Pluralsight lays off 400 employees – 20% workforce
layoffstracker.com
layoffstracker.com
Pluralsight is one of a few companies in the "education" business that I don't really have high hopes for in general. Pluralsight, Lynda / Linkedinlearn, Udemy, etc. They either target enterprise companies as a way to "skill up" and save money on training. Or they sell to aspirational individuals. But the main problem is that the overall quality is really really low, borderline useless. I haven't seen a site with this model that does better than just buy a book and practice. I think most sites could be beaten by finding good videos on youtube.
I do like Coursera's model, namely because you can come away with a certificate or degree, and the average quality is way higher. Functional Programming by Martin Odersky on Cousera was one of the best online courses I've taken.
Ultimately training should be associated with an outcome which accelerates the time to achieving business value. Good training pays for itself this way.
Often there’s enough complexity where you need juniors to cease an opportunity to become the go-to on something as well.
Teaching is a skill, the same as engineering.
All the winningest coaches in the NFL, NBA, etc were not the best players when they played themselves. But they can communicate and motivate. I don't think there's been any stellar players that became stellar coaches.
I know I've always been one of the shittier coders - whatever I do, I'm usually not the best. Don't get me wrong, I know what I'm doing, but just not the best by a long-shot. However, I've usually the one who everybody comes to for help and explanations, because I think I have a knack for teaching. I like teaching. Even stuff I don't really know well at all, I can give people the general idea of the concept, which is 75% of the battle. I can point people in the right direction and give an overview so they are not wasting time in a wild goose chase.
That has not been my experience with Pluralsight courses. I've done quite a few (10?) over the years for .NET, C, and C++. Most were authored by people who are experts in that specific niche (ex: Kenny Kerr's course on C, Kate Gregory's courses on C++) and quite well done.
Maybe it depends on the technological niche you're looking at?
A number of years ago just after they debuted, lots of people raved about the quality, but something happened along the way which I've noticed, too. It's a tragedy that the state of technical writing in general within the industry shows how drastically under-funded it is, and that under-funding extends even into these learning platforms.
Content creators are typically a one-hit wonder. They usually move on and do other things in life.
And the shelf life of a one-hit wonder is so short. Technologies change, so the content needs to be updated. And content can easily be copied by other content creators.
Specifically for self study programs, there's not enough instruction time spent on tying everything together in a course. Most of them just bounce from topic to topic and then you're done. In certain "certificate" programs, they'll have some sort of capstone project, which still isn't the same as getting additional educational reinforcement, which I feel is probably needed MORE in self-study systems than in university settings where you can get office hours and discuss topics in-person with classmates.
I am going to concur with the other poster, this is not my experience at all
I will grant you that more advanced courses are some what fewer, but for a Jr Dev or Jr Admin, or technician looking to skill up I find Pluralsight to be one of the more complete sites out their, the video courses combined with their Internal testing (skillIQ) and realtime labs I think provide good training base
What does that even mean? Taking responsability should mean going down with the ship.
I will never forgive that they have eaten code school :).
https://www.crunchbase.com/search/acquisitions/field/organiz...
The webinar wasn't especially useful, there were only 15 technical staff in our division and I still don't know why it wasn't just a pre-recorded video learning course on their video learning platform.
As someone that is involved in making those purchasing decisions, I disagree with that assessment
I hate when people write this. Unless there’s actually some accountability, like the CEO loses pay or her bonus or some stock, these are just useless empty words.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
Their cancellation process is quite bad. The "agent" on the other end seemed standoff-ish.
I feel bad but as a dev I've tried this and didn't care for it. I've had better success with udemy, youtube, books, and slowing down and reading the docs.
I've had this conversation multiple times. We don't need an upskilling platform; just give your existing devs an afternoon off each week to learn specific new skills. They will need that time to upskill anyways.
The next 3 to 8 years will have a bunch of companies like Evernote: "They're still around? I thought they died a long time ago."
My schadenfreude level was high, very high during the dot-com bust in 2000.