Hired Partner, Educative: Hands-On Learning for Software Developers

Hired partner, Educative, provides interactive courses for software developers, changing how developers continue their education and stay relevant by providing pre-configured learning environments that adapt to match a developer’s skill level. We sat down with CEO Fahim ul Haq to learn more!

Welcome! Please tell us a bit about yourself…

My name is Fahim, and I am the CEO and Co-Founder of a software startup called Educative. We provide an in-browser learning platform for software developers to accelerate their careers.

What made you start Educative?

My brother Naeem and I spent several years at large software companies. We both had degrees and were working on exciting projects, but whenever we wanted to learn a new language or ramp up on a library unique to the project we were working on, we found learning to be a slog.

All the information was out there, someone had a YouTube video, or you could watch something on Coursera, or read a blog post with sample code, but then you’d have to pause the video, go to your IDE, copy and paste the sample code. Rewind. Pause. Go forward.

Sometimes you’re ahead of the video, sometimes you’re behind. And that doesn’t even count the setup of your tools and installing libraries or getting the right git pull.

We wanted to build a solution that wasn’t just finding disparate pieces of information, but something tightly woven together to create an intentional learning experience that is hands-on and easy for the user to test their skill.

All this experience tallied to a product like Educative in our heads, and we just wondered “why isn’t anyone doing this?” So we did it ourselves.

So how does Hired fit in there?

Educative provides self-directed courses for software developers at every stage of their career. We have programming for beginners, advanced users, and engineering managers. We are so intimately familiar with the developer career cycle and the needs of employers, that we also offer the leading interview solution for software engineers. 

As Hired helps tech talent find and land roles it was a natural fit to help Educative users who were taking that next step in their career find an exciting role. So for qualified users, Educative refers these jobseekers to the Hired platform.

Hired has helped many of our users find their next opportunity. Inversely, Hired has also introduced many learners to Educative and we are glad to assist candidates on their job search journey.

Related: Interview guides from the collaboration between Hired and Educative:

• System Design Interview Survival Guide: Tips to Navigate Interviews
• Ace Your Engineering Manager Interview: A Comprehensive Guide to Prepare
• Want to Ace Technical Interviews? A Guide to Prep Software Engineers

Yes, we love working with Educative learners! What else is Educative working on now?

As you could imagine, there has been a ton of interest in generative AI and prompt engineering skills. We’ve been developing a ton of new courses and projects that get learners hands-on with the industry’s most popular models and technologies — whether that’s OpenAI API and Google BERT, or starting with ML and AI engineering fundamentals.

Cloud computing skills have also been hugely in demand over the past couple of years, so we went ahead and built Educative Cloud Labs. It’s a hassle-free way to dive into AWS cloud services and start tinkering and building without any setup or cleanup. We have over 100 labs on the platform today, and we’ve been getting some really gratifying feedback from learners.

That’s great, sounds like a productive initiative for the Educative community. Anything we should be on the lookout for?

Of course, AI isn’t just an in-demand skill for engineers. It’s also a way to help learners get even more out of their learning on the Educative platform.

Look out for more exciting AI-powered learning features — everything from adaptive feedback that lets users learn from errors in real-time to a mock interview experience designed to help developers prepare for System Design and Coding Interviews.

There will be plenty more exciting opportunities for learners to build their skills on the Educative platform, so stay tuned! 

Exciting stuff. Thank you so much for sitting down with us and for Educative’s continuous partnership with Hired. 

Hired is the largest AI-driven marketplace matching ambitious tech and sales talent with the world’s most innovative companies. Backed by global HR leader, The Adecco Group, Hired combines intelligent job matching with unbiased career counseling to help people find a job they love and reach their full potential.

By providing accurate, real-time information, access to equal opportunity, efficiency, and transparency, the Hired platform serves as the backbone for hiring managers, recruiters, and C-level executives to surface the best talent and build amazing, diverse teams.

Hired is committed to building equity in the hiring process through a more representative talent pool, using bias reduction features, customized assessments, and salary bias alerts to help remove unconscious bias when hiring. 

Are you hiring? Click here to learn more about how Hired helps reduce time to fill. 

Are you looking for a new role? Click here to learn how the Hired platform works for candidates.

Originally published November 2021. Updated March 2024.