. For example, the AWS workshop spanned three days. It was incredibly draining and didn't really help with the exam study since it was difficult to keep up with the pace (the instructor was also just reading off the AWS booklet which we could've done ourselves). I think for a workshop of this nature, it would be better to make it optional and ask the grads if they want to partake - this way only the grads who are actually committed and want to learn attend and the ones who don't want to attend don't impact the learning or the mindset of the ones who do. In my opinion, it would have been better to have the Critical Conversations workshop sometime after the first rotation. The workshops ask us to draw on personal experiences regarding conflict - to make the most out of the workshop it's ideal to have a workplace-related conflict. As we had the workshop within the first month or so of starting at Xero, a majority of us didn't have those experiences which is why I think having it later on in the year will be better as the grads will have more relevant experiences to draw from and can really make the most/appreciate the benefits of the workshop. For me, I appreciated what was taught in the workshop but didn't really connect with the content since it wasn't relevant to me at the time.

Set aside personal development time and a training budget for certifications etc incl AWS

Xero places a large emphasis on learning and upskilling (especially in the graduate program) and provides a training budget for everyone to help them buy resources such as online courses or paying for certification exams in order to support your personal development. In my experience everyone in Xero is also happy to help at anytime and share what they know.

We get a training budget that helps us to invest in things we want to learn!