A software company goes obsolete at the speed its team does. Training is not a perk: it is maintenance.
Autonomy before supervision
We would rather someone decide and explain than ask and wait. That demands two things of us: that the context needed to decide is reachable, and that a good-faith mistake is treated as information rather than fault. Without the second, the first is useless — nobody uses autonomy they can be blamed for.
Knowledge gets written down
What lives only in one person's head is a dependency, not a credit. So decisions are documented where the code lives, with the why and not only the what: in a year the reader will be someone who was not in the conversation — and there is a fair chance that someone is you.
Opportunities, not promises
Professional development is measured in what work you are trusted with, not in how many courses you are offered. Someone growing is someone touching things this year they would not have touched last year. The rest is a catalogue.
The most visible form of this commitment is the STEP programme.