
Udacity lays off 125 people in global strategy shift - acdanger
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/edtech-unicorn-udacity-lays-off-125-people-in-global-strategy-shift/
======
muhneesh
I've completed 10 online learning courses and probably spend 20 hrs/week
learning online.

Udacity Likes: I loved Udacity's production quality & instructors. I think
they are generally awesome in the balance of teaching concept and practical
knowledge. They also don't shy away from more complicated topics like
autonomous vehicles, InfoSec, AI / ML, etc., which is a unique asset.

Udacity Dislikes: They are placing too large of a bet on the nanodegree
concept. There isn't a clear ROI for students - and it's fairly clear that
most companies don't really give a hoot about online certifications.

Their classes are too expensive. Both Udacity and Udemy have great Web Dev
classes. Udemy's was $10 for 19 hours of content + responses to any questions
I had within hours, and gave me everything I wanted + more. Unfortunately, I
had to sift through the Bootcamp and Nanodegree madness on Udacity.

They are unaccredited. My company (maybe most companies?) only subsidizes
classes that are accredited. I have a $10,000 annual credit and I use it all
on university classes. I would definitely consider Udacity nanowhatevers if I
could use my credit on them.

~~~
SilasX
I got a bad taste in my mouth from Udacity when I tried their React
Nanodegree. It was oozing with the expert-in-a-week, fake-it-till-you-make it
mentality.

Early on, I asked for help for why my code wasn't working, explaining why I
thought it should. My question was handled by _the actual face of the course_
\-- the ostensible expert, Richard Kalehoff, and yet he had only a superficial
understanding. All his answers were some variant of "I don't know why this
isn't working, copy the example more closely." The conversation went roughly:

Me: Why isn't this code working?

Him: Obviously, because you called .setState in multiple places. Didn't you
listen to the lectures? It's asynchronous, so you can't guarantee that it
happens in the expected order.

Me: Yes, I know, but the docs say that if you chain them as callbacks, you can
ensure that they happen in a specific order <link>. Why isn't _that_ working?

Him: I don't know, no one does it that way. I think it's being overwritten.

<several other commenters point out why that can't be the case>

And I paid $800 for that expertise!

If you've signed up for the course, you can see it here:

[https://udacity-
react.slack.com/messages/C5T90A6TS/convo/C5T...](https://udacity-
react.slack.com/messages/C5T90A6TS/convo/C5T90A6TS-1507310007.000517/)

~~~
projectramo
As much as I love Udacity lectures (see my pro-udacity rant above or below)
some of the things they do don't scale.

They can take hours to perfect an explanation and examples and present it to
you. That scales.

They cannot give quality feedback to 1000s of students.

I had a similar experience where they switched the sample data in one of the
submissions, so the code would not work.

I don't blame the person for not catching that. Had they told me "this should
work, but I don't know why it does not", I would have been fine.

Instead they made thing that they thought might work: Use an alternative
notation for matrix multiplication which is different in "subtle ways" (it was
identical), change the order of the inputs (the functions were commutative,
but more importantly they should have known that), and some other nonsensical
advice.

I would have respected them simply saying they don't know but actively bad
advice is quite damaging.

~~~
SilasX
It's majestically reasonable to expect experts to understand what they're
teaching, doubly so when they are the literal face of the course.

That includes knowing how to use the single parameter on the most common React
function.

~~~
projectramo
Experts should of course.

But should the person who understands it best be the face? Or should the
person who _presents_ it best be the face? The person who understands it best
might design the content, or check that it is accurate. The person who is most
gifted at intuitive graphics should design the visuals.

I don't think the fact that the face of course is not an expert is a big deal.
I do think they should not be answering the advanced questions. However, with
1000s of questions coming in, I don't know how they should solve that issue.
They need a quick way of knowing which is the hard question and which is the
easy one. (Is that equivalent to the halting problem? I think it might be).

~~~
SilasX
"Why isn't setState doing what the docs say it should" is not an advanced
question, and if he's not prepared to answer basic questions, he shouldn't be
"faking it until he makes it" and doing office hours and charging $800 for his
expertise. Being able to answer my questions is what I'm paying for.

He didn't simply say "I don't know", he confidently faked it until he made it
and claimed that he knew the answer, which was false and based on not knowing
how a common parameter worked.

~~~
projectramo
I agree with you.

Or rather, it seems you agree with me.

Or perhaps we agreed with each other all along but I am not sure why it sounds
like you're disagreeing.

~~~
SilasX
Sorry, I misread your comments; it seemed like you were saying it was
unreasonable to expect the kind of answers I was asking for.

------
eksemplar
I truly don’t get how sites like udacity are able to sell thousands of
amateurish introductions to various trends, when you can literally follow CS50
in all its incantations for free on edX.org.

Sure it won’t give you a video guide of X popular framework intro-
documentation pages, but it will actually teach you CS for free, and I’d
argue, that if you can complete CS50x and CS50x Web, then you’ll never need a
site like udacity.

I guess FOMO sells though.

~~~
dunpeal
> _I’d argue, that if you can complete CS50x and CS50x Web, then you’ll never
> need a site like udacity._

Sure, but that's a tiny minority of people.

If you have the capacity to complete deep CS courses, you can buy a book for
$12 and learn React or Angular or any technology you want.

Most people don't have this capacity.

> _I truly don’t get how sites like udacity are able to sell thousands of
> amateurish introductions to various trends_

1\. People read that some trend gets you jobs.

2\. People don't have the discipline or enough foundation to just buy the $12
book and learn trend by themselves.

3\. People find a course online that is really basic and thus doesn't tax
their mental resources while convincing them they'll be able to get job later
in the trend.

4\. People get job, or they don't (I bet they don't, since having low learning
capacity isn't a good predictor for getting a job in an intellectual field),
either way Udacity gets paid.

It's not a bad business model, but eventually it will collapse because
customers routinely fail to obtain the key value proposition: tech skills or a
job using them.

~~~
Jweb_Guru
> Most people don't have this capacity.

Citation badly needed for the ridiculous assertion that most people don't have
the "learning capacity" for "deep CS courses" (whatever that means). The fact
that one can reliably teach programming to eight year olds, boot camp
graduates can get jobs in the industry with high probability, and just about
anyone in any other scientific field can fill a data science position suggests
that CS is not such a rarified academic pursuit.

~~~
sfifs
Teaching is actually very different than ability to self learn. I taught a
class of 8-11 year old lower income but fairly motivated kids programming with
Scratch over summer. Everyone did reasonably well but exactly 2 out of the 26
demonstrated the ability to push further and teach themselves more than what I
taught in class by experimenting with the platform. This ability becomes much
rarer the older you grow.

~~~
barry-cotter
Of course the ability to push further and teach themselves is rare. It
decreases monotonically with time spent in formal education as intrinsic
motivation to learn is extinguished.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations in the classroom: Age
differences and academic correlates.

> Consistent with previous research, intrinsic motivation showed a significant
> linear decrease from 3rd grade through 8th grade and proved positively
> correlated with children's grades and standardized test scores

Enthusiastic students: A study of motivation in two alternatives to mandatory
instruction

> The present study used Self-Determination Theory as a framework for
> examining age-related changes in motivation for 57 students aged 7-17 years
> in the context of two alternative educational environments: a home school
> resource center and a democratically organized school. Students completed
> the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire in order to assess their
> intrinsic motivation and three types of extrinsic motivation. _In stark
> contrast to the well-replicated negative correlation between age and
> intrinsic motivation in traditional schools, there was no relationship
> between age and any of the four motivation subscale scores in the present
> study. Interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed._

------
cheriot
> We will increase our investments in growth areas like enterprise and career
> development

I'm surprised the shift has taken this long. Employers will spend massively
more on employee development than employees will.

Employer: $2,000 for a 5 day class? No problem.

Employee out of pocket: $150 for 6 weeks? I wonder if I can just read some
tutorials.

~~~
ehnto
Enterprise certification programs are very often money grabs that companies
fall for and employees get saddled with participating in. The last thing I am
interested in is sitting through a "React Certified Developer" exam. I hope
that is not where the industry is headed.

It is interesting though, I can imagine it's really hard to hire good talent
for many hiring managers because it is difficult to spot who is good or bad. I
am sure they wish there was some kind of standard measure like other
industries have.

~~~
cheriot
There's a lot more to professional development than certification bs. I've not
done anything on Udacity, but I've spent my employer's money on Coursera
before and it was well worth the time. I've also spent 10x the Coursera's
price on a 5 day training that was good, too. There's good material out there,
money ready to be spent on it, but the the current business model doesn't tap
into it well.

------
StudentStuff
Does getting a nanodegree from Udacity significantly improve ones hirability?
For $600, it looks like one gets a shot at a nanodegree that has numerous soft
deadlines, but with fixed, inflexible deadlines potentially piling up at the
end of the course.

In my experience, having a mostly self paced class with no hard deadlines,
then a stack of hard deadlines for projects at the very end results in
stressed out students and a ton of poorly done work. Choose a model and stick
to it, either its self paced with no defined end date, in which case people
will learn at their own pace, or its a classic fixed format course, with a
list of due dates published prior to the class even starting.

Edit: Additionally, the refund window seems much shorter than one sees at
traditional colleges and there is still no accreditation for the nanodegrees
Udacity lists. At accredited institutions, these types of workforce retraining
programs have a bit more heft, and set you up to go straight into a decently
paid job. It appears Udacity hasn't solved this problem.

~~~
brylie
Building a portfolio of open source work in conjunction with at-your-own-pace
study is a great way to grow and showcase your abilities.

~~~
StudentStuff
This portfolio is built by committing your classwork to git, I wouldn't say
Udacity has this as a particular advantage. If I search for a course, usually
the first couple results I'll get are git repos, regardless of the institution
offering said course.

~~~
brylie
Right, building a portfolio isn't specific to any learning platform.

When I buy an online course or book, it is often reassuring for me that the
course materials are available in an open source repository. This ensures that
students can use the course materials in their personal projects, and
increases the commonwealth.

------
jammygit
Udacity has been much better than my actual university for almost every topic
I've went to them for. I'm sad to hear they're going through this.

On the topic, how does their security nanodegree look? It starts early 2019
and I've been seriously considering it.

~~~
darpa_escapee
> Udacity has been much better than my actual university for almost every
> topic I've went to them for.

Which topics, in particular?

~~~
alexhutcheson
Andreas Zeller's "Software Debugging" course is excellent, although it's a
topic that most universities wouldn't offer a full course on.

~~~
jammygit
What did the course cover?

------
TheMagicHorsey
I paid for their self driving car class, very early. It was a mistake to do
that.

Not because the class material or teaching was bad. On the contrary it was
very good.

Rather because they did not let me access the materials after the class was
over. They would not let me postpone completion of the class based on my
schedule.

It was very much like a real course. I thought it would be more like a course
that I could complete on my own schedule if I missed their schedule. I didn't
want their certificate. I just wanted to learn the material.

After paying over $600 for the course, it really rubbed me the wrong way that
they shut me out of the course lectures and materials. It would not have cost
them anything to allow me to learn at my own pace. But they decided to go that
way.

One of the points that was really annoying and borderline fraudulent is that
their free courses don't operate like that. Those materials are available to
you all the time. It's just the courses you pay for where your experience is
worse. Go figure.

Anyway, $600 was a cheap way to learn the lesson not to buy a course from them
again.

I really think there's a place for a good company to sell courses on emerging
technology, and to charge premium prices. They just have to understand that
most people need to be able to tackle the material in a self-paced manner.
Some of us have jobs and families.

------
znpy
Udacity essentially failed in reaching its base goal: becoming an university
capable of issuing bachelors degrees, via the mooc teaching method.

No wonder it now needs "restructuring".

~~~
gumby
Coursera is going more in the way you describe: you can actually get a
university degree from some institutions via Coursera and the degree says
"Batchelor of XXX from well-known-university" (not "well-known-university
online").

IMHO the big reason for the difference: Udacity original CEO: former professor
(Thrun). Coursera original CEO: former president of Yale (Levin). This is not
to imply one was smart and one was not; it just shows that the companies'
implementations and objectives reflected the backgrounds of the respective
CEOs. In the long run I haven't the faintest idea is better.

I do find the Udacity web site hard to follow, but I don't care at all about
credentials/certification so might find the "nanodegree" idea more practical
for my own purposes (compared to Coursera) if I wanted to take a class.

disclaimer: my gf works for Coursera, but honestly until she started there the
only online teaching company I'd heard of was Khan. I learned all the info in
the first two paragraphs from her.

~~~
anticensor
Are US university presidents not required to be profs?

~~~
ghaff
No. But it’s common in part because the faculty tend not to respect those who
aren’t members of the club.

~~~
znpy
>the faculty tend not to respect those who aren’t members of the club.

Classic faculty.

------
edshiro
This seems like a necessary reset, especially given their very high valuation.
I personally enjoyed most of Udacity's Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree.
The content was great and at the time I had a very supportive mentor (gutted
they got rid of this feature). Moreover, they have managed to build a large
community of current students and alumni who keep in touch even after the
nanodegree is over.

I would suggest they reduce the number of courses they offer and improve
quality. I tend to see them as a more "premium" MOOC but I do agree that
quality of content is variable depending on course.

Another area they should naturally look at is training for employees in
corporations. I really hope Sebastian Thrun can turn things around.

~~~
anonymous5133
I completely agree with the quality arguments.

Everyone...let's be honest with ourselves and what we want from these moocs. I
don't know about everyone else but what I want is high-quality courses that
are online and basically free. Ads are okay and premium features are okay
(like live tutoring or a human given lecture). When I say high-quality I want
the content to be similar to what you would get from a Harvard, Stanford or
other top university in the field in terms of the content. I want to learn the
same topics. Don't water it down and make it simple. I want the real deal with
the difficulty and all. Once that is accomplished..work on building tools that
make these subjects easier to learn.

This is quite a hurdle to build but ultimately this is what we need. We need a
free online university that teaches the same material you would learn from a
top university. I don't like the watered down MOOCs that udacity, coursera and
udemy offer.

~~~
gaius
_I don 't know about everyone else but what I want is high-quality courses
that are online and basically free_

What you want then is EdX. Every course is backed by a real-world institution
that people have heard of, and they are free to audit, pay only if you want
the certificate and/or to support their nonprofit mission

~~~
barry-cotter
There are occasional trash courses on EdX though. If I hadn’t already started
on LouvainX’s MicroMaster’s in International Law Amnesty International’s
course on the law of asylum and refugees would have turned me right off. The
intellectual level of that course was round about middle school.

~~~
anonymous5133
I've had the same issue! People say that EdX is so great and it is equivalent
in course quality but it simply isn't. I haven't' seen that. All of the
courses are heavily watered down...and I mean significantly watered down like
you don't even learn 20% of what you learn from the traditional course in
college.

------
asien
Absolutely not surprise.

Unicorns like Udacity have extremely high valuation but are barely making any
money.

Most of their spendings goes into Marketing and not actual R&D for education.

~~~
Neracked
> Unicorns like Udacity

I thought that was an hyperbole. Then I checked on Wikipedia: "While not yet
profitable as of February 2018, Udacity is valued at over $1B USD having
raised $163M USD from noted investors".

~~~
pluma
Probably a good moment to remember that "unicorn" is an arbitrary label and
valuations are entirely based on subjective speculation and extrapolations
that may be entirely unrealistic.

It's never about how much money a company can make, it's only about how much
someone might pay for that company. At the end of the day, a lot of startup
investment is more like trading baseball cards than producing anything of
actual value to consumers.

------
notgettingfined
Hopefully they make their classes focused more on teaching useful information
than trying to make students feel good about completing projects that have the
challenging portions already completed. I am going through the self-driving
driving car nano degree and I do not see how this could do much to convince an
employer you know anything

~~~
anonymous5133
Yeah, that's what happens when you focus on buzz word trends. Self-driving car
is a hip term right now but there is a ton of science, math and engineering
that goes into it. For Udacity, which needs to impress investors, they need to
focus on the money and that is by selling hyped up courses that make people
think they're learning something. In reality, it is just the high-level
overall of it with nothing significant. If they actually focused on the real
science and engineering of self-driving cars then most would flunk of it very
quickly...and no one would really want to go that route...unless you are a
major geek of course that likes a challenge. The truth is the amount of those
geeks that exist is very to the amount that would pay for the buzz word
course. So of course udacity is going to focus on where the money is at.

------
wpdev_63
Not surprised. I took one of their courses and found it to be incredibly
shallow in comparison to actual college courses and edx. It's closer to those
baby youtube tutorial video than anything that resembles a course.

Anyone notice the google trademark has been remove from their android course?

~~~
athar
yeah, and in the course, you do get all those tutorial together. I never
actually completed any course there.

------
criddell
What's the difference between Udacity and Udemy? Are they the same company?

Also, I'd love to hear about your favorite online courses. I took Andrew Ng's
Machine Learning and Dan Boneh's Cryptography (both on Coursera) and they were
excellent.

------
diminish
Udacity's clean, curated, well designed approach lost to market based diverse
mooc approach by others.

