71–80 of 174 posts
I'll do my best to answer questions as they pop-up here today, but please feel free to email me at (contact at jumpstartlab) dot com if you want to know more.
Also, is it possible to learn only Ruby, without Rails? While I find Ruby a very interesting language, I'm not really interested in web development.
Is the job salary negotiated before the program? I feel like it must be hard to accurately judge someone's programming value before they learn how to program. What happens if, at the end of the 5-month program, they offer you a desperately low-paying salary? Have you wasted 5 months and moved to DC for nothing?
Something tells me that after making it though a program like this, you'll have plenty of job options, with the one from Living Social just being one.
How much do you get paid to fill out the application? I love the idea that you're "edgy" and thinking outside the box, but honestly, have you really thought your application process through? As an ugly introverted nerd who still has trouble getting a date, but builds killer software apps and loves doing it, the last thing I ever want to do is spend multiple days in order to enter your beauty contest. So you'll end up…
We're engineers -- not pretty people. We don't care what your face looks like, but watching you explain who you are and what you're good at can give great insight into your personality. The application is more about whether you feel like a good fit for the team than it is your programming skills. It doesn't mean "do you look good", it doesn't mean "is your English great," and it doesn't mean "Does this look like I 'e…
If there's only a 3% chance of getting accepted into something so important and life-changing (for both of us), then as an applicant, I want to make damn sure I put my best foot forward into a process that gives me the best possible chance. This just isn't it...
I already know that there's no way anything I put onto video or any underwear (my term for source code) can put me in as favorable competitive light than what I can do for you. I'd just lose out to those who can present better than me.
Compare your application to those of the many incubators and accelerators like yc or techstars. For overachieving builders (the exact people you want to attract), it's the exact opposite experience. Filling out those applications is an enriching experience that gets the juices flowing and generates the excitement that you can compete.
Making videos to be judged by strangers on your "team worthiness", on the other hand, is very hand wavy and a total turn off to precisely the people you're trying to attract.
I believe that "fitting in" is overrated and "being excellent" is underrated and that your process is optimized for the wrong metric.
But then again, what do I know? I'm sure you'll try to prove me wrong (and probably will).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're engineers -- not pretty people. We don't care what your face looks like, but watching you explain who you are and what you're good at can give great insight into your personality. The application is more about whether you feel like a good fit for the team than it is your programming skills. It doesn't mean "do you look good", it doesn't mean "is your English great," and it doesn't mean "Does this look like I 'e…
No it doesn't...you honestly think anyone would record a video off the top of their head? Those answers will be calculated to sound the way you want to hear. "Of course I enjoy working, if I can't get 90 hours of work in, I feel depressed that I'm not living up to my potential...taking days off is also completely unacceptable, since I don't want to let my coworkers down." And getting a feel for a person from a video…
Plus, you can get a feel for someone after a couple of seconds of video. Even if they don't watch the whole thing, they probably have people screening. Did you know that Paul B looks at the YC application videos before anything else? In any event, think of all the other applications that we spend ages on, where most get very brief reviews.
As for the programmer part - I'll tell you what I'd do. A certain percentage of the 24, I'd take good proven programmers. A smaller portion I'd dedicate to people who don't know advanced programming, but have undeniable potential, and a basic understanding. Because, really, basic code (if, else, while, for) takes an hour at most to learn.
Why? Here's an anecdote: My friend's father was recruiting developers and received among many applications, one whose only previous job experience was delivering pizza, and he didn't have a university degree. He was bored and intrigued, and decided to interview the guy. He turned out amazing. Perhaps they're trying to hedge their risk, while hoping to chance upon someone brilliant :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're engineers -- not pretty people. We don't care what your face looks like, but watching you explain who you are and what you're good at can give great insight into your personality. The application is more about whether you feel like a good fit for the team than it is your programming skills. It doesn't mean "do you look good", it doesn't mean "is your English great," and it doesn't mean "Does this look like I 'e…
No it doesn't...you honestly think anyone would record a video off the top of their head? Those answers will be calculated to sound the way you want to hear. "Of course I enjoy working, if I can't get 90 hours of work in, I feel depressed that I'm not living up to my potential...taking days off is also completely unacceptable, since I don't want to let my coworkers down." And getting a feel for a person from a video…
1,000 applicants x 8 minute videos = 133.33 hours, not 8,000
In addition, it's common knowledge that interview questions - whether in person or on youtube - are crafted for the benefit of the interviewer. i.e.
"what's your biggest weakness?" "well, I find it hard to delegate (because I'm such an awesomely hard worker, etc)"
This is inevitable, and not a flaw specific to this format.
However, I think your last point is valid. Realistically, they will be picking people with some background in programming. That said, it's unlikely that applicants to a RoR bootcamp will have absolutely -no- exposure to programming. They might not be professional developers, but I think most of the applicants will have had some exposure to web technology and/or scripting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're engineers -- not pretty people. We don't care what your face looks like, but watching you explain who you are and what you're good at can give great insight into your personality. The application is more about whether you feel like a good fit for the team than it is your programming skills. It doesn't mean "do you look good", it doesn't mean "is your English great," and it doesn't mean "Does this look like I 'e…
No it doesn't...you honestly think anyone would record a video off the top of their head? Those answers will be calculated to sound the way you want to hear. "Of course I enjoy working, if I can't get 90 hours of work in, I feel depressed that I'm not living up to my potential...taking days off is also completely unacceptable, since I don't want to let my coworkers down." And getting a feel for a person from a video…
If you look at our community, so many great people don't have the traditional background. Chad was a professional saxophone player. Others studied philosophy, education, economics, or didn't study at all.
We're trying to solve the single biggest problem in our industry: talent shortage.If we accept only programmers, then we're not growing the pool. People with a CS background will get jobs as developers somewhere, I want to find the amazing people who aren't yet a part of this community but are hungry (zing) to join us.
Logistically, LivingSocial has a massive recruiting and HR team who can help out with the screening. Add in a team of a hundred engineers who are eager to find their next awesome colleague, and we have plenty of labor.
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CodeAcademy is totally awesome. I'm the instructor for Hungry Academy and an advisor for Code Academy ( http://codeacademy.org/staff ). CA is an awesome program where you can get a great start and be independent. HA is a larger scale (20 weeks), you're paid during the program, then expected to join the engineering team full time. You're not guaranteed a job, but if you aren't ready for the team then I haven't done my…
Is Hungry Academy effectively an internship program that offers a guarantee of some dedicated training time instead of the intern being thrown to the wolves?
Our dream is that this program is "better than college." There are people out there that want to do what we do, we want them, so we need to help them build the skills to do it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something tells me that after making it though a program like this, you'll have plenty of job options, with the one from Living Social just being one.
Those others don't matter though because by going through the class you've signed on for an 18 month stint with LivingSocial.
I read this as, if you TAKE the position on the elite engineering team after the five-month period, the contract is for 18-months. I don't think it is necessarily tied to the 5-month learning period.