Review of DataCamp - Learning Skills for the Future of Work
By: Double Pointer
Tags: Technology, Interview, Data Science, Tech, Data Scientist

Data Science is one of the hottest fields in computer science nowadays and is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. The number of job postings asking for data scientists has steadily increased, giving rise to a number of online Ed-tech companies that sell courses to teach buyers data wrangling chops. According to LinkedIn, in August 2018 in the U.S., the tech industry was experiencing a shortage of 150,000 data scientists and the demand for skills in data science has only gained more steam since then. DataCamp is an upstart in the online Ed-tech industry that trains folks with little to no technological background in data science and associated fields. DataCamp and its online peers are filling the gap of not enough technically skilled professionals by providing supplementary education at a fraction of the cost, in lieu of formal university degrees.

In a nutshell, DataCamp subscription is worth its money only if you are a newbie to the data science field. For intermediate and advanced users, the courses aren’t thorough and deep enough to deliver much value. Read on for a detailed review.

DataCamp was founded by Martijn Theuwissen, Jonathan Cornelissen, and Dieter De Mesmaeker in the year 2013. Since then DataCamp has come a long way and now offers a number of courses varying in skill and difficulty level for languages and tools used extensively in the data science domain such as Python, R, Power BI, Excel etc. So far the company is purported to have raised $31.1 million dollars, thanks to the explosive growth in the number of users, with the most recent funding raise of $25 million in 2017.

The site provides various choices for users to customize their learning experience. The spectrum of instruction formats is as follows:

Pursue individual courses catering to a specific and narrow topic.

catering to a specific and narrow topic. Enroll in a skill track that consists of a series of curated courses aimed at teaching a broader skill-set e.g. “Importing and Cleaning Data” or “Data Manipulation” .

that consists of a series of curated courses aimed at teaching a broader skill-set e.g. “Importing and Cleaning Data” or “Data Manipulation” . Follow a career track that focuses on teaching several skills expected of a industry role such as a data scientist, R programmer, data engineer, machine learning scientist etc.

DataCamp offers various pricing tiers for individuals as well as businesses. However, you can only purchase annual subscriptions, though the marketing displays the monthly as a monthly cost (billed yearly). This is a slight departure from other Ed-tech companies such as Educative that offer monthly subscriptions. The free tier lets you access the first chapter of each course in addition to seven projects, three practice challenges and one skill assessment. You may sign-up to get a look and feel of the user interface and play around.

Overall, the quality of the courses is pretty solid. Each course is designed to be interactive with in-browser code execution and comes with video tutorials. You can easily switch between the various modes depending on your liking. There’s also the option to switch from reading a course on your desktop to your mobile phone, while you are on the move. The interface is gamified and lets users collect points called “XP”-s if they successfully complete exercises without receiving hints or seeing the answers. The courses are non-graded and provide a statement of completion at the end that can be shared on the LinkedIn profile of a user.

Note that the content of the courses is not novel in any sense. You can always google any topic for free-content and setup a Python IDE on your local machine for hands-on practice. The real value DataCamp delivers is in streamlining your learning experience through a one-stop portal. You don’t have to bother yourself with installing a pandora box of tools and dependencies on your local machine and open a dozen chrome tabs for each online blogs you find on Google for a given topic. At the same time, DataCamp falls short of the credibility and rigorousness of a university degree in Data Science rather it teaches practical, and industry focused tools and skills. Most of the Ed-tech companies side-step dry theory and head-spinning maths that accompanies data science and DataCamp is no different.

One notable drawback DataCamp suffers from is the absence of interview preparation content. We expect majority of DataCamp’s readership to be students, budding technologists, and folks switching to computer science realm from other professions. The end for these users is a well-paid job and data science is a means to that end. DataCamp has baked the cake but is missing the icing. It would be ideal if DataCamp introduced courses similar to the ones offered by Educative that focus solely on interview preparation for Data Science jobs. Some of Educative’s competing offerings are:

All in all, if you are a motivated self-learner or someone mulling changing careers, DataCamp is a good start, especially for the latter who want to spend thousands of dollars enrolling in a university-accredited data science program. You can start with DataCamp and have a firsthand experience of what it feels like to work in the data science realm, much like a litmus test to ascertain your aptitude for the field before plowing in serious dollars.