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Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

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Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#31

Post by tivert »

ado__dev wrote: post #2

I've been a Pluralsight subscriber for probably over a decade now. Their content is awesome for getting up to speed quickly or just learning about a technology without too much fluff. I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying th…

> I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying that knowledge through trial and error) has made me much more productive and also greatly reduced my reliance on using sites like Pluralsight to get up to speed/debug/etc.

That seems like a learning cul-de-sac, sort of like trying to learn a city only by following turn-by-turn directions and never looking at a map. You're going to have no idea all kinds of things are even there.

Also, this: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

> And reading the Sparknotes often would be enough to fake your way through the test, but it would not have any chance, like, not a chance, of changing you, of shifting you, of giving you the ideas and insights that reading “Crime and Punishment” or “East of Eden” would do.

> And one thing I see a lot of people doing is using A.I. for summary. And one of the ways it’s clearly going to get used in organizations is for summary — summarize my email, and so on.

> ...But what matters about reading a book, and I see this all the time preparing for this show, is the time you spend in the book, where over time, like, new insights and associations for you begin to shake loose. And so I worry it’s coming into an efficiency-obsessed educational and intellectual culture, where people have been imagining forever, what if we could do all this without having to spend any of the time on it? But actually, there’s something important in the time.

> There’s something important in the time with a blank page, with the hard book. And I don’t think we lionize intellectual struggle.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#32

Post by rqtwteye »

jamestimmins wrote: post #14
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #3

Pluralsight is a classic example of a small tutorial site forced to become a giant company. It just doesn't work. There was another: Treehouse, which had a similar fate. On the other hand Jeffrey Way's Laracasts is an astounding success and had a huge role to play in the second coming of PHP.

I've always been curious about what companies in the graveyard of VC-backed companies would do really well as bootstrapped or 1-person shops. Laracasts is a great example.

I bet a lot of “failed” companies could provide a nice steady income for a small team if they weren’t forced to grow fast.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#33

Post by glennpratt »

nradov wrote: post #17
BillSaysThis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes? The investors in the PE's fund that owned this company?

What? Are you saying that you think there needs to be some kind of post-mortem because the investors might end up paying less income tax then they would have in some unlikely alternate reality where the deal was a success? That doesn't make any sense at all.

I'm not GP, but perhaps something like the following would be a reason (investigation might be a more accurate term than post-mortem in that case).

>In October 2020, Vista's CEO Robert F. Smith and investor Robert T. Brockman were named in a tax evasion case.[33][34] That month, Smith signed a non-prosecution agreement with the IRS, agreeing to pay $139 million and testify against Brockman.[33]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista_Equity_Partners#Tax_evas...

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#34

Post by eterm »

I don't know if it's my own career development, but it felt like the quality of Pluralsight has also taken a nosedive.

I had a bit of career break during the pandemic, so went from being a fairly regular consumer of pluralsight in 2018/9 to only coming back to it fairly recently.

Whereas previously it felt like I could find interesting guides at my level, when I tried to look for similar things now, nothing felt quite right.

Worst still, some of my previous favourite series were no longer available. It seemed really short sighted to destroy so much value.

Even if videos were produced on "old" (i.e. .Net framework) technology, they should be marked as such, not removed from the platform.

They could have been a massive hub of long tail content, instead it feels like they're trapped re-recording and refreshing the same content.

Perhaps it's also just market forces, I think 5 years ago there was a lot more .Net content and perhaps .Net is just a lot less in vogue now.

One of the recent videos on .net benchmarking had serious flaws. I realised half-way through I had seen an article on hacker news about it, but hadn't realised it was the same course. ( https://sergeyteplyakov.github.io/Blog/benchmarking/2023/11/... with hn discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38137879 )

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#35

Post by zerkten »

azemetre wrote: post #29
formerly_proven wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely a tail risk of this stuff making the vast majority of "knowledge workers" jobless.

I took it more as Pluralsight courses are barely better than documentation, and from my experience of being a subscriber I definitely agree.

I don't think there is much vision or editorial control. Anyone with an idea can seemingly produce content for these platforms and it almost always falls short.

How do you position this video content versus documentation? Anecdotally, younger audiences may have a preference at times, but I think it's more about the use case and preparation. I've seen really good video content and bad. Same applies to docs, or any content.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#36

Post by bostonsre »

eterm wrote: post #34

I don't know if it's my own career development, but it felt like the quality of Pluralsight has also taken a nosedive. I had a bit of career break during the pandemic, so went from being a fairly regular consumer of pluralsight in 2018/9 to only coming back to it fairly recently. Whereas previously it felt like I could find interesting guides at my level, when I tried to look for similar things now, nothing felt quit…

It was not great to work at a company Vista acquired company ~10 years ago. Engineering talent fled, code quality dropped, product prices were jacked up, etc. I guess the company I worked for was then sold to another pe company in 2017, but it's not public if Vista made money or not. I would guess they're still using cold fusion to this day.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#37

Post by tomrod »

texas2toss wrote: post #26
cj wrote: post #10

The timing coinciding with the founder exiting is interesting. I've heard multiple horror stories from founders who sold to Vista. They don't exactly have the best reputation. I wouldn't be surprised if this move stripped value away from other stakeholders in some slightly questionable manner.

I know many who have had hugely successful exits to vista. They are extremely good at what they do - but perhaps what they do doesn’t align with your morals

If drop in quality and increases of price for the same product is good morals, I question the supporting worldview.

"Profits above all" is not a good thing. Authentic delivery and growth is a great thing -- it means people want your product. Profits above all is just pillaging.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#38

Post by acchow »

tivert wrote: post #31
ado__dev wrote: post #2

I've been a Pluralsight subscriber for probably over a decade now. Their content is awesome for getting up to speed quickly or just learning about a technology without too much fluff. I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying th…

> I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying that knowledge through trial and error) has made me much more productive and also greatly reduced my reliance on using sites like Pluralsight to get up to speed/debug/etc. That seems l…

Learning/Coding with Claude 3/GPT4 is not like following turn-by-turn directions. It's like having a city guide next to you that knows everything about every street and the history of every building.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#39

Post by bredren »

tivert wrote: post #31
ado__dev wrote: post #2

I've been a Pluralsight subscriber for probably over a decade now. Their content is awesome for getting up to speed quickly or just learning about a technology without too much fluff. I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying th…

> I do see though how AI is a huge threat to them. Using Claude 3 for coding and being able to ask questions about my specific issues and getting tailored responses every time to my exact issue (vs watching a general video and applying that knowledge through trial and error) has made me much more productive and also greatly reduced my reliance on using sites like Pluralsight to get up to speed/debug/etc. That seems l…

> That seems like a learning cul-de-sac, sort of like trying to learn a city only by following turn-by-turn directions and never looking at a map. You're going to have no idea all kinds of things are even there.

But you do walk the streets. Sometimes learning this way lets you deliver on stuff way faster, even if you don't understand the whole.

Re: Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout

#40

Post by pseudosavant »

lucretian wrote: post #27
creativeSlumber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of sad. It was /is a functioning profitable public company with employees. A PE firm decides to take a huge loan to buy it, and now the company is gone. All those people lost their jobs. A huge net negative on the world and society because of greedy PE.

the company isn't gone. vista is likely getting wiped out and the lenders will own the business.

More than half the employees have been let go in round after round of layoffs for 6 quarters straight.
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