“Material is outstanding. […] great course instructor. Guests were world-class. Extra tools and material are top shelf.”
In April, we ran the first ever Growth Engineering course at Reforge. The feedback was good. But we’re rebuilding it.
Here’s everything learned so far, and how we’re rebuilding it from the ground up for V2 in October.
Preamble: how did the course go?
- Over 40 students from some great companies: Dropbox, LinkedIn, Zapier, Supabase, and more.
- Guests like John Egan (Pinterest, Lyft, Character.ai), Darius Contractor (Dropbox, Airtable, Otter.ai), Austin Hay (mParticle, Ramp, Clarify) and Chetan Sharma (Airbnb, Webflow, Eppo)
- Feedback was pretty positive: An NPS of +40 (everybody at 8+), and universal top marks on instructor effectiveness.
What did you learn, and what are you changing?
1. “Obvious” is relative
At the end of the course, I asked folks which sessions were “too basic” versus “too complex”. Responses were all over the map: even for “complex” sessions, other folks said they were too basic, and vice versa.
How come? I have some theories. First, the course draws Engineers from a wide range of experience levels, from junior ICs to Directors. Second, the course had students from across company maturity stages. Crucial advice for a Series B company comes as banal to somebody at LinkedIn.
Improvements: for the October cohort, core content will move from sync lectures to async guides. Students can consume the content appropriate to them; live portions will focus on case studies and featured guests.
2. We need more time for questions
Another common bit of feedback was “I wish we had more time for Q&A.” That makes complete sense, especially given the caliber of guests we were able to bamboozle into invite to join us. Folks loved being able to ask Darius about the decision to move to Product Management, or dig into statistical significance with Chetan, who walked us through the Central Limit Theorem.
Improvements: more time for questions! We’ll be updating our weekly sessions from 60 to 90 minutes, and going down to 1 session per week. We’ll also hold office hours weekly.
3. Into the weeds is good, actually
V1 of the course was structured as “everything a software engineer needs to know about Growth.” This includes lots of cross-disciplinary content around Statistics, Psychology, and Growth Product.
For some. this was perfect; for others, there wasn’t enough true engineering content. After all, Reforge has plenty of other Courses available to cover the other areas.
Improvements: We’ve refactored the course to emphasize Engineering-focused components that are not available anywhere else, like Growth-specific Design Patterns and Scoping. To make room, we’re consolidating Growth Fundamentals and Psychology into one module, expanding the Engineering module to cover MarTech and AI in more depth, and adding a new Leadership module tailored to Growth Engineering leaders.
4. Time Zones are hard
4PM Pacific sessions are no fun for folks on Eastern Time (7PM) or in the UK (midnight).
Improvements: We’ll be recording live sections for folks who can’t make it and hosting some UK/East Coast-friendly office hours.
5. More Quizzes and Surveys
I’m kidding. Nobody asked for this, and we’re not doing it.
What’s the next course going to be like?
Even better. It starts on October 30th
V2 will include brand new sections focused on MarTech, AI, an entire module on Growth Engineering Leadership, and more industry luminaries as guests.
The course will taught at a slightly higher level, targeting a “Tech Lead or above” level of seniority, but ICs should be able to follow along, so long as they are diligent about the reading.
But what if I want the more beginner-level course for my team?
I’ve been running private courses for companies who want a tailored version. If that makes sense for you, reach out directly