

Hacker School: Summer 2012 Applications Open + Etsy Scholarships - nicholasjbs
https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/1-summer-2012-applications-open

======
rabc
Awesome. No more words to describe.

I thought that Hacker School is an amazing idea since the first time I read
about it. Now, it became something much more bigger, a response to the sexism
that spread in software development (it's not an exclusive problem from U.S.,
but it's a start to inspire everyone else).

My congratulations to Hacker School team and to Etsy initiative.

I hope someday I can attend to some batch :)

~~~
davidbalbert
Thanks! It means a lot to hear such kind words. We'd love to have you apply
:).

------
talos
Disclosure: former Hacker Schooler.

Great experience. If I were asked to name one criticism off the top of my
head, though, it would be "gender gap." It was my first foray into tech, and I
was a bit taken aback. Now I'm acclimated, but it's great to see they've got
the resources to try and tackle the gap head on. The school always draws quite
a few tech-experienced people who were in nontechnical (and not male-
dominated) fields. This means they can bypass the whole four-years-of-classes-
with-only-dudes problem that comes with expecting any shift from academia.

~~~
precipice
That is sort of the point of the Etsy sponsorship!

See [http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-
suppor...](http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-supporting-
women-in-technology/)

------
brendannee
Want to know what Hacker Schoolers work on? I made a visualization of hacker
schoolers github projects: <http://hs.bn.ee>

~~~
ericd
Really cool visualization, and a well made UI to boot. Good work. Was that one
of your HS projects, or did it come afterwards?

~~~
brendannee
Its one of the first HS projects I did, I really wanted to get a handle on
what everyone else was working on, and what they had done pre/post hacker
school.

~~~
ericd
Neat. Any chance you're looking for a job?

------
ruswick
I think that this is a good program with an undoubtedly noble cause. However,
I don't really like the idea of calling this need based aid. Need based aid
should be given regardless of gender. If someone wants to do Hacker School and
is unable to afford it, they should get aid regardless of what gender they
are.

So this comes off not as giving aid to those who need it, but as incentivizing
women to join Hacker School, which is something entirely different. It's not a
bad thing, but it's not need based aid.

And, although this program is going to be effective, I'm not sure that it is
going to create true equality. It's going to artificially inflate the number
of women applying to hacker school, but I'm not sure that that is the right
way to go about encouraging women to join Hacker School, and I'm not sure that
this is going to result in true equality. The real goal should be to encourage
the community of women programmers to apply to Hacker School on their own, and
get it to a point where they can organically be half of the enrolled people.
All this program does is compensate for the problem, not truly trying to fix
it.

So, although I like this initiative and think that it definitely will help
equalize Hacker School, I think that there are a few issues with it.

~~~
thomasballinger
I don't think it's a stretch though to call this "need-based aid for women" as
Nick does in the post. The term is often used in this way by traditional
educational institutions.

I felt very fortunate to have the money lying around to take three months off
of work to attend Hacker School, and I imagine there is a large pool of
entirely qualified candidates who are financially unable to make this work
(several of them posted on HN last time around). If we assume happening to
have the money socked away and being a passionate hacker are a bit
independent, then this need-based aid for women will increase the number of
entirely qualified women who are able to attend. This is the right, least-
artificial way to "[encourage] the community of women programmers to apply to
Hacker School on their own," as is possible for an organization that doesn't
happen to run a k-12 educational program or other major institutional social
change agent.

Although 5k for three months will modify the incentive structure, it's less
than the average American income for that period, and your living expenses are
going to increase if you're moving to NYC unless you're coming from Paris or
similar. The only expected changes in the applicant pool are qualities I don't
give a lick about, having to do with educational loans, having a job that can
be done remotely for a few days a week, having money saved up, or personal
financial conservatism (willingness to spend money on an unknown 3-month
commitment). From what I've observed, Nick, Dave and Sonali are 100% about
maintaining the excellent quality of people in their program, and I trust they
will ensure that financial aid for women in no way undermines that.

This hopefully will "artificially inflate" (what wouldn't be artificial? just
waiting until the problem is solved by someone else?) the number of women
applying, some of whom will be accepted and hopefully become better hackers,
contributing in a small way to fixing the problem. Should more drastic steps
be taken at a primary / secondary / college education level to attempt to
"organically" grow the community of women programmers? Sure, and I'll continue
to vote for elected officials who say they'll try to fix this as I always
have, but in the meantime the Etsy scholarships are trying to make concrete
progress growing that community right now.

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prophetjohn
This is a pretty awesome move by Etsy. I'll be graduating soon and have been
giving strong consideration to moving to New York. All my research indicated
that Etsy would be a great place to work. This reinforces my feelings!

~~~
klbarry
My accounting professor is the head of accounting at Etsy. He definitely
enjoys the culture.

------
iqster
This is an interesting program ... wish there was a weekend bootcamp organized
in a similar way. I know people do things like ROTC on weekends ... why not us
hackers? :)

~~~
davidbalbert
We haven't done this primarily because we think you'll improve the most when
becoming a better hacker is the top idea on your mind
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html>). Doesn't mean it wouldn't work though.
Just maybe not as well. I'd love to see what would happen if someone organized
it.

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kenrikm
This is great guys, glad to see you're going to grow HS and bring in more
guys/gals. I myself applied as it is very close to my core values I _know_
there is value in alternative forms of education (in my case Home School >
College) which I can directly atribute to my rapid success once I joined the
job market.

Keep up the great work!

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j2labs
I was in batch[0] and have spent a lot of time with the people who run this
group. I think they're wonderful.

I stand by what I have written in the past:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3436007>

~~~
thomasballinger
Thanks James - I remember reading that comment three months ago and being
encouraged by it to apply, and it's been a stupendous experience so far.

I was one of the lonely programmers Nick describes in the post - it's been
fantastic to spend so much time with so many people I now hold in such high
esteem.

------
2bithacker
As someone who has been contemplating quitting my job and moving to a more
programming centric job (oracle consultant now) this is something that would
be a huge boost both personally and professionally (my github profile is sadly
pretty bare).

I'm just wondering what the success rate is when helping people apply for jobs
at the startups that I see at hackruiter. I would love to do this but am still
uncertain about taking 3 months with no pay _before_ I start applying for
jobs. The alternative being apply while still working.

I am on the fence about applying. Anything anyone could say to sway me one way
or the other is much appreciated. :D

~~~
davidbalbert
Unfortunately, there's no real answer to this. If you're good, you won't have
trouble finding a job, but that's a question only you can answer. I plan on
writing a longer post about this later, but the best way to answer this for
yourself is to ask "do I really love programming?" People who love programming
and have gone through Hacker School have had no trouble getting a job
afterwards.

If you do love programming, you should apply!

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evoxed
As much as I would love to apply, I am going to be in Japan through most of
July and August. If anyone would like to sublet (1-2 people) my fiancée and I
have 1000sqft in Brooklyn, but since we'll both be gone most of the summer I'd
be happy to give a good deal to a fellow hacker! Email from my page if you
need more details since I'm not offering on craigslist or anywhere else.

It's technically a 3BR, but currently one bedroom is a study (library and
desk) and another is our drawing + modelmaking studio (you can use my
soldering station if you'd like).

~~~
nicholasjbs
Thanks! That's a really helpful offer. My cofounder just emailed you about it.

Also: If you can't make it this summer, our fall batch will start in September
:)

~~~
evoxed
Just sent a reply!

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kellyreid
Lovely. I know plenty of men who don't have the financial ability to do
something like move to NYC for a summer, but to hell with them. Let's try to
find those rare women who code and throw money at them.

Listen, I'm all for supporting women in engineering. There are many female
engineers in my family. I just find it appalling that Etsy is willing to just
throw money at one gender and not another. It's sexist garbage.

I see their motive, and i wholly support it. They could have taken a better
line of play though; Rather than straight up gender segregating, why not
organically filter the scholarship candidates based on female-oriented areas
of study? Etsy is largely creative and industrious and driven women, so why
not just sponsor projects that will naturally be female-led?

No offense to the hacker school guys and etsy guys, but this is straight up
amateurish.

~~~
stuntgoat
I'm reading a negative tone to your comment (ie "to hell with them", "throw
money at them", "sexist garbage").

Do you think it's possible that rather than having negative, sexist motives
for offering scholarships, they are simply going out of their way to be
_supportive_ to minorities in the field?

~~~
zallarak
There's also a lot of evidence that bringing in more women into any group
increases its performance [for example: [http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-
research-what-makes-a-tea...](http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-
what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1)].

EDIT: MaxGabriel pointed out this article claims more women in a group
improves performance [not equal numbers]. Thanks for the correction.

~~~
kellyreid
Yes, I'm quite negative on this because I feel that their methods are very
poorly thought out. Good on them, as I said, I support their effort and their
basic mission. That's not in question. You don't have to appeal to affirmative
action or research; the concern is not their motive but their method.

Let me make sure I'm clear: I love the idea of female engineers being given
incentives to enter a male-dominated field. There are a myriad of great
benefits to everyone involved. The trouble is, the methods they are using are
previous-level.

Seriously, a group of hackers can't figure out a more elegant process? They
are literally saying "If you are a girl and ask us for money we will give it
to you". That's absurd. Lets see them set up a special fund or something for
female-friendly fields rather than just throwing money at women outright.

I stand by my assertion that their methods are amateurish but their intents
are good. I'd like to see the people who designed this program at least speak
to the topic; what else they tried, why it didn't get approved, why it didn't
work, et cetera. I just want to hold other engineers to rigor and examine
their methods, especially when I find the goal noble but the methods
sophomoric.

~~~
nicholasjbs
_They are literally saying "If you are a girl and ask us for money we will
give it to you"_

We never said that. This is what we said:

 _We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a
little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the
sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world._

 _But we want to say that now, so people don't have to waste time asking or
debating the point. Women will be judged on the exact same scale as men. We
think to do otherwise would be insulting and counterproductive. We care a lot
about getting more women into Hacker School, but we won't do it at the expense
of the quality of the batch._

~~~
mythrowawayacct
That's great that you won't lower the bar for female applicants. Does that
mean you will remove gender-identifying information from applications before
evaluation/processing? that could be a cool way to do things and a great
experiment...

~~~
nicholasjbs
I agree it would be a fascinating experiment, but I don't think this would be
possible, since interviews are an essential part of our process.

------
Jun8
Do you have a HS yearbook of sorts, why dont you feature the alumni more
prominantly?

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monkeygus
do you need a special visa to attend if you are non-US resident?

~~~
nicholasjbs
You should be fine assuming you can legally be in New York for the entirety of
the batch (12 weeks). We've had several non-US citizens. We're not an official
school, so we can't sponsor student visas.

~~~
monkeygus
Awesome. I will definitely be applying for the etsy scholarship, sounds like a
great opportunity.

------
mythrowawayacct
I think it is a positive thing to discuss the structure of the scholarships,
whether one agrees with it or not. Let's have an open discussion of it.

I would love to see alternative methods to involve women more in coding rather
than just paying them.

The current method just 'feels wrong' to me.

I've also seen programming competitions with a 'top female programmer' award
but no 'top male programmer' award, which also feels wrong, even if the intent
comes from a very positive place.

I've spoken w/ several female developers/engineers and they were not excited
about that kind of structure.

~~~
jlees
Yes; as a female programmer I find both of these kinds of things offputting,
not encouraging.

Of course, if I were a female programmer who needed $5k and a kick in the
pants to level up (e.g. if this had been around 2 years ago) I would probably
jump at the chance, it's all a matter of perspective.

One of the issues is simply lack of good alternatives. How else would we
encourage other female programmers to come out of the woodwork? Strong female
leadership of the program would be a great start in my opinion. Women Who Code
in San Francisco has a great, active, healthy Ruby study group going on which
is arguably a mini-Hacker School. It's run by and for women, and there's been
(as far as I know) zero issues getting enough people together for lively
discussion. Plus, some of the newbies have explicitly said they preferred this
all-women environment as they could ask the sort of questions they may self-
censor elsewhere. Although that's hardly realistic of the real software
engineering world - any full-time programmer has probably got to get used to
working with men as well as women. :)

------
cinquemb
So will people learn things like SQL injections and XSS attacks there?

If so, would have applied a longtime ago. Too late for me now, now i just
follow the latest vulnerabilities people post on twitter.

~~~
davidbalbert
We mean hacker in the pg (<http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html>) esr
(<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html>) sense of the word, namely
an awesome programmer who loves learning, groks hacker culture, and self
identifies as a hacker. Not a cracker. Certainly learning about computer
security is part of being a good hacker, but it's not primarily what Hacker
School is about.

Incidentally, have you ever read Hacking: The Art of Exploitation
([http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-The-Art-Exploitation-
Edition/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-The-Art-Exploitation-
Edition/dp/1593271441))? It's my favorite book on the subject.

~~~
cinquemb
No i haven't but ill definitely look into it since it sounds pretty cool ha

