Udacity

So if you're like a junior dev and you're trying to get into the space, we offer online training.

Who would be an example, like what would be a similar kind of company? Udacity.

Okay, Udacity.

Any others? Team Treehouse.

Treehouse.

And then my second idea came as like, well, I personally want to learn a little bit coding myself.

Just understand it, right? Not to do it, but to understand it.

So I went to Udacity, I went to the big three, and I'm like, okay, they must have it.

massive open online courses are probably the one that most recently went through higher education.

And I don't know, Sebastian Thrun, who was a Google employee, a founder of Udacity, said that in 10 years, there will be 50 universities left and Udacity might be one of them.

And as it turns out today, sitting here in 2026, there are more than 50 universities that are left.

uh people were really enthusiastic about the web online courses um there was a book called disrupting class which clay christiansen wrote he's the the developer of the theory of disruptive innovation in 2009 he said that in 10 years by 2019 half of all secondary school courses would be mediated online that they would cost a third as much to deliver and they would have better outcomes And my hunch is if any of your listeners wander to their local public high school, they will not find that half of the classes are delivered online, that they will not find that the costs of running educational institutions have gone down by 66 percent.

But did you think about this? Did you think about the level? Was 20%, are you sure that that was the most you could have got? Like all of this stuff that they didn't consider.

So this one part of the process that we do with everybody, and I taught this to your cohort as well, is that after what I saw the executives do when I was at Udacity or in my career, was they would never start countering right after they got an offer.

They would get a job offer and their first instinct is to go into due diligence mode.

So for them, it's a huge high stakes thing to take an offer, even if the offer is huge.

Who would be an example? Like, what would be similar kind of company?

Udacity.

Okay, Udacity.

Any others?

Team Treehouse and-

Not to do it, but to understand it.

Yeah.

So I went, I went to Udacity, I went to Pl- I went to the big three.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but how would I go about making my own model? Like, I remember I, I, I took, uh, Udacity's autonomous car.

I've done DNN training.

I understand convolutional neural networks well enough to sketch it out, and I know that, you know, I need a ton of data, and then I need, if I'm, uh...

Facebook's profit library.

What the fuck is this, man? This is me? And wait, a UC Irvine and Udacity?

Dude.

And got a data analyst nano degree?

He blends data-driven decision-making with instinct and stakeholder input to deliver world-class user experiences.

Beyond full-time roles, he is passionate about mentoring and leading teams of product managers, owners, and designers, serving as product manager, mentor at Udacity and product coach for early-stage startups.

In that capacity, he provides coaching and training that unlocks go-to-market strategy, growth, and retention, while guiding strategic product direction to help organizations raise their first round of funding.

He holds CAPM and PSPO certifications and an MSc in digital innovation from UCD Michael Schmurfett Graduate Business School.

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You've had senior positions at places like MongoDB, Zscaler, Udacity, Multiverse.

Now you're at Cerebras.

How have you had to change yourself? in order to be effective where you are today? Are you the same leader or have you had to adapt and change?

Today's guest is Dr. Katie Malone, host of Linear Digressions, one of the world's most popular data science podcasts.

Katie earned a Stanford PhD in experimental particle physics working on CERN data, and then she taught machine learning at Udacity and the University of Chicago.

Most recently, she's been leading the development of agentic AI platforms for large organizations and her podcast.

In this episode, Katie explains why managing people and managing AI agents are the same skill in different clothing, why AI could hollow out the expertise we need to catch its mistakes, and a fascinating range of data paradoxes from Simpsons to Benfords.

At the time, I was in grad school.

I had taken a summer off.

I was over at Udacity, if anyone is familiar with sort of the mid-2010s online MOOC.

environment.