Microsoft Hands-on Labs vs. Pluralsight Skills

The Microsoft Hands-on Labs were great for training when working alongside an instructor. They would show things on their screen, and I would work alongside with a real environment. Being able to actually use the environment and interact with it was more preferable than just a straight lecture. It allowed me hands-on practice.

Incentivized

Awesome tool for teams looking to gain new skills or refine and update existing skills. I love the convenience of using this tool for recertification credits (i.e. PMP). Instead of identifying which classes I need to take, I can identify my interests and have recommendations presented for what paths I should take. It is a really helpful tool to create ladders for my team to transition from one role into the next. I think this is going to be a really beneficial tool.

Incentivized

• The platform was simple
• It did what it needed to do

Incentivized

• Pluralsight has hundreds of authors that are constantly producing new content, which is valuable for the tech industry that is constantly moving at a brisk pace.
• Many content authors are respected leaders in the topic they're presenting. You are able to trust that their content is thorough and authentic.
• Niche expert-level topics are presented in a curated video format which is difficult to find anywhere else.

Incentivized

• Copying and pasting can be clunky
• Sometimes the instructions are not accurate
• For some Microsoft tools, it requires you to create a temporary account, which takes some time and is time-consuming
• Have to remember to save or you will lose your environment
• May not be the most user-friendly to initially start

Incentivized

• Companies don't change technologies in their products often. For example a product that was built on AngularJS is still viable and the company may have no plans to upgrade it. Pluralsight could do a better job of providing new courses on technology that's still useful, though somewhat dated; like AngularJS for example.
• Pluralsight has a bad habit of throwing all their courses in a large bucket. For example, when I log-in and look to see what new I often have to wade through courses on tools that a web artist or designer would use. I wish Pluralsight would categorize course and let us (their customers) flag what types of videos we wanted to see, or better yet exclude from our view.
• Years ago, Pluralsight would let its customer download the courseware and that was great. I was disappointed when they stopped this feature.
• I'd love to see more course where the goal is to build a particular type of software. For example, lets have one where you build a blog using ASP.NET and deploy it to Azure. Let have one where you build a survey application, etc. Learning technologies is great, but I'd love to see courses where the goal is to build a particular type of application.

Incentivized

Great product and service so far. Awesome new content almost every week.

Incentivized

Very, VERY easy to use.

Incentivized

Each feedback I do for them, I get no response. Minimal communication and followups!

I think Udemy is really superior as a platform, people create super high quality courses that get employees up to speed in days. The platform has a web and mobile app and has taking notes functionality that can be exported

Incentivized

Before using Pluralsight, staff was using YouTube to help them with developing certain aspects of their knowledge. However, YouTube is much less structured/organized than Pluralsight. Pluralsight has a very wide offering of courses and it has lot of good content. One quick search and we can get started.

Incentivized

• I think it has a positive impact in having a platform to train employees
• I don't think the cost might be worth it given that the content is super dry

Incentivized

• One positive impact is it has kept our employees engaged in the material they work with every day. Instead of becoming stagnant and complacent, they are actively searching out ways to develop skills and do more with the tools available to them.
• It saves money when it comes to offering training and development opportunities company-wide. It would be much more costly to invest in specialized training for that number of employees.
• One potential negative is the amount of company time spent on coursework over work responsibilities. A balance must be struck and individuals should be encouraged to explore the training on their own time.

Incentivized