12 ms·

Honest question - has anyone here, ever, learned anything deep or useful from training videos? I've worked for many large vendors, many large companies. Train

Honest question - has anyone here, ever, learned anything deep or useful from training videos? I've worked for many large vendors, many large companies. Training videos are less useful and much longer than just reading the product guide followed by the admin guide for a product. And a good way to start, is a google image search. Every single training video I've encountered in almost 30 years of work falls into 2 categories: spend an hour on very basic things that are repeated over and over, then insert a couple of very technical, very useless deep dive topics. At the end, you open up the product guide and read it. The other category is usually a guy recording himself and his screen, doing very technical very useful stuff, and you watch him type commands and do something. This is completely useless - you can't copy/paste into your notes, the commands he types is forgotten in 5 minutes, and at the end, you open the admin guide and read it. There are some things to be trained on for which the video format was not designed. Things like coding, things like running different commands to deploy something. Why is video training so popular? No one I know learns jack from videos.

mbg721 3y ago
I have never learned anything useful at my office-desk-job work from training videos, but almost all my handy homeowner knowledge is from videos. It's a very useful format for physical tasks that are hard to communicate.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  I used to be all about text and reading, but YouTube has gotten so niche and good that I learn a lot from YT videos. Recently there was a conversation on HN about concrete and I could actually see people get some details about the process wrong, meaning I somehow have a slight level of concrete knowledge by accident.
  - analognoise 3y ago
    Like "I know Kung Fu" from the Matrix, but about absorbing concrete knowledge? I've never thought about house projects where I consult YouTube (which is constantly) in that way, and now I'm going to tell my (bewildered) wife I know Kung Fu every time I have to pull a toilet or caulk a sink. Thanks for this connection, stranger.
hyperrail 3y ago
I find these Microsoft ethics training videos quite cheesy, but I appreciate that they try to keep your attention by falling into neither of the buckets you mentioned. The originally linked news story goes into that quite a bit. As an alternative, Microsoft provides transcripts of all these training videos, which you can read instead of sitting through the videos themselves. Feels much quicker especially if you don't like them.
- davchana 3y ago
  My employer pays about $30 for minor suggestions. We get a video address from higher ups every week. I suggested they add a pdf of transcript (not subtitles). They accepted.
tayo42 3y ago
There are very few things I like videos for. I also don't think i've ever learned something valuable from corporate training, video or not. I never understand when people say companies should train their employees, like they try, and fail miserably, every time.
bawolff 3y ago
Some videos are less about training and more about liability avoidence. The audience doesn't have to learn in order to be able to say - well we trained them!
prmejc 3y ago
I general, when I need to do something fast and I have an idea how it should be done, I dislike video format. E.g. how to bind a file from a host to a docker container. I liked training videos at my previous employer. They were mostly about company culture and concepts. E.g. video explaining that no process at work is fixed. They all should be constantly improved. It was easy to share it with coworkers, why is it ok to start with imperfect process. I also like videos when I'm learning something completely new and I see the person doing the video also making a mistake. It gives me confidence, that they are human too, and I can grasp it. E.g. how to make fire in unreal engine.
drunkan 3y ago
Hard agree. For learning programming etc I have to wade through recommendations for YouTube this or some other video platform for a channel run by some learning influencer. All the best online courses I have taken have always been text form. The one impediment to my learning unreal engine is that every single course is video based. It makes no sense. Video is for entertainment. Off topic - If anyone happens to know any non video based learning for unreal engine 5 please recommend
MattGaiser 3y ago
> The other category is usually a guy recording himself and his screen, doing very technical very useful stuff, and you watch him type commands and do something. This is completely useless - you can't copy/paste into your notes, the commands he types is forgotten in 5 minutes, and at the end, you open the admin guide and read it. This is useless for someone typing commands, but I find it invaluable for graphical contexts. Where the heck do I configure X in the massive tree of options? Video is quite useful there.
jpmoral 3y ago
Not sure if this counts for your question but I get a lot of value from Muay Thai and ukulele videos. That said, those are in combination with instruction from a teacher.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
no. but of course microsoft does that. they are basically initech at this stage.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>Honest question - has anyone here, ever, learned anything deep or useful from training videos? Way back in my childhood (mid- to late-90s), I learned a lot of computing from those "How To" VHS tape sets[1][2] that were being sold for educating/training people coming into the new world of computing. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvxhpglQmv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvxhpglQmv4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9Wvm2x8Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9Wvm2x8Fc
asdfman123 3y ago
There’s the possibility they are reaching the rare person who completely lacks self awareness. The kind of person if you tell them about their offensive behavior, they’re genuinely shocked. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s mostly BS compliance, but those kinds of people sometimes do need things spelled out for them. Also, not everyone is a reader.
shermozle 3y ago
People learn in different ways. Smart organisations provide multiple pathways. Video, done well, is an amazing way to get an overview. Check out Confluent's intro to Kafka. They're brilliant.
_8j50 3y ago
This stuff in general, I assume is just there to break you down mentally so you can conform to stuff. It's like when you get suspended in school.
bombcar 3y ago
Klaus taught me about forklift safety, and I will never shake hands with danger.
prepend 3y ago
I learned that organizations treat employee time taking training videos as an externality with no consequence. That was pretty illuminating. It’s interesting how places are happy to set up a required training video for an hour that 25k people must take. That’s the equivalent of 12 contractor person years. If I wanted to put out a contract for 25k hours there’s all sorts of reviews and governance around spending $2.5M. But not around having everyone spend an hour. That and I’ve learned that training videos have to be repeatedly completed even if they are the same exact thing. I have to watch the same exact ethics class every year. It’s the same class. I can’t test out of it, I must sit and watch an unskippable video each year. I actually think that the first eye tracking no ad skipping tech will be implemented in institutional training videos.
- codaphiliac 3y ago
  The cost of compliance.
- collsni 3y ago
  A company I previously worked for, gave us an overall budget of time costs to the company. Roughly the same size, but we had to cut our training time down for the exact reason you outlined, except it was more of a monetary figure.
- mathattack 3y ago
  I think you may be missing the point. This is training as “plausible proof that we have compliance in place.” So if the company gets in trouble they can say, “100% of the employees will get harassment training” or “100% of the employees will get training on insider trading” Then the second time they get in trouble they say “This was a rogue employee. 100% of our employees are trained. It’s not our fault.” That people actually change behavior requires a lot more than a training class.
  - prepend 3y ago
    I don’t think me taking the same training 5 years in a row shows any more compliance than me taking it once. It’s extra effort to figure out who has taken it or not so they just have everyone take it. I expect that in time, BS courses that show nominal compliance will be shown to be part of a workplace culture of not caring. But I shudder to think what the next form of compliance will be and will likely be much worse than watching a video once a year.
ngneer 3y ago
Deep, no. Useful, yes, but very rarely, and the SNR is quite low. Inventory management is one example where a video can help avoid stupid mistakes. View it as supplementary documentation for cases where there is no product or admin guide.

mbg721 3y ago

I have never learned anything useful at my office-desk-job work from training videos, but almost all my handy homeowner knowledge is from videos. It's a very useful format for physical tasks that are hard to communicate.

asdfman123 3y ago
I used to be all about text and reading, but YouTube has gotten so niche and good that I learn a lot from YT videos. Recently there was a conversation on HN about concrete and I could actually see people get some details about the process wrong, meaning I somehow have a slight level of concrete knowledge by accident.
- analognoise 3y ago
  Like "I know Kung Fu" from the Matrix, but about absorbing concrete knowledge? I've never thought about house projects where I consult YouTube (which is constantly) in that way, and now I'm going to tell my (bewildered) wife I know Kung Fu every time I have to pull a toilet or caulk a sink. Thanks for this connection, stranger.

hyperrail 3y ago

I find these Microsoft ethics training videos quite cheesy, but I appreciate that they try to keep your attention by falling into neither of the buckets you mentioned. The originally linked news story goes into that quite a bit. As an alternative, Microsoft provides transcripts of all these training videos, which you can read instead of sitting through the videos themselves. Feels much quicker especially if you don't like them.

davchana 3y ago
My employer pays about $30 for minor suggestions. We get a video address from higher ups every week. I suggested they add a pdf of transcript (not subtitles). They accepted.

tayo42 3y ago

There are very few things I like videos for. I also don't think i've ever learned something valuable from corporate training, video or not. I never understand when people say companies should train their employees, like they try, and fail miserably, every time.

bawolff 3y ago

Some videos are less about training and more about liability avoidence. The audience doesn't have to learn in order to be able to say - well we trained them!

prmejc 3y ago

I general, when I need to do something fast and I have an idea how it should be done, I dislike video format. E.g. how to bind a file from a host to a docker container. I liked training videos at my previous employer. They were mostly about company culture and concepts. E.g. video explaining that no process at work is fixed. They all should be constantly improved. It was easy to share it with coworkers, why is it ok to start with imperfect process. I also like videos when I'm learning something completely new and I see the person doing the video also making a mistake. It gives me confidence, that they are human too, and I can grasp it. E.g. how to make fire in unreal engine.

drunkan 3y ago

Hard agree. For learning programming etc I have to wade through recommendations for YouTube this or some other video platform for a channel run by some learning influencer. All the best online courses I have taken have always been text form. The one impediment to my learning unreal engine is that every single course is video based. It makes no sense. Video is for entertainment. Off topic - If anyone happens to know any non video based learning for unreal engine 5 please recommend

MattGaiser 3y ago

> The other category is usually a guy recording himself and his screen, doing very technical very useful stuff, and you watch him type commands and do something. This is completely useless - you can't copy/paste into your notes, the commands he types is forgotten in 5 minutes, and at the end, you open the admin guide and read it. This is useless for someone typing commands, but I find it invaluable for graphical contexts. Where the heck do I configure X in the massive tree of options? Video is quite useful there.

jpmoral 3y ago

Not sure if this counts for your question but I get a lot of value from Muay Thai and ukulele videos. That said, those are in combination with instruction from a teacher.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

no. but of course microsoft does that. they are basically initech at this stage.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Honest question - has anyone here, ever, learned anything deep or useful from training videos? Way back in my childhood (mid- to late-90s), I learned a lot of computing from those "How To" VHS tape sets[1][2] that were being sold for educating/training people coming into the new world of computing. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvxhpglQmv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvxhpglQmv4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9Wvm2x8Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh9Wvm2x8Fc

asdfman123 3y ago

There’s the possibility they are reaching the rare person who completely lacks self awareness. The kind of person if you tell them about their offensive behavior, they’re genuinely shocked. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s mostly BS compliance, but those kinds of people sometimes do need things spelled out for them. Also, not everyone is a reader.

shermozle 3y ago

People learn in different ways. Smart organisations provide multiple pathways. Video, done well, is an amazing way to get an overview. Check out Confluent's intro to Kafka. They're brilliant.

_8j50 3y ago

This stuff in general, I assume is just there to break you down mentally so you can conform to stuff. It's like when you get suspended in school.

bombcar 3y ago

Klaus taught me about forklift safety, and I will never shake hands with danger.

prepend 3y ago

I learned that organizations treat employee time taking training videos as an externality with no consequence. That was pretty illuminating. It’s interesting how places are happy to set up a required training video for an hour that 25k people must take. That’s the equivalent of 12 contractor person years. If I wanted to put out a contract for 25k hours there’s all sorts of reviews and governance around spending $2.5M. But not around having everyone spend an hour. That and I’ve learned that training videos have to be repeatedly completed even if they are the same exact thing. I have to watch the same exact ethics class every year. It’s the same class. I can’t test out of it, I must sit and watch an unskippable video each year. I actually think that the first eye tracking no ad skipping tech will be implemented in institutional training videos.

codaphiliac 3y ago
The cost of compliance.
collsni 3y ago
A company I previously worked for, gave us an overall budget of time costs to the company. Roughly the same size, but we had to cut our training time down for the exact reason you outlined, except it was more of a monetary figure.
mathattack 3y ago
I think you may be missing the point. This is training as “plausible proof that we have compliance in place.” So if the company gets in trouble they can say, “100% of the employees will get harassment training” or “100% of the employees will get training on insider trading” Then the second time they get in trouble they say “This was a rogue employee. 100% of our employees are trained. It’s not our fault.” That people actually change behavior requires a lot more than a training class.
- prepend 3y ago
  I don’t think me taking the same training 5 years in a row shows any more compliance than me taking it once. It’s extra effort to figure out who has taken it or not so they just have everyone take it. I expect that in time, BS courses that show nominal compliance will be shown to be part of a workplace culture of not caring. But I shudder to think what the next form of compliance will be and will likely be much worse than watching a video once a year.

ngneer 3y ago

Deep, no. Useful, yes, but very rarely, and the SNR is quite low. Inventory management is one example where a video can help avoid stupid mistakes. View it as supplementary documentation for cases where there is no product or admin guide.