Not the person you replied to.
I have 0 professional experience on the field, however I would suggest:
I strongly advise you to check out this book. Best thing I have read in my life. There you will find a lot of answers.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XPJML5D/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_9HZSH89W8FAKA4MRDSDA
Most of my team's professional development budget goes toward conferences and training. Most recently, we shipped myself and another team member off to Kubecon -- the tickets came out of our professional development budget, travel was handled in a separate budget line item. There's a lot of really great local conferences that are attended by many people within the company each year -- yay no travel spend. A small chunk goes towards PluralSight and other online learning platforms. We have a separate book budget.
> Perhaps you have a favorite textbook from undergrad?
Designing Data Intensive Applications is great if you do "big data" stuff. I recommend it to practically everyone on my team.
These get plugged a lot on this sub: