I have been unemployed nearly three months, but even when I am making money, I can't go to conferences or even on vacation, either because I work on an hourly contract and would lose money, or because I can't take any time off because of deadlines and scheduling pressure. No matter what lipservice companies give to the idea of wanting their employees to educate themselves, it's just PR. Unless you are already a CTO, Principal Software Engineer, or some other important title. (I'm not counting the Marketing types, since I'm a programmer/developer.)
