Seven years ago, Educative co-founder and CEO Fahim ul Haq was an expert in cloud systems and data engineering, particularly with the C++ programming language. Today, he says, the industry would present him with new challenges.
“When I was last writing code full-time, C++ was on version 14. Today, C++ 20 is out. While it’s the same language, I’d have to take some courses to return to development,” Fahim told Career Karma in a recent interview.
This gap between Fahim’s existing skillset and the technical know-how needed to perform today’s jobs is just one example of what the Association for Talent Development calls the skills gap. Combined with the tech skills shortage—a lack of qualified candidates in the job market— the challenges to businesses and employees alike are clear.
Both employers and employees are aware of these two issues plaguing the tech industry. A recent Forbes article reported that over 75 percent of global executives were concerned about the existing employee skills as well as the availability to recruit skilled candidates.
For employees, a survey by TalentLMS and Workable found that nine out of 10 tech workers would like to get more learning and development opportunities from their companies, while 62 percent say more learning and training opportunities would make them more motivated at work.
There is an effective solution for the issues mentioned above: upskilling. Upgrading a worker’s existing skillset—whether on their own or through a company training program—makes a tech worker more marketable and valuable in an ever-changing industry.
The demand for technical know-how is why Fahim started Educative with his brother Naeem ul Haq in 2015. When he first started in the field, the iPhone and Android did not exist, and Microsoft was still supporting two operating systems. In less than 20 years, the world has shifted dramatically.
“As tech becomes more pervasive in our lives, the demand for software engineers is exploding,” Fahim said. “Combined with that, the speed of innovation has accelerated and is still accelerating. The way to build a successful system changes every few years. Technologists need to be up to date very quickly; to be part of a productive team requires upskilling. It is existentially important for the software engineer’s career.”
Educative offers software developers the opportunity to upskill and cross-skill through hundreds of online courses on a wide variety of developer-focused subjects. For example, learners can master another coding language, pick up a new library like React or Angular, or study an entirely new skill, such as cloud computing.
An Educative course can strengthen your skills in sought-after tech areas and help you advance your developer career with its wide range of management, design, and operational courses.
Upskill yourself with Educative’s online learning platform featuring hundreds of in-demand courses in software development.
Find the right Educative course for you.The Educative Edge
Fahim and Naeem brought over 15 years of combined software engineering experience from Facebook and Microsoft when they started Educative, an online learning platform that offers interactive, text-based courses for software developers to upskill and cross-skill. The platform has over 300 courses in its library, from technical interview prep courses to courses on Python and C++.
Courses are co-developed with leading technology educators, workgroups, and publishers globally. The course writers are developers, while technical editors hold PhDs in computer science and engineering. Educative focuses on teaching practical application, not just theory, and allows learners to put what they learn to use in real-time.
Text-Based, but Not Textbooks
One significant feature that sets Educative apart from other online learning platforms and bootcamps is that all Educative’s courses are text-based instead of video-based.
“Research indicates that a person can literally read 50 percent faster than they can watch a video, so it’s quicker,” said Fahim. “In addition, when you watch a video, you have to pause it to start doing work in your coding environment or rewind it if you missed something or fast forward through the boring parts. It becomes a hassle. For all these reasons, Educative is text-based.”
Even if Educative courses are text-based, they are not like textbooks. The online platform is highly-interactive and allows learners to explore and solve problems independently. “You don’t have to install Python to learn Python or set up the right Git repository in your Visual Studio or Notepad++ instance. It’s all built into the browser,” Fahim said.
“We don’t trick you into one right answer to a problem, but allow you to build and interact and figure things out on sample problems. We call these editable, executable code widgets ‘playgrounds’ because we believe you learn by doing,” he added.
Designed to Advance Your Tech Career
The founders of Educative like to say “Educative helps you hire-to-retire.” They refer to it as a job triangle: get a job, get better at your current job, and find your next job.
- Get a job. Educative offers introductory courses for beginners to learn Java, Python, and other coding languages. Built-in assessments help set learners on the right path and reinforce what they already know. Educative also offers interview prep courses in six different coding languages.
- Get better at your current job. Educative offers advanced courses in several programming languages. Its library includes courses on popular tools and frameworks, including common API integrations, Android, and iOS-specific platform work. It also has various courses on system design, team management, and machine learning.
- Find your next job. All the above offerings from Educative give developers the skills they need to move to a senior developer role or technical lead while adding the technology skills to change technology tracks or even companies. One of the most popular Educative courses is Grokking the System Design interview. This course helps learners ace their system design interview and move on to the next level of their careers.
Whether a developer wants to upskill or cross-skill, Educative can be part of this journey.
A Leader in the Online Learning Space
“We’re doing really unique work compared to other platforms with how we approach learning. We talked about this a bit before with text-based courses, in-browser playgrounds, and our course writers and partnerships,” Fahim explained. “But what really distinguishes us for software developers is that we aren’t a general learning platform. We are by developers and for developers. Everything we offer is built around advancing careers in software engineering and building strong product teams.”
With this sharp focus, Educative has helped over 700,000 users upskill and cross-skill. To further solidify its leadership in this space, it has expanded into enterprise partnerships, bringing with it a keen understanding of what software companies and software teams are looking for.
Because of this, leading global companies are integrating Educative’s course library and platform into their team boarding and learning environments.
A Developer-First Platform
“You can go on other sites and find thousands of courses—but they’re not all about software engineering,” Fahim said. “Naeem and I built Educative to scratch our own itch. Every few weeks, we’d have to learn a new API or a new bit of code. We’d scrape Quora or Stack Overflow looking for answers. It all just slowed us down.”
“So, we built a place where we could kick the tires, learn at our own pace, experiment, and learn by doing. That’s what Educative is really about: it’s software developers building something for software developers to be hands-on and learn quickly. We are the best at what we do because it’s the only thing we do, and the people we hire to build the platform and partner with to write the courses are the same,” he said.
Future-Proof Your Software Development Career with Educative
As technology continuously changes and evolves, developers need to constantly upskill themselves to interface with and build for new platforms.
“Employed developers will become irrelevant as the technology around them changes unless they are continuously learning. At work, either you’re creating a lot of technical debt by not using the latest technologies, which means you’ll at some point have to do a huge migration or let your product die, or your team is actively learning and growing,” said Fahim.
He highlighted the importance of upskilling with an illustration of these rapid changes in JavaScript. “If you want to advance, you’ll have to go from writing code to designing systems. If you want to switch jobs, you’ll have to learn the technology a target company or job is using. Consider JavaScript. JS first appeared in 1995. But today, there are different libraries all uniquely implementing just this one language—React, Angular, jQuery, Node, Vue. So you have to keep learning.”
Educative gives developers the skills they need to stay relevant in a constantly changing world. If you want to keep up with rapidly changing tech and advance your developer career at the same time, take a look at Educative’s most popular courses here.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
