Online Coding School Treehouse Lays Off Most of Its Staff (oregonlive.com) 55
Treehouse, which launched in Portland a decade ago in an ambitious effort to teach software development online, plans to lay off most of its staff by the end of the month. Oregon Live reports: CEO Ryan Carson didn't answer emailed questions about the cutbacks, but said in a brief reply Tuesday that "we are going to continue to serve our students and customers." Carson, who moved to Connecticut last month, said Treehouse is no longer based in Portland and that its remaining staff now works remotely. In an announcement sent last week over the company's internal Slack messaging channel, later viewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive, Treehouse notified employees that their jobs and benefits would end on Sept. 30, without severance. "A small team will be remaining, along with Ryan, to continue to support students," the company wrote to staff.
Workers later posted an online spreadsheet with the names of 41 employees looking for new jobs. Treehouse has a geographically distributed workforce and the company's employees live in cities across the country. Treehouse attracted national attention in 2013 and 2015 with two unorthodox management strategies: The company eliminated all layers of management and it moved to a 32-hour-work week. Neither experiment worked. [...] It's not clear what triggered this week's cutbacks. Online education has been booming during the pandemic.
Workers later posted an online spreadsheet with the names of 41 employees looking for new jobs. Treehouse has a geographically distributed workforce and the company's employees live in cities across the country. Treehouse attracted national attention in 2013 and 2015 with two unorthodox management strategies: The company eliminated all layers of management and it moved to a 32-hour-work week. Neither experiment worked. [...] It's not clear what triggered this week's cutbacks. Online education has been booming during the pandemic.
Educational Gold Rush. (Score:5, Insightful)
Online education has been booming during the pandemic.
Booming yes. Effective? That's a harder one.
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"It’s not clear what triggered this week’s cutbacks. Online education has been booming during the pandemic."
Well, the CEO just moved across the country and bought himself a big new house in Connecticut. So, there's that.
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"It’s not clear what triggered this week’s cutbacks. Online education has been booming during the pandemic."
Well, the CEO just moved across the country and bought himself a big new house in Connecticut. So, there's that.
Guess those guys that were laid off can just learn to co... oh wait...
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Online education has been booming during the pandemic.
Booming yes. Effective? That's a harder one.
Online learning is very effective.
The problem with these "coding schools" is that online job requirements acquisition is not effective at all.
The result is that Khan Academy is popular, but people aren't going to pay a bunch of money for unaccredited education.
If it's done right, by the right teams (Score:2)
Long before the pandemic, I had a job helping part of a university move from online campus system to another. That didn't involve changing any *course* material, as the courses are separate from the campus (called an LMS). The project to move the courses to the new platform took over a year.
After that, I helped build some courses. Some were cybersecurity courses, some were firefighter training, etc. Building the firefighter course also took well over a year, with a team of instructional designers, the inst
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Right, but if the goal was just to do the learning online, they could have easily done it in a couple weeks.
What makes it take a year is all the moving parts of "job requirement acquisition," where you have to deal with assignments, and help with assignments, and mitigating cheating, and evaluating student response to the material, etc. That's all the "high quality" parts.
Compare to Khan Academy. They can just fire up the camera and do a lecture, maybe they do a bunch of takes, but it doesn't take very long
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A video of a lecture will work for some people.
Personally, when I'm driving, I prefer to listen to lectures, TEDx talks, etc. rather than Justin Bieber. Eddie Woo is very good.
Studies have shown that for the best learning, the teaching is multi-modal, meaning you aren't JUST listening. Students learn beat when they are hearing, seeing, and doing. By seeing I don't mean seeing a talking head. Rather, seeing the material - the parts and things being discussed, diagrams, etc.
I can TELL you about how an engin
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I've been involved in online learning in various capacities for 20 years now. You're doing it wrong.
Yeah, it's flamebait, but I don't even know where to begin. There's so damn much to unpack here. You've got to know that you're needlessly burning a ton of cash, at least.
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Oh I'm sure you did something real cheap by tossing a video of a lecture on a web page. Yep, you didn't spend any money.
But you claimed online *learning*. Studies make it very clear what the number one factor that affects *learning* is. There's no learning if the course covers material the student already knows. There's also little to no learning going on if the course is a few weeks ahead of what the student understands, so the student is lost half the time. The lesson has to be anchored in what they alre
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You really have no idea, do you? You drank the consultants kool-aid. I'm very sorry about that.
Here's some advice a wise old professor once gave me: If you want to get a handle on a subject, go to the undergraduate textbooks. They're designed for that.
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Too little is just as bad as too much (Score:1)
The company eliminated all layers of management
You can't have a hundred people just doing whatever they want. Too little management is just as bad, maybe worse, than too much management.
Re:Too little is just as bad as too much (Score:5, Insightful)
Some kind of unofficial hierarchy always forms. When push comes to shove, someone will step in, make decisions and take charge. Sometimes its the person who is the most capable, sometimes its the person with the biggest ego or the person who is the most pushy. After a while, that person becomes a defacto "boss" and people do what he says. That person will also have some friends who he likes more than you, and those people will also start telling you what to do. They become the defacto middle management.
In reality, it becomes more an issue of terminology rather than organization. Technically, there's no "hierarchy" or "managers", but some people become more important and influential than others, and you'll find yourself taking orders from one or more of those people.
The change in terminology creates a lot of feel-goodery for the company owner, but even in the best cases, it's still just a hierarchy by another name. Unfortunately, the informal nature of this hierarchy tends to lead towards cronyism rather than egalitarianism.
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undoing bad mod
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Unfortunately, the informal nature of this hierarchy tends to lead towards cronyism rather than egalitarianism.
And it is low quality cronyism, but they're not even getting paid more! If they're good at being in charge, they'll quit and move somewhere that pays managers more, because most places do.
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the lack of a management layer deciding salaries means that everybody is everyone's enemy and there is constant politicking and back-stabbing to get bigger raises. It's not fucking communism dude.
That's exactly how it works in Communism!
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Ideally, the manager works for the department as a coordinator and liaison to other departments. He should do that with input from others in his department. He is not "above" them but he is the leader. He shares in the success of the department because he facilitates that success.
In most organizations though, he is the boss. You report to him. He claims the department's success as his own because you just work for him. His power within the company derives from how many people report to him. In many organiza
Blatant, Unwarranted Speculation (Score:3)
It seems to me that Treehouse might be positioned at a particularly bad nexus. Most people will probably fail out during the free trial when they discover that learning to code isn't as simple as the buzz would seem to imply. Of those that remain, a few months of paid courses might arise before most take a similar path. Finally, those with the genuine ability to excel may discover that the internet is full of free material on the path of their choosing, and discontinue their membership.
Might be completely wrong... if so, I apologize to Treehouse in advance.
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I can't imagine the basic lessons are that hard. I was coding in BASIC just by reading the rather dry manual that came with my computer, and then going to the library to find more, at about age 8. Honestly the hardest thing was that I was bad at spelling.
Small team remaining (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO has moved to Connecticut. The rest of the positions have moved to Mumbai.
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Get a real degree (Score:2)
Re: Get a real degree (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Get a real degree (Score:2)
I have about 20 years experience doing software development of one kind or another. Lack of formal education has NEVER been a problem.
retrain = get an degree and that = loans (Score:2)
retrain = get an degree and that = loans
We need to get rid of NEED degree and
Make so that working pros can get an degree with out needed to be on the College time table
Forced to live in dorms at high cost to go to some Colleges or even at an older age (for people who are going to College for that retraining)
Stopping things from getting to Need Masters for basic jobs. With PHD as an nice to have.
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The problem is the loan, not the degree. We can fix that part very easily.
This anti-intellectualism really needs to end. It's getting ridiculous.
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As does the worship of intellectualism.
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Its not anti-intellectualism to embrace the statement that not everyone needs a 'degree' to be employees effectively and support themselves.
There is a large portion of the population that falls into a valley where they may not have the mental facility to do 'creative work' however they are plenty capable of learning and applying skills. Lots work like electrical installation, plumbing, welding, mechanical, .... you could keep listing all day long ... is mostly prescriptive here the job if you are trained t
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Its not anti-intellectualism to embrace the statement that not everyone needs a 'degree' to be employees effectively and support themselves.
It is when the only value you ascribe to education is the earning power it provides.
Lots work like electrical installation, plumbing, welding, mechanical,
When progressives talk about 'free college' they include in that trade and technical schools as well. We know full well that not everyone can be an astronaut, but we also know that everyone can benefit from furthering their education.
We need skilled tradespeople, but we also need skilled engineers. Anti-intellectualism sneaks in when you start thinking that these professions are equivalent. I've heard more than one builde
The future (Score:2)
Learn everything online and do proctored exams at some recognized exam taking place. I believe there will be entire degrees that can be done that way. As in, you learn the way you want, how, and where. Then itâ(TM)s just a matter of taking exams. The key will have to be the availability of exam locations that are trusted to ensure no cheating (cameras and in person monitoring?) or else the exams will carry no weight.
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What happened, the cleaners couldn't get the blood stains out of your hood, and you can't afford another one because you keep getting fired?
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And if you think the lack of white male representation in tech job marketing material does affect white boys, then you admit that the lack of representation of non-white and females in tech job marketing material also has an effect and that is not simply a matter of merit.
Re:Sexist and Racist (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine being so fragile you're triggered by not seeing white, male faces on a website.
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Except that there are lots of white male faces on the website. [teamtreehouse.com] He is triggered by seeing other genres and skin brightness alongside.
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Imagine being so fragile you're triggered by not seeing white, male faces on a website.
That depends -- is the absence of white/male faces a result of making great strides in diversity among students or of a carefully selected tokenism?
Portland (Score:2)
Turns out not all than many trans people actually want to learn to code.
Unorthodox management strategies (Score:2)
The company eliminated all layers of management and it moved to a 32-hour-work week. Neither experiment worked. [...] It's not clear what triggered this week's cutbacks.
Just a guess: the company's unorthodox management strategies failed.