Looking for feedback on online technical training - specifically software development - which site(s) do you think provide the best experience. I have used udemy and linkedin training a few times...any others? TIA
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I've found both LinkedIn Learning and Coursera to be very good. And I did not link my personal LinkedIn account to my AT&T account simply because I don't want AT&T to learn about all I take, like interviewing skills, resume makeovers courses...anything that may alert someone at AT&T I'm leaving this company ASAP.
The only downside I need to point out about LinkedIn or Coursera is my "leadership" doesn't give a sh*t about any additional training we've done, it won't make a bit of difference job-wise or help in getting a better raise or a promotion. They don't care. The ONLY reason I'm taking classes is to get away from this company and get a much better job.
The only training this company cares about now is how much diversity and inclusion training you take to get as "woke" as possible.
What stacks are you interested in? That's always been the choice. I was a C developer, the VB and pre-.NET web development (as in 1990s) before becoming a SQL developer.
Along the way I've looked at Ruby and rails, hadoop, content-management systems, but I'm always afraid to invest too much time on one only to see it deprecated over time. I do OK with credentials in some unglamorous places, (Perl, anyone? Don't laugh—on a limited processor for text processing, Perl is faster by orders of magnitude than other more modern scripts).
SQL looks perennially green to me, as does Unix shell work though much of that is offshore now. What particular technology do you think will be the best use of your time and money?
A couple issues with linking. I personally decided not to. One is that you will not later get a free trial month of training if you are no longer with AT&T or if AT&T ends the subscription on your behalf. The other reason is I don't want my personal LinkedIn profile, which I use to find opportunities outside AT&T, to be linked. LinkedIn says that more 'personal' information is not shared with AT&T; I personally don't trust it. As an aside, I had linked my old LinkedIn Learning account (after the transition from Lynda) to LinkedIn, and my logins were perpetually messed up. They may have resolved that by now, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for integrating the disparate systems.
Question- what’s the problem with linking them? You can’t show the training/courses you’ve done in your profile otherwise.
Glad it worked! One suggestion - do NOT link your personal LinkedIn account to LinkedIn learning if you can help it. Keep them separate. I always go to an anonymous tab in a browser and start LinkedIn Learning so they don't accidentally couple.
@uvm+196IyHlC I was able to login to Linkedin Learniing with my AT&T credentials - THANK YOU so much!!!
Didn't catch your followup, OP. I have done LinkedIn (some groups at AT&T actually have a subscription provided by the company; try to use the corporate login with your @att.com email address to see).
I haven't found a better resource than LinkedIn (formerly Lynda), but I've found several that are significantly worse; some are even terrible.
"Coding boot camps" IMO are misguided. The one cited is $17,000 for just 15 weeks (not 15 months). You come out with a wide but very thin set of skills. You have not developed critical thinking, nor logic (I mean formal logic, coupled with numerical methods), nor a true understanding of algorithms, nor the ability to truly solve business problems.
Analogies are hard to come up with, but it's like taking a boot camp to become a carpenter, and later being told to build a piece of furniture. You stand there in front of the materials without the slightest idea what to do. You require the employer to tell you to hammer a particular nail in a particular place, while they hold the wood for you, and you only know how to use a specific model of hammer. (But you can use that hammer to pound in that nail really, really well when told to)
I'm not saying anyone taking bootcamps is dumb or duped. In fact many are smart, and many will get hired, even by AT&T. The above post is a case in point. I'm just saying that such graduates are treated like cheap parts in a machine that and will be discarded quickly. But long-term prospects beyond being a "code monkey" are challenging (not using that disparagingly; I was one myself).
If you're at a point where you are not wanting to invest in a degree program, then, for my money, I'd recommend sticking with LinkedIn Learning (the full version; one month free followed by 29.99 a month or 19.99 if you agree to a full year). It requires some self direction, but you can then concentrate on your weaker areas, unlike boot camps which make it very hard to focus on what you need. Use Google to find an outline of a curriculum that interests you and build your foundation with those courses within LinkedIn. There are some surprisingly in-depth ones.
Good luck.
OP here - I should clarify - I have been a software developer my entire career - prepping to leave this year and want to learn/brush up on new technology stacks. Looking for online training sites to pay by course or monthly.
Flat iron. My son did a 15 month coding boot camp. Landed a job as a developer in October. He is 22, 67k starting salary, 401k and works from home.