Strange state of mid-career training

I recently started looking into a potential training opportunity called PDM. This is put on by the folks who run the PyBites coding platform. I've followed these two since they set up the 100 days of code training for Talk Python and they're quite good.

What prompted this is a nagging feeling I have as a mostly solo developer for the last 6 or so years–a sort of double-whammy–that hits you when you're both mid- or advanced in your career and work alone. First, it's hard to find training aimed at experienced professionals, at least in the coding world. There are endless great resources out there to help you get started: boot camps, online training platforms, certificate programs, degrees and the like, but seemingly not much for someone in my position. Second, when you're mostly working alone you never get feedback unless something breaks and are never exposed to other peoples' work. How do you improve? How do you get exposed to other ideas and patterns outside of very surface-level things like blogs and such?

The idea is probably that once you're in the field you're working with other people, many of whom are presumably more experienced than you. But it can't be that unusual to be alone in your department or company. I read with insane jealously about places where code reviews are common practice, and learn at lunches and mentoring and pair programming are built in. I wonder if it's this way in other fields, especially for anyone whose somewhat specialized. My sense is that conferences, professional associations, and coaches are the usual way to address this issue. In my experience many (most?) conferences are just about equal parts marketing, new features, introductory training, and maybe some advanced training.

All of this is what excites me about PDM, it seems like a unique blend of training and coaching aimed specifically at mid-career folks. I need to do some more investigating in terms of what's involved and how I'd work out the cost, but my initial impressions are promising. Part of what got me looking into coaching is that a co-worker of mine hired a coach to help him with his presentation and training skills. First, I was struck by the fact that he did this at all. I think he hired the coach both while working on his doctorate and while having a full time job. Not only that, but he's already one of the better speakers I've ever seen. I'm just amazed and inspired by that kind of drive and attention to craft. I think he'd say the coaching itself was a mixed experience at best, I think that just shows how few options there are at his level.

I have a call this week to ask questions about the PDM program so we'll see how that goes. I think it would be great if it manages to work out, otherwise it's back to navigating this strange/awkward phase of my professional life.