31–40 of 42 posts
Hacker School is a great thing to do during a sabbatical or career break. I got pretty burned out on my previous job (of 6 years) in the Midwest. I was also a bit lonely since there wasn't much of a tech community in the area. I came out to New York for the Winter 2013 batch, and it was exactly the kick in the pants I needed. By the end of the batch, I had renewed vigor, job prospects, and a bunch of new friends. I e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We take this approach specifically because we don't do any affirmative action or bias our admissions process in favor of specific groups." You're giving grants to women specifically because they are women. That's a bias. You're favoring a specific group. What about the men who haven't applied because they can't afford it and aren't women? You should be giving grants to underprivileged people regardless of sex. But…
To clarify: 1) We judge male and female applicants on exactly the same scale. We in no way lower the bar for women or any other group. Nor do we give women or any other group a leg up when making admissions decisions. 2) We offer grants to women who need financial assistance. By offering these grants, we do bias the pool of applicants, because we (hopefully) increase the number of women who choose to apply. 3) We hav…
Are there any other initiatives like this elsewhere in the world? As much as I'd like to commute over from the UK, I think the petrol costs might make it unfeasible.
edit: previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6450472
For those who've attended this school or are otherwise just familiar enough to answer this question, what's the expected total cost of living over the course of the program? Is it common for students to find shared living arrangements to cut down on NYC rents?
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I've applied to Hacker School twice and found them to be short, impersonal and sometimes even rude to me during the interview process. They asked questions that struck me as inviting me to participate in "dickwaving" rather than talking about the nuance of my work or the problems I've engaged with. Such as "what's the hardest thing you have ever done?" I've never seriously thought abo…
There is a good chance they meant what project stretched your abilities the most. Or which project did you have to grow the most to complete.
Learning and stretching ones self varies in difficulty from person to person. For many people it is considered hard to extremely hard so ability stretching/growing project is synonymous with a hard project.
> Also one of their interviewers called my code "shaky" after pairing, which could be true, but it's not very constructive or specific is it?
No that is not very specific, which is unfortunate. A founder's comment in this thread mentioned that they think their time is best spent reviewing more application rather then going in depth with fewer. So not giving in depth, specific responses is complementary to their strategy of interviewing more people.
They might be better off giving less or no feedback rather then anything off the cuff. Hard to balance that against an applicants frustration at getting no feedback however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We take this approach specifically because we don't do any affirmative action or bias our admissions process in favor of specific groups." You're giving grants to women specifically because they are women. That's a bias. You're favoring a specific group. What about the men who haven't applied because they can't afford it and aren't women? You should be giving grants to underprivileged people regardless of sex. But…
To clarify: 1) We judge male and female applicants on exactly the same scale. We in no way lower the bar for women or any other group. Nor do we give women or any other group a leg up when making admissions decisions. 2) We offer grants to women who need financial assistance. By offering these grants, we do bias the pool of applicants, because we (hopefully) increase the number of women who choose to apply. 3) We hav…
Hacker School guys, if you are here, are you open to foreign candidates? I am from Pakistan and would absolutely love to join if selected.
For those who've attended this school or are otherwise just familiar enough to answer this question, what's the expected total cost of living over the course of the program? Is it common for students to find shared living arrangements to cut down on NYC rents?
The total cost depends on your circumstances (e.g., if you have student loans, dependents, etc), but if you're only supporting yourself and are willing to live cheaply, you can do it on $5 to 6k (this number is based on an informal poll of our students I did a few batches ago; it's also what I personally live off of during a batch).
Hacker School is a great thing to do during a sabbatical or career break. I got pretty burned out on my previous job (of 6 years) in the Midwest. I was also a bit lonely since there wasn't much of a tech community in the area. I came out to New York for the Winter 2013 batch, and it was exactly the kick in the pants I needed. By the end of the batch, I had renewed vigor, job prospects, and a bunch of new friends. I e…
you were programming for 6 years before hacker school?