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They were already in a good position pre-Covid and that just amped things up for them. Your opinions on the value of the credentials is simply your opinion, an

by evgen 6y ago

They were already in a good position pre-Covid and that just amped things up for them. Your opinions on the value of the credentials is simply your opinion, and both the market and downvoters here seem to think you are wrong. The interesting revenue that has the biggest upside, IMHO, is for enterprises doing internal training and 're-skilling' for employees. In any company of more than a thousand people it seems there is some branch of HR that organizes courses on everything from how to avoid a sex discrimination lawsuit to using some ML library in the analytics stack -- this seems to be where the long-term money is when it comes to online education.

echelon 6y ago
> how to avoid a sex discrimination lawsuit Where's Coursera's moat here? Dozens of companies offer this, and from what I can gather, companies will want to spend the minimum amount of money they can get away with to cover the legal liabilities. > using some ML library in the analytics stack This was a fad. You don't teach your average software engineers how to do this. If you care, you hire data scientists and have your own ML team. Or you just carry on with business as usual. edit: your downvotes flag my account and prevent me from interacting with the HN community. If that's how you'd like to do things, then fine. I'd rather this was an amicable discussion than a downvote party.
- evgen 6y ago
  The moat is that Coursera can bundle all of these into a single package and sell it in bulk to these companies. No one wants to deal with this themselves. At the FAANGs that I have worked at there were teams devoted to this task, but it is the sort of thing which is easy to outsource and when it comes to certain compliance courses you sometimes need a legal imprimatur for the course that is a pain for each company to certify but easy for someone like Coursera to do. (I am not downvoting you, just commenting on why some people might be doing so...)
ghaff 6y ago
While true, in my experience, companies are generally looking (rightly or wrongly) more for the sort of content that Udemy and LinkedIn crank out; i.e. practical hands-on material that's often relatively bite-sized. I don't think you typically see University-type courses on corporate training platforms--though I'm sure there are exceptions.

by evgen 6y ago

echelon 6y ago

> how to avoid a sex discrimination lawsuit Where's Coursera's moat here? Dozens of companies offer this, and from what I can gather, companies will want to spend the minimum amount of money they can get away with to cover the legal liabilities. > using some ML library in the analytics stack This was a fad. You don't teach your average software engineers how to do this. If you care, you hire data scientists and have your own ML team. Or you just carry on with business as usual. edit: your downvotes flag my account and prevent me from interacting with the HN community. If that's how you'd like to do things, then fine. I'd rather this was an amicable discussion than a downvote party.

evgen 6y ago
The moat is that Coursera can bundle all of these into a single package and sell it in bulk to these companies. No one wants to deal with this themselves. At the FAANGs that I have worked at there were teams devoted to this task, but it is the sort of thing which is easy to outsource and when it comes to certain compliance courses you sometimes need a legal imprimatur for the course that is a pain for each company to certify but easy for someone like Coursera to do. (I am not downvoting you, just commenting on why some people might be doing so...)

ghaff 6y ago

While true, in my experience, companies are generally looking (rightly or wrongly) more for the sort of content that Udemy and LinkedIn crank out; i.e. practical hands-on material that's often relatively bite-sized. I don't think you typically see University-type courses on corporate training platforms--though I'm sure there are exceptions.