
My Hacker School Pairing Interview (2013) - luu
https://dpb.bitbucket.io/my-hacker-school-pairing-interview.html
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danabrams
I just “never graduated” from an RC batch. It’s also a mid-career shift, and
my experience was very similar. I also spent the day of the interview dejected
assuming I didn’t get in.

About all that’s changed is the name and borough!

I highly recommend this program.

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benesch
Well hello, Dan! Nikhil here. It’s always nice to get a reminder that the
internet can be a small place.

(Dan and I were at RC concurrently for the second half of his batch.)

I’ll echo the sentiment: RC is a really cool and unique place. I was somewhat
atypical, I think, in that I came in with a very defined and niche project
that I wanted to work on (hacking on gccgo), but the RC format is flexible
enough to be amenable to that. It’s nice to be surrounded by a community of
folks united by a love (or at least appreciation?) of programming, even if
you’re not actively working on a project together.

I’m a bit sad that I missed out on some of the more social/collaborative side
of RC by focusing so heavily on one project, but I’m told this is a common
sentiment: it’s hard to strike a balance between being people-driven and being
project-driven.

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raphlinus
It is indeed hard to strike that balance. I've not properly written up my
return statement but based on my experiences I would recommend not trying to
do a hugely ambitious project, expect the experience to be social, and, if
you're already a senior programmer, expect do to mentoring.

RC is definitely a cool and unique place! One thing people might not recognize
if they're not keeping track is that there's usually about one item by a
Recurser on the front page of HN.

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maximp
Currently at the Recurse Center (formerly Hacker School) and happy to answer
any questions about it! I imagine a few alums are reading :)

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vaibhavsagar
My pairing interview for RC was with the author of this blog post :). Also
happy to answer questions other people might have!

