Apply to seventh batch of Hacker School

Apply to seventh batch of Hacker School
hackerschool.com

I am flagging this precisely because I believe the Hacker School experience is valuable and yet you offer a sexist and discriminatory grant to women.

Hacker School is valuable due to the experiences, the education, and the networking opportunities.

Do you offer scholarships for living expenses? We offer a limited number of $5,000 need-based grants for women to do Hacker School. You can apply for a grant simply by checking the box that you need financial assistance on our application form.

It is within your rights to offer this grant. But I see no reason why your sexist bullshit should be advertised without complaint at Hacker News.

Would you feel comfortable offering such a sexist grant to men only?

Do you feel comfortable about traditional "old boys networks", the existence of such were one valid reason that women's groups protested men's only clubs, men's only dining rooms, etc.?

They why do you perpetuate sexism within the industry?

Either your students need financial aid or they don't.

I have a similar aged nephew and a niece that would benefit from Hacker School, but you will only enable one of these people to attend. That's sexism, and that's not the fault of patriarchy, nor the fault of male engineers, that's Hacker School bullshit.

So I flagged this.

It's varied a good amount by batch, but for our past couple batches, we've gotten a few hundred. That said, I don't think looking at raw numbers is particularly useful, because many (most?) of the people we say no to fall into one of these categories:

* the applicant says he/she wants something very different from what Hacker School is (e.g., a highly structured curriculum, some sort of "startup school", etc)

* the applicant has never programmed before (we don't require much programming experience, but you need to have coded enough to know if you actually enjoy it. See: https://www.hackerschool.com/faq#faq-how-much-experience)

* the applicant doesn't appear to actually like programming

* the applicant didn't take the application seriously, or provided little to no information in the application

If you have a clear idea of what Hacker School is and you're a smart and friendly person who enjoys programming (whether you've been programming for two months or ten years) and want to get dramatically better, your odds of getting in are pretty high.

I hope this helps!

Edited to fix formatting

Apparently you think this is (i) sexist but (ii) within their right to do. That's unusual… even if you believe this, why would you bring it up?

> Do you feel comfortable about traditional "old boys networks", the existence of such were one valid reason that women's groups protested men's only clubs, men's only dining rooms, etc.?

This is so over the top—I don't know what to say. My understanding is it's still mostly men who attend Hacker School.

It's like a group of men saying 'fuck, we turned into an old boys network. let's give out grants to gifted women so they can join us'. And here you—a man—are protesting outside.

> They why do you perpetuate sexism within the industry?

Is sexism against guys a problem in the industry now?

Or do you think this will increase sexism against women too? If so, you should have argued why that's the case (or at least mentioned that that's what you mean).

> I have a similar aged nephew and a niece that would benefit from Hacker School, but you will only enable one of these people to attend.

I'd love to attend but I find it too expensive. I'm not complaining about this grant though. I think it's great! I absolutely hate that there are few women in the IT industry in the Western world.

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addendum

> Either your students need financial aid or they don't.

I think this misses a point. Hacker School is throwing opportunities at people. That's awesome because people need opportunities to succeed in life. However, Hacker School does not have an obligation to give opportunities to everyone—that's just not possible. What they are doing with these grants, however, is identifying a group that has trouble succeeding in the IT industry in the Western world (most female programmers I know are Chinese) and throwing extra opportunities at this group. That's awesome because if this group is underperforming then the most obvious way to fix that is to throw extra opportunities at them!

In fact, there's an argument that the very reason they're underperforming as a group in the first place is because they have trouble identifying opportunities in the first place. E.g. because they're told girls don't have the right kind of brain for IT, because they feel intimidated by the men IT, etcetera. All the more it makes sense to give extra grants for women!