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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

#41

Post by ForHackernews »

jkestner wrote: post #9
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…

Does MCSE still pull weight? Are there newer certifications that matter now? What fields do you think will benefit from this certification? In design (one of Lynda's pillars), half of hireability is portfolio. I suppose in production roles, you'd want to know you're hiring technically proficient people, but that too you can mostly tell from the work. Perhaps this works as well, or better, from the angle of "People wh…

I had always heard that MCSE was considered a joke. I've heard positive things about RHCE and some of the Cisco networking certs, but I haven't been around that world for several years now.

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

#42

Post by Raphmedia »

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…

My first reaction was also "oh no!".

That being said, it could be interesting if Lynda course completions could be linked to a linkedin profile or something similar. Gives some power to self-learners.

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

#43

Post by ghshephard »

nly wrote: post #26
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…

How can their technology possibly be worth $1.5B?

It's not the technology, but the brand, customer base, content, and growing business that Linked In is investing in.

Lynda.com has been working incredibly hard for quite a few years to build up their business, so I'm really happy to hear that they've been reward for all the hard work and excellent execution.

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

#44

Post by err4nt »

aurora72 wrote: post #17

Wonder how they will be able to compete with free online courses, there are plenty of them and they're just as quality. I also wonder how Linked-in itself can compete with other social networks.

It's not about providing education, it's about exclusivity.

LinkedIN will likely begin showing your Lynda courses in a prominent way on LinkedIN profiles, so if you want to be competitive on LinkedIN, you'll need to give more money to LinkedIN Lynda.

The problem I see with this is that veterans would never go take an introductory class on Lynda, but every young aspirant who has desire where you have experience will _appear_ better to recruiters because at least their introductory courses can be verified where with your experience, somebody knowledge in that field would have to evaluate your work.

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

#46

Post by endlessvoid94 »

eli wrote: post #14
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…

I think this is exactly right. If you look at what's going on at education in general right now, "credentialing" is one of the top challenges for education startups. Particularly for MOOCs but also for bootcamps. How are hiring managers supposed to know which certificates mean something or which classes actually teach people something? LinkedIn's revenue right now is all about services to make recruiting easier.

My personal opinion is that credentialing is going out of style anyway. Employers want to see what you can do, not where you learned.

Put another way -- when's the last time you cared if someone was Microsoft Visual C++ .NET certified?

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

#47

Post by Someone1234 »

jkestner wrote: post #9
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…

Does MCSE still pull weight? Are there newer certifications that matter now? What fields do you think will benefit from this certification? In design (one of Lynda's pillars), half of hireability is portfolio. I suppose in production roles, you'd want to know you're hiring technically proficient people, but that too you can mostly tell from the work. Perhaps this works as well, or better, from the angle of "People wh…

> Does MCSE still pull weight?

Depends where you are in your career. I've heard it claimed that an MCSE can be a stand-in for a degree (yes, I know that makes no sense, but I mean from a recruiter's perspective when reviewing a candidate's overall qualifications, rather than relating to technical skill/knowledge).

So in your first 1-10 years? It might help. I will say eventually you have to remove an MCSE from your CV/resume as it does more harm than good (e.g. if you had a Server 2000 MCSE on your CV right now, it's just going to make you look out of touch).

> Are there newer certifications that matter now?

Timeless is key(!).

A cert' which is tied to a specific piece of software only helps you while that software is relevant. So getting a cert on something like Project Management, Project Planning, or a broad cert' on security (with a focus on policy, not systems like CISSP or Security+).

That's why degrees are a no-brainer. They're always timeless. People list their degree in their first and last job. Few certs survive more than fifteen some odd years.

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

#48

Post by JustSomeNobody »

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…

Maybe it makes sense in this world of everyone needs to "learn to code"? (Whatever that means...)

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

#49

Post by z3t4 »

Whenever I want to learn something I just search on the Internet or ask experiences people to recommend a book. Or lookup what course literature the well known schools are using.

What are the benefit of online courses more then that you get a badge or paper that says you have taken the course?

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

#50

Post by blub »

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…

Well, there's always Safari. They also have videos and stuff now, although I prefer the cheaper, book-only subscription.
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