

Hacker School User's Manual - davidbalbert
https://www.hackerschool.com/manual

======
d23
A lot of programmers I know could really learn from the "social rules" on this
page. There's no need to try to prove oneself to be the smartest in the room
on every topic. It takes a lot more balls to say "wow, I really can't even
remember whether the syntax was X->Y() or X.Y()!"

The "well-actually" problem is particularly rampant on HN.

~~~
pokpokpok
I don't think that "well-actually" comments online have a fraction of the
negative social effects that they do in a really life situation.

~~~
dustingetz
agreed.

in a 3 person private conversation, a factual inaccuracy that is not central
to the point isn't going to harm the participants. Online, the conversation is
public. People who don't know what they're talking about should be politely
called out before they stir up FUD or otherwise cause harm.

(i am a hackerschool alum)

~~~
pindi
I think the focus is on pedantic corrections that are entirely irrelevant to
the discussion and serve only to make the commenter feel superior. For
example, see this recent thread [1].

The first commenter proposes a device that would use a Molex connector. The
second points out that the device needs to interface with a wire not found on
the Molex 8981 connector, a useful correction. The third makes the inane
observation that Molex the company makes many connectors, when it is obvious
that the first two commenters were referring to the Molex 8981 connector
specifically.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5638420>

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loupeabody
After reading, I really want to experience Hacker School sometime in the near
future.

I checked out the application, though, and noticed something that's pretty
odd, if not downright disrespectful. At the bottom of the application there's
a lone checkbox labeled "I'm a Woman". Given the behavior of the following
checkbox, it's clear that the point of this box is to indicate that financial
aid is available for female applicants. Regardless, the presence of a field
labeled as such, given that it seems to suggest that the default gender of a
hacker is male, is pretty jarring.

I get it, but surely a couple of radio buttons labeled "Boy" and "Girl" could
do the job just as well as the checkbox.

~~~
thumbtackthief
I see your point, but as an 'un-graduate', I've never been part of a less-
sexist community. I'd also point out that being forced to choose between boy
and girl, as opposed to having the option to identify as a woman, is difficult
for some. Hacker School has had some awesome transgenders!

~~~
thumbtackthief
And apply. It's beyond amazing.

------
7402
One of their rules seems odd. To "Feign" means to pretend. Do they mean that
people actually pretend to be surprised about someone's lack of knowledge?

I would have thought the more common problem is when people are _honestly_
surprised about someone's lack of knowledge, and then show it. That hurts
more. I can usually tell if someone trying to show themselves off as a
bigshot. That doesn't bother me as much as if someone genuinely thinks I'm
ignorant about something that I ought to know.

Better to say, "Please feign unsurprise when you encounter ignorance." Or
better yet, don't use the word "feign." Just tell participants that they may
encounter people from a variety of backgrounds, and they should not assume
that every understands what everyone else is talking about.

~~~
spacemanaki
> Do they mean that people actually pretend to be surprised about someone's
> lack of knowledge?

Yes, I think so, or at least the common reaction is usually over-dramatized.
I've observed this behavior in friends, colleagues, and in myself. When
learning about someone's lack of knowledge, it's very common for the other
party to react with "Really?! You don't know xyz??" I think 99% of the time
the person saying this is not _actually_ surprised, and does not _actually_
need confirmation by asking again "You don't know xyz??" It's just a social
tic ends up being kind of exclusionary and negative.

> Just tell participants that they may encounter people from a variety of
> backgrounds, and they should not assume that every understands what everyone
> else is talking about.

This is fine and well, and I'm sure the people running HS would agree with
this, but tbh it is a little obvious sounding. The thing with avoiding
"feigning surprise" is that some people (like myself!) might not even realize
that they do this. After I read about this rule of theirs last year, I've been
trying to cut down and was a bit saddened to realize how much I do it.

It's a pretty similar attitude to this comic, in the sense of adding a twist
to the more general form the rule that you proposed. Recognizing that this is
a positive opportunity for sharing some neat factoid instead of an opportunity
to put someone down is not obvious, unfortunately.

<http://xkcd.com/105/>

------
michaelochurch
I really like the civility rules. One thing I've learned about programming is
that, like creative writing, the insecurity only gets _worse_ as you get
better. (I'm sure that once you have fuck-you money or the consulting pipeline
that's essentially the same thing, that changes, but it takes time to get
there.) It's paradoxical.

For one thing, there's hard-core dimensionality in what we do. There are
things I consider to be huge areas of computer science that I know nothing
about, and many of those didn't even exist when I was in school.

It's really admirable that they're paying attention to the behaviors ("well,
actually" and unsolicited advice) that make this worse and cause communication
breakdowns. Of course, tone is more important than what is actually said, but
that can't be legislated.

~~~
read
Paradoxical as it sounds, that's a pretty accurate observation. You get better
the more insecure you are.

I've struggled to find an explanation for this, the closest being Prospect
Theory. The theory states that people make decisions based on the potential
value of losses and gains rather than the final outcome.

My best guess is that less secure people worry more about not looking bad
rather than the final outcome. They optimize for minimizing losses, and are
thus represented on the bottom left quadrant of the theory graph[1].

Which means the less confident you are the more successful you are[2].

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valuefun.jpg>

[2] -
[http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/less_confident_people_are_mo...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/less_confident_people_are_more_su.html)

~~~
nostrademons
I think it's accurate in certain problem domains, and the causality runs both
ways.

I think that for technical tasks, ones with a good deal of depth that need to
be performed precisely, insecurity correlates highly with success. For two
reasons. One is that insecurity is a very potent emotional driver: if you
think that being good at X is going to give your life meaning, then you'll
probably spend a lot of time getting good at X. Time spent mastering a subject
is probably the best predictor of how good you get at it.

The other works in the other direction. The more skilled you get at something,
the more you understand the complexities of the problem domain, in sort of a
reverse Dunning-Kruger effect. And so as you become more successful, you start
seeing that your knowledge, _as a fraction of the total knowledge out there_ ,
is much less than you thought. The result is insecurity.

For people tasks, where a significant part of your success is convincing other
people to go along with you, success is correlated with confidence. There's a
game-theoretical explanation for that. When evaluating the credibility of a
proposal, a random person has very little information to go on. They also know
that the person proposing it has _more_ information than they do. So a major
information channel for them is how sure the proposer seems to be of their
proposal, and they naturally follow subconscious signals that telegraph how
the proposer _really_ feels about himself.

Whether high confidence or low confidence is better for you depends on which
stage of your career you're at, and also who you're talking to. In particular,
you don't want to project high confidence when the listener has backchannels
that can tell them unequivocally that you're wrong: you lose all credibility
then, which makes you seem deathly insecure. When the listener has poor or no
information, though, you want to project high confidence because that's the
only information they have available to them. When evaluating yourself, you'd
ideally want to have no confidence as that would give you the greatest drive
to improve. Unfortunately, confidence doesn't work that way: it's very
difficult to have no confidence and then suddenly "turn it on" for an
important client. Instead, an optimum solution usually involves having supreme
confidence in your ability to _learn_ anything required for the job, no
confidence that you actually _know_ anything right now, and the ability to
fudge the distinction between those when you talk to other people.

The scientific method actually enshrines this into a well-known process.

------
nanook
I wish it wasn't such a hassle getting a VISA to the US..

~~~
majke
A tourist visa is enough to do Hacker School. You don't earn any money, you
don't pay for the school and it's not a real school anyway.

The only problem is explaining the program to the Immigration Officer.
Mentioning "Hacker" or "School" is not recommended. I used the phrase
"programming workshops" :)

~~~
nanook
I'm getting an F1 visa for grad school and the earliest I can enter the US is
August. I'll have to get a visitor visa, go to hackerschool, fly back, get my
F1 and re-enter the US. That's just too much of a hassle.

I guess I'll just try next time.. and I hope Norvig stays for a few more
batches.

------
ollieglass
I'd love to do something like this in London. Inspired by the manual, I've
created a signup page at hackerschoollondon.launchrock.com Perhaps we can get
one going here if there's some interest.

n.b. Hacker School have asked me to stop using their name - I don't mean to
mislead or imply any affiliation with them. I'll change it shortly. But I do
want to copy the idea :)

------
scottbartell
This manual makes me even more glad that I applied.

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jkhanlar
<http://i.imgur.com/m0en5Vj.png>

I could have used better fonts.

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gasu
codeacadamy and hackerschool should get together.

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shaohua
For github junkies, fork here: <https://github.com/shaohua/Hacker-School-
Users-Manual>

~~~
nicholasjbs
I appreciate that you're excited and mean well, but would you please delete
this repository? We haven't licensed the manual, and this could easily mislead
people (and will quickly fall out of date -- we've already fixed two small
issues since publishing this afternoon).

~~~
grey-area
Well, actually, there's still an error in the first paragraph you might want
to correct:

 _We've decided to published[sic] it in the hope_

You're welcome :)

~~~
davidbalbert
Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

------
floor
"So how exactly do we make money? Right now, we have recruiting agreements
with a small set of companies, and for each Hacker School alum they hire,
_they pay us 25% of that person's first year salary, excluding bonus_ , as
long as that person stays at the company at least 90 days."

rofl

------
dobbsbob
lol 'social rules'.

Sounds more like a cult, like they're grooming you for corporate serfdom.
Having the most bitter basement dwelling neckbeard with a self taught PHD ream
you out thoroughly and colorfully on a public mailing list for a less than
perfect commit is a true hacker tradition. It's usually pretty hilarious, and
prepares you for when you show up to defcon or the chaos congress and meet
real actual hackers who shockingly will not have any social rules.

This school will groom good employees, not hackers. It's a bootcamp that uses
'hacker' for marketing. It's great this exists for people who want to work
doing code, but 1980s MIT AI lab Stallman would prob be kicked out the first
day, same with every other hacker throughout history.

