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LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

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Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#131

Post by orionblastar »

Someone1234 wrote: post #109
webwanderings wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you had a Server 2000 MCSE on your CV right now, Why? It would show strength and background of your past and history.

It shows you haven't done anything worthwhile for 14 years(!). If you have to pad your CV out with stuff you know won't be relevant, then you're in a weak position professionally (or are just too lazy to update your CV, which might be worse). A lot of older employees (late 40s or 50s) make this mistake. They leave experience on their CV which is not relevant because it is twenty or more years old, and then wonder why…

I'm in my 40s and been on disability since 2003. My skills are out of date, and I've been out of work for far too long.

Been trying to learn the new technology, but knowing the old technology makes learning the new technology easier.

I haven't updated my resume in a long time, been meaning to do so. Still list Novell Netware, Commodore Amiga, COBOL, Wordperfect, Visual BASIC 6.0 etc and never updated the resume since 2001 or so. But I never handed out my resume because I've been disabled. Time to trim off the old stuff and add on my new experiences.

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#132

Post by theVirginian »

easytiger wrote: post #80
kirinan wrote: post #5

This is a pretty interesting acquisition. Linkedin is trying to position themselves as a full service job market. If you want a particular job, go to Linkedin and even if you are missing a few skills you can pick it up on their site and get "Linkedin Certified". This provides Linkedin with a series of "Linkedin Certified Professionals" that recruiters need to pay to get access to. It's an interesting position to be i…

Great, back to the 90s and java & oracle certification style shit being demanded by employers

I think we can do better this time. I'm optimistic that these new "certifications" will be ways to continue learning after higher education, or a way for people who didn't have that opportunity to learn gainful skills

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#133

Post by orionblastar »

Someone1234 wrote: post #18

This, to me, is terrible news. I am a big fan of Lynda.com. They've always had a great library (both for tech' stuff but are also one of few sites that offer non-tech video training (business courses, photography, etc) and their prices were always very reasonable. LinkedIn can only make the site worse as far as I am concerned, and I already avoid LinkedIn due to the fact that they've essentially become spammers who w…

Linkedin is sort of a social network for recruiters and brokers who are looking for new talent.

Sure they spam potential clients with job offers. Sure they set up groups and make posts on it and they flood your email.

Your Linkedin profile is supposed to be your resume or CV, people endorse you for skills that worked with you.

Buying out Lynda is going to give Linkedin an option to sell classes for certification to be added to your Linkedin profile. It will make you more valuable to the people looking for new employees and clients. It is not a perfect system, but at least they'll know you took a class on the subject they are looking for.

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#134

Post by freshhawk »

alexashka wrote: post #123
rosser wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What few skills can a working programmer get from Lynda? Honestly... The myopia some technologists display is really staggering sometimes. I mean, it's not like people who aren't technologists would ever want to learn new skills or anything, would they? They should totally just stay at their menial, paper-shuffling desk jobs, or serve lattes to programmers, or something.

"Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has Lynda got to offer?" I'm not saying people shouldn't learn. I'm saying there are superior alternatives for every area Lynda is offering to teach. Not sure whose point of view you're disagreeing with really.

Those are of very different types. Where is the practical photoshop retouching course from MIT or Stanford?

Of course there isn't one, because that's not the kind of education they provide.

Where are the superior alternatives for someone to learn how to process HDR images in Photoshop or How to use Rhino to render architectural designs? And they need to learn this by tomorrow.

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#135

Post by freshhawk »

jasode wrote: post #16

As an outsider looking in, LinkedIn's purchase of Lynda.com looks like an odd duck in comparison to their previous acquisitions[1]. As far as I can tell, the Lynda.com brand name isn't that well known outside of tech circles. (Virtually all of their courses are Adobe, Microsoft Office, and web development, etc) I'm guessing those computer courses are relevant to less than 5% of LinkedIn's user base. It was very recen…

Everyone who listens to podcasts has almost certainly heard of Lynda.com

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#136

Post by rada »

puranjay wrote: post #115
alexashka wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite terrible, I mean, amazing for Lynda :) Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has Lynda got to offer? It's a sinking ship. The 'one-stop for all your learning needs' is simply a bad model - all programmers know this. You have to go and seek out different resources that work for you and now we CAN, more than ever. The only reason to choose Lynda is out of ignorance or lazine…

Exactly. Take is as someone who has been teaching himself how to code, Lynda, Codecademy, even Udacity are not going to cut it. These are good if you want to play at coding. But if you want to do anything serious, you'll have to check out actual lecture videos and books. For example, I was trying to figure out linked lists and the best resources were either from solo Youtubers, or a couple of videos uploaded by MIT a…

There are currently 5 linked list tutorials on Lynda.com:

http://www.lynda.com/search?q=linked+list

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#137

Post by wwweston »

ausjke wrote: post #57

Why not udemy/coursera/udacity? Lynda is great but seems a bit "old-style", but anyway I think this is the right move, a job site companied by training

> Lynda is great but seems a bit "old-style"

Can you be more specific about ways in which their offerings fail to measure up to current competitors or the potential of current technology?

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#138

Post by mlangdon »

gohrt wrote: post #106
webwanderings wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you had a Server 2000 MCSE on your CV right now, Why? It would show strength and background of your past and history.

"Server 2000,2003,2007,2013 MCSE" or such, would show continuous strength.

Better make sure you get those years right if that's your padding :)

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#139

Post by mason240 »

rosser wrote: post #121
alexashka wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite terrible, I mean, amazing for Lynda :) Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has Lynda got to offer? It's a sinking ship. The 'one-stop for all your learning needs' is simply a bad model - all programmers know this. You have to go and seek out different resources that work for you and now we CAN, more than ever. The only reason to choose Lynda is out of ignorance or lazine…

> What few skills can a working programmer get from Lynda? Honestly... The myopia some technologists display is really staggering sometimes. I mean, it's not like people who aren't technologists would ever want to learn new skills or anything, would they? They should totally just stay at their menial, paper-shuffling desk jobs, or serve lattes to programmers, or something.

Why would people not interested in technology want to learn programming?

Re: LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B

#140

Post by alexashka »

freshhawk wrote: post #134
alexashka wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has Lynda got to offer?" I'm not saying people shouldn't learn. I'm saying there are superior alternatives for every area Lynda is offering to teach. Not sure whose point of view you're disagreeing with really.

Those are of very different types. Where is the practical photoshop retouching course from MIT or Stanford? Of course there isn't one, because that's not the kind of education they provide. Where are the superior alternatives for someone to learn how to process HDR images in Photoshop or How to use Rhino to render architectural designs? And they need to learn this by tomorrow.

Here is what google gave me in 0.31 seconds for photoshop retouching: https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es...

Smashing magazine 70 free resources? Sounds good.

Let's go down the list, HDR images in Photopshop: google gave me https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es...

The first link seems quite in depth and adequate.

Do I need to go on? I'm not trying to be a dick but the first two examples I gave you took less than a minute to find FREE answers for.

Even if you do find some edge case where Lynda happens to have a better solution than what I can gather online within 5 minutes, what does that prove?

Lynda can't match MIT or Stanford, or Apple's developer resources. Instead of pivoting, they're selling what's available freely, for money, to those who are incompetent at using the internet.

That's their business model. If you think that's ok and worth 1.5 billion, great, we simply have a different outlook on life.

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