
Udacity restructures operations, lays off 20 percent of its workforce - guiambros
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/udacity-restructures-operations-lays-off-20-percent-of-its-workforce/
======
bitL
I took their Self-driving car Nanodegree and it was hands down the best online
course I've ever taken in my life (and I took some crazy courses from MIT and
Stanford). Where else could you end up with a capstone of actually programming
a real self-driving car that is then running your code on some course in
Mountain View?

Offerings right now:

1\. If you want academic rigor only, go with edX

2\. If you want academic rigor and some more approachable/practical courses,
go with Coursera; or if you want to do full MS/MBA/MSA online (they have the
widest selection right now comparing to edX/Udacity)

3\. If you want unique practical skills in hot areas like self-driving/flying
cars, deep (reinforcement) learning etc. without fully committing to rigorous
practices, go with Udacity

4\. If you need anything else, go with Udemy, Masterclass, School of AI and
similar

~~~
SiVal
I was driving south on 101 in Mt. View and a car came out of the left lane and
cut me off to take the 85S exit. Was that your code? (The responsible thing is
to use a linter to catch these things so they don't become "runtime" errors.)

~~~
bitL
Path-planning algorithm might have been set to "racing mode" and your driving
was evaluated as non-threatening/non-colliding for the duration of the
maneuver ;-)

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jamestimmins
Whatever problems Udacity may have as a business, I will always be thankful bc
they're responsible for me getting into software development as a career. CS
253, Intro to Web Development by Steve Huffman of Reddit, was an incredible
introduction into full stack development.

Udacity has always taken bold bets about the future of education, and I
sincerely hope that they survive and thrive, simply because of their
willingness to push the envelope.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I can also say that while that particular course was not formative for me (I
took and enjoyed it, but it wasn't what got me into programming), I also can
attribute at least the start of my career to Udacity. The CS101 course Udacity
offered in Python many years ago was what really gave me the confidence to
enter the dev scene and to start thinking about things as a real software
engineer instead of hacking things together as I always had in the past.

~~~
nitins
The old CS101 was the first course I took online. It was a very enjoyable one
as you said.

~~~
russwagnor
Same goes for me. It was an invaluable course for me.

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tannerc
Another round of layoffs in only a few months, things are not looking good for
the company. Udacity cut 125 employees in November 2018 [1], just five months
ago. Just before that 25 people were cut around August/September 2018 [2].

1\. [https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/28/udacity-
cuts-125-employee...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/28/udacity-
cuts-125-employees-as-part-of-global-restructuring-plan/)

2\. [https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/online-education-
unicorn-u...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/online-education-unicorn-
udacity-has-quietly-laid-off-5-of-staff-at-least-25-people-since-august/)

~~~
veryworried
Are we witnessing the end of Udacity?

~~~
thomasmeeks
Yeah, I think so.

The players in the industry that went after enterprises are doing well, the
players that stuck to selling mostly to individual customers are having a
rough go of it. Udacity definitely had some big enterprise deals with their
specific nanodegrees, but it never looked like they became an enterprise sales
company from the outside.

I believe most marketing departments (along with people trying to make a name
for themselves) have massively cranked up the amount of free content they pump
out in the last few years. It is making it terribly difficult to become big in
the education space while selling to the masses.

Enterprises, on the other hand, _really_ want to lower their salary
expenditures through training and will happily throw money at a company like
Pluralsight to train up new employees. For what its worth, I think they're
correct that training can drive down payroll costs. But the company I worked
for was acquired by Pluralsight, so there's some bias.

~~~
christudor
Something else that makes the B2C market difficult is the fact that the sign
of a great educational video is one that you only need to watch once.

~~~
povertyworld
The point of Udacity is the projects, not the videos. You can skip all the
videos, and just go straight to the projects if you want.

------
anonymous5133
I like what udacity is doing overall but I think they've failed to really
comprehend the nature of the education industry in the United States. Overall,
the biggest problems are simply perceptions by employers in terms of what is
considered a quality education. First, employers don't view self-studied or
online education to be good. Second problem is employers overwhelmingly
gravitate towards traditional degrees from government or private universities.
This ends up corrupting the entire fabric of education.

Students, seeking some sort of way to make themselves marketable in the job
market, will only obtain education if it results in some sort of valuable
degree. Hence the reason people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands to
obtain these degrees.

If you really want to disrupt education then you need to be directly figuring
out how to change those perceptions. Start with the basics of making
educational courses that would be considered the best in the world and then
leverage the powerful benefits of an internet connected computer to create the
best learning experience for the student. You don't need to reinvent the
wheel. The way universities are teaching now is good but it is just not
efficient and too costly overall. Take what works from traditional
universities and then solve the weaknesses through the benefits of a computer.

When I took udacity courses I just felt that the quality wasn't fully there.
They felt more like something that would be a supplemental project you would
take if you were studying a traditional course. You still need a way to obtain
those key foundation skills before tackling the bigger projects.

~~~
arcturus17
Udacity does a Masters of Science of CS with Georgia Tech for 7k. I hear most
of the courses there are high quality and very rigorous... Perhaps they only
need to apply that philosophy to smaller modules instead of a 12-course MS.

~~~
trendnet
I am currently enrolled in that program. The program is great (I still don't
believe it is so cheap). But it is not because of Udacity. It is great thanks
to Piazza, professors, TAs, remote office hours, projects, students, Canvas,
Slack groups, OMSCS subreddit, GaTech HPC clusters, remote labs, software
licenses, student perks, and various other internal GaTech services. Udacity
is just a small tool there to present a list of videos. Not a lot of
professors use it for anything else. Hell, on Piazza for most courses you can
even find a YouTube playlist because the Udacity web and mobile apps are
incredibly bad compared to plain YouTube.

~~~
dalbasal
That's a good thing, isn't it?

Do we really want everything locked down and centralised or do we want a
portfolio of tools, marketplaces and such adding up to an educational
platform.

~~~
ghaff
Sure. I think the point though is that the education provided through MOOCs
like Udacity, etc. is a small part of what's needed for an educational program
in most cases. After all, we've had recorded lectures for decades. For certain
types of course material such as programming assignments, computer grading
systems are useful as well. However, for the most part, online courses aren't
really all that different from Great Courses DVDs or YouTube videos. Which is
to say nice resources but not very transformative.

~~~
dalbasal
Not transformative or not transformative in isolation?

~~~
ghaff
Being able to use the Internet to learn things is pretty transformative in
aggregate of which MOOCs is a small piece. (Although, arguably, it hasn't
really been transformative in the sense of the educational certifications
required for most jobs, whether at the university level or specific
established IT training certs.)

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matt_j
I completed a bunch of courses at Udacity before they introduced the
Nanodegree programs. I enjoyed the experience and gained useful knowledge in
areas that my regular degree program didn't cover (brushed up on Stats, Python
web programming, JavaScript graphics, etc), but free courses doesn't seem like
a viable business platform.

The Nanodegree programs are not free, and from the courses that are included
it's clear that you would gain valuable skills, but are they recognized as a
qualification in industry at large? I'm sure some employers would consider
them, but would enough employers?

Regardless, it's a fantastic service that they offer, and I'm grateful for it.
Hopefully they can keep the ball rolling and pivot to a place that is
profitable enough for them to continue.

~~~
dooes
There wasn’t enough innovation. What they offer is replaceable instantly by
any single university in the world which offers a course for free and hosted
on YouTube.

I don’t have a solution but I think online education has not been solved.
Clearly there is a lot of innovation but nobody is making it.

~~~
cinquemb
>What they offer is replaceable instantly by any single university in the
world which offers a course for free and hosted on YouTube.

I completely agree with this.

>I don’t have a solution but I think online education has not been solved.
Clearly there is a lot of innovation but nobody is making it.

I don't think the problem is online education, I think problem with these ed-
tech companies is that they still are trying compete with the credentialing
system of universities without access to all the student loan debt the latter
have access to.

Gotta love the choices HS graduates can get funneled into/ reinforced by
mainstream opinion today: bootcamps, nanodegrees, or loading up on student
loan debt if you can edge out agaisnt the legacy/bribery admits.

I think what people are really trying to solve is a cheaper credentialing
system, that get's distorted by some of the incentives involved.

~~~
dooes
even if they get their credentialling system to be “accepted”, they have not
solved the root issue which is the elephant in the room: their credentials are
not trustworthy because anyone can easily cheat their tests. The other
elephant in the room is that the rigor of their online courses.

Education is not a one size fits all - you cannot offer the same from MIT vs
community college no matter if the course content is the same. The difficulty
(proxied by the reputation of the school) of the same courses vary wildly and
dramatically, as does workload, peer support, TA support, exams, and even the
pace and how the final grade is curved.

By necessity they cannot grade difficultly, since they are trying to get
people to pay for courses like they are dessert. By necessity they cannot
offer different tiers of difficulty based on entrance exams or other tests,
since they would insult their customer base (the intuitive argument being that
those in most need of such nanodegrees are inversely the ones who may do worse
in general).

~~~
povertyworld
The projects are certainly as rigorous anything you will get in any undergrad
degree. The difference is the grading system. With Udacity, you have to hit
every deliverable as if it were a paid contract, but you can keep going 'till
you hit them all, since there's no deadline. In college, there's a deadline,
but you can skip that one thing you couldn't quite get working, and still move
on with a 'B', etc.

~~~
dooes
Deadlines matter a lot in increasing difficult (but also helps with
efficiency). Especially when compounded with multiple courses.

~~~
povertyworld
I think that's true. Deadlines do have some pedagogical value. When I did
Udacity, it was pay by month, so there was a sense of time pressure in that
every extra month burned cash. I think they switched to the flat fee now
because too many people were blazing through in 2-4 months which is too bad
because it took out the admittedly low pressure time aspect of the program.

------
codesternews
The real problem for me as an investment in courses is Rate of return from
Udacity. Their courses might be good but they are too expensive. In my country
it is 100K. It is too expensive for most of the students and even
professionals.

Also, most of the courses are comparable on other MOOC sites like Udemy and
Coursera. Udemy is best you can get in $10 and it helps a lot.

I recently took AI course on Udemy for just $7 in sale and It is hands on
course and I am really satisfied with it and the content. Even if it is not
good I have not lost too much money. The value I got from that course far
better than I would have got from udacity 100K ND courses.

Their Nano Degrees does not provide value in the industry and you can not
expect a job after it. After spending 2term fee of college I expect something
from the course but it way too expensive.

It's all hype you can do actually really good and get all the stuff and
knowledge online. At the end for any job your knowledge will count.

~~~
mesarvagya
Major courses cost $999, which is equivalent to Rs. 100,000 in Nepal. Of
course it will be expensive for us.

~~~
mandeepj
That is just for one term. When I took SDC from Udacity, it had 3 terms.

------
Ice_cream_suit
A story I know first hand:

An unemployed PHP web developer struggled for 2 years to get a job. She had
taken time off to have children. In that time PHP had acquired pariah status.

I suggested that she do a Udacity "front end developer" course. A thousand
dollars and 3 months later, she finished the course, found it valuable and
obtained a job. She was promoted to project manager/leader a few months later.

~~~
smartbit
_She was promoted to project manager /leader a few months later._

Must have been a horrible experience: you put in all that efforts to learn PHP
and soon you get a job that requires a different skill set. Poor woman.

------
gilaniali
For me personally, it comes down to cost and acceptability. I would like to
pursue nanodegrees but the cost is much higher than Coursera - which has a
monthly subscription model. Also, Coursera has an expanding offering of
Master's degrees from world renowned Univerities which employers will accept
(my employer - a Canadian Bank will even pay for online masters degrees) but
nanodegrees seem like vaporware, if Udacity goes under how do I get my
nanodegrees verified? If the cost were lower, i could take the risk.

------
mattbillenstein
Interviewed here at the end of 2015, so quite a while ago, but even back then,
something just didn't _feel_ right about that place -- like they had their eye
on everything but the ball -- raised a ton of money, hired a bunch of smart
people, drinking plenty of the koolaid, but they weren't really focused so
much on the problem if anyone wanted what they were selling...

It was a big vision and most startups fail, so maybe it's just they couldn't
figure it out -- happens to most of us.

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iandanforth
I took the deep reinforcement nanodegree and was disappointed. The course had
several instructors, only one of whom I thought was a really good teacher.

When you're competing with free material like the David Silver lectures you
need to produce something really awesome to justify a $1k cost. I think the
potential was there, and the partnership with Unity helped, but overall it
felt disorganized, outsourced, and of insufficient quality (after the first
section which was awesome).

Hopefully Thrun brings a renewed focus on course quality as well.

~~~
tuesday20
I took the blockchain nanodegree, and was disappointed as well. There are 10$
Udemy courses that are better :(

Hopefully things will improve

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muhneesh
I don't know anything about the business or cultural elements of Udacity, but
they have such high quality of courses that this makes me genuinely sad. I
hope they can figure out a business model - even if it leans B2B vs. B2C.

------
randomacct3847
I don’t think it’s clear from the customer perspective what you really get for
$1k. Sure, it’s a lot cheaper than going to school but if it means nothing to
an employer than psychologically it feels like money spent rather than money
invested. I’m sure they have partnerships with some cos to offer to their
employees but seems like investing on enterprise sales for employee training
could be a more fruitful route than b2c.

------
FailMore
I'm not sure this is the case here, but one thing I notice is that competitive
environments (i.e. non natural monopoly businesses) do catch up with
businesses eventually. I don't think this should prevent VCs from investing
(esp early stage), as great success can be achieved when capturing a market -
but in the long run pricing pressures do force the business towards tighter
margins.

------
wirthjason
I like their model of education which focuses on highly targeted technical
skills to be completed in 3-6 months. Continuing education is an interesting
beast. The transitional educational opportunities are often out of sync for a
working professional. We don’t need a second bachelors or a masters but rather
an in-depth course to get us up to speed where we’re lacking.

~~~
colmvp
It still feels like 3-6 months is far too short for a curriculum for people
making career changes, as there is a great deal of depth for each topic
covered.

For example, in their Robotics Software Engineering degree, one of the topics
they cover is Mapping and SLAM. That topic alone is a full university course
and a specialization, i.e. Cyrill Stachniss' lectures on YouTube.

I think online courses try too hard to squeeze too much material in a short
time, whereby students only acquire a superficial understanding of a topic.

~~~
momofarm
if you look at the price they paid, compare to the students enrolled in real
university, you got what you paid for.

Knowledge always costs some money, for cheap things you should be ware of what
really missing.

------
mirimir
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190410021520/https://techcrunc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190410021520/https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/udacity-
restructures-operations-lays-off-20-percent-of-its-workforce/)

Gotta hit ESC just after it loads.

------
bjourne
That sucks. The site has some damn amazing content given the low cost (free!).
For example, their courses on theoretical computer science and compiler theory
are pretty great. But... I already have a degree so I can't see myself paying
for a nanodegree. Hopefully, someone else will pay for it to keep the site
running.

------
syntaxing
Not surprised things aren't doing too well. I'm part of the deep learning
nanodegree sponsored by Facebook (amazing course IMO). Two of the people in
charge of our group from Udacity left back to back. I knew something weird was
happening and this shows me why they left.

------
netwanderer3
I loved many of their individual courses at the beginning but now everything
is just bundled into their nanodegree programs.

While Udacity helped kick-start many similar online self-learning business
models, but ultimately I believe they failed in their scaling effort.

Their nanodegree programs often feel a little overpriced. I remember their
mission was to democratize online education, but at those prices I'm not so
sure. I tried it once and their support really left a lot to be desired.

------
amrx431
I want Udacity to succeed as a business. The amazing course content of Udacity
especially in AI and Machine Learning has no parallels when it comes to
actually accomplishing something novel(for the student). If you take self
driving car nanodegree, you will at the end of course be able to code actual
software for the car.

------
neves
Hope they manage to fix their operations. Udacity is hands down the best MOOC.
Their courses are professionally produced, with great visualizations,
animations, and superb projects. I've already completed courses in Udemy,
Coursera, PluralSight, and edX. Udacity is a level above everybody else.

------
CSMastermind
I signed up for the very first Udacity class when it was first announced. I
took several more in 2011 and 2012. I haven't logged into the site for a
while.

It's sad to see that they weren't able to figure things out.

------
baoha
It seems like being academically excellent and being successful in industry
are totally different things. I still remember the hype about Udacity and
Coursera a few years ago.

Beside VmWare and Akamai, I haven't seen any company founded by university
faculty that have survived and made impact (even though VMware was tiny
compared to what it is today when EMC acquired them)

~~~
learc83
>I haven't seen any company founded by university faculty that have survived
and made impact

Bose, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Financial Engines, Genentech, MathWorks, Boston
Dynamics, Pixar (I think it counts), Arista Networks, MIPS, Rambus, Duolingo,
Sun Microsystems. Depending on what your cut off is for made an impact, I'm
sure there are dozens more from Stanford alone.

~~~
brian_cunnie
VMware (Stanford)

