4 ms·

Advanced folks will have very specific needs that are hard to meet for any course with a pre-determined curriculum. Perhaps a better approach would be to hire

Advanced folks will have very specific needs that are hard to meet for any course with a pre-determined curriculum. Perhaps a better approach would be to hire an expert from a consultancy, negotiate a detailed custom curriculum together and go from there? It would certainly be expensive but perhaps within reach for a small group or for heavily motivated individuals?

btilly 9y ago
Exactly this. Any self-taught intermediate person will have learned some things, missed others, and the pattern of what is missed varies widely by person. Therefore it isn't, "Oh, you're intermediate, this is what you need." Instead it is, "Here are the basic things that you happened to miss." So it may be valid to swallow your pride and do the basic course, most of which you know, to find what you don't. Or to trust that you can fill in holes yourself on demand. (People's belief about how well they can do this tends to exceed their actual ability...) Or to have someone evaluate you to find those blind spots.
xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
I have had the same thought about college-courses. Why have 100+ people paying 2k+ for a course being taught by a grad student. If you could cut out the middlemen (schools), we could probably get better "professors" (i.e. one of the best people in the field - im sure people in industry would love to pick up an extra 10-20k to teach 1 class a year) for cheaper and in smaller class room settings. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........Just gotta figure out how to do the signaling properly so businesses will look at the classes you took and think 'I want to hire that person.'
- sbov 9y ago
  That's what you get for going to a research school: grad students teaching classes. I went to a non research school (a CSU) back in the early 2000s, and all classes were taught by real professors, but it isn't as prestigious as a Stanford or Berkeley. Beyond that, the teachers for night classes were all from industry. I took a graphics class taught by someone who previously worked on OpenGL at SGI, a database class taught by someone who was at the time working on DB2 at IBM, and a j2ee class taught by someone who at the time was working at Sun Microsystems.

btilly 9y ago

Exactly this. Any self-taught intermediate person will have learned some things, missed others, and the pattern of what is missed varies widely by person. Therefore it isn't, "Oh, you're intermediate, this is what you need." Instead it is, "Here are the basic things that you happened to miss." So it may be valid to swallow your pride and do the basic course, most of which you know, to find what you don't. Or to trust that you can fill in holes yourself on demand. (People's belief about how well they can do this tends to exceed their actual ability...) Or to have someone evaluate you to find those blind spots.

xxSparkleSxx 9y ago

I have had the same thought about college-courses. Why have 100+ people paying 2k+ for a course being taught by a grad student. If you could cut out the middlemen (schools), we could probably get better "professors" (i.e. one of the best people in the field - im sure people in industry would love to pick up an extra 10-20k to teach 1 class a year) for cheaper and in smaller class room settings. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........Just gotta figure out how to do the signaling properly so businesses will look at the classes you took and think 'I want to hire that person.'

sbov 9y ago
That's what you get for going to a research school: grad students teaching classes. I went to a non research school (a CSU) back in the early 2000s, and all classes were taught by real professors, but it isn't as prestigious as a Stanford or Berkeley. Beyond that, the teachers for night classes were all from industry. I took a graphics class taught by someone who previously worked on OpenGL at SGI, a database class taught by someone who was at the time working on DB2 at IBM, and a j2ee class taught by someone who at the time was working at Sun Microsystems.