

The Hacker School Experience - nicholasjbs
http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2012/12/hacker-school-experience

======
xiaoma
As a man who has been hustling flat out to get into a program such as this for
the past several months and is currently dead broke living in an 8 square
meter apartment in SF, it's very difficult to read this kind of article and
not wonder. I'm passing the technical filters (which admittedly should be weak
for a school), but not quite making it in. I not only went out of my way to
visit multiple schools and talk to former graduates, but I even sold a bank on
the idea of giving me a (small) loan to cover living expenses.

With such high applicant to acceptance ratios, I can't take things too
personally, but it's hard not to feel discouraged. Am I getting passed over
largely because people just don't value investing in a 30 something man? Would
a female in my shoes have gotten in long ago?

I know having more money would help, but it's a bit of a reinforcing cycle
since the social proof and skills gained at such a program help greatly in
making money. As my last submission to HN should make it clear, I love this
kind of teaching system. I strongly believe that people learn way faster with
guidance and peers working towards the same goal than they do working alone.
What can I do to up my chances of acceptance into a similar
school/bootcamp/dojo/academy?

~~~
dizzystar
I'm over 30 and I was accepted into one of these schools. I couldn't go for
myriad reasons, but mainly money. Although these schools do say that they
don't want money to be an issue, it truly is unfair for anyone to ask them for
a free education, though deferment is perfectly valid _if they deliver their
promise of making you good._ The initiative goes both ways.

The filter is very high. They get thousands of applicants for each cycle, so
there has to be some convincing proof that you have what it takes. The
implicit question from these schools is very simple: If you did NOT go to
their school, would you have gained the requisite knowledge anyways through
your own learning?

The reason they have to ask this question is multi-fold:

1- They are asking you to invest tons of time in very little time to learn and
pick up all the skills they ask you to pick up.

2- They won't look good unless their students do good at the class

3- They won't look good if their students don't get jobs.

And since this is a two-way street, what have you done to convince them that
you will deliver on your promise to make them look good?

Examples:

1- Did you take, and become certified on any of those MOOC courses?

2- Have you created anything of significance like a website? I'm not talking
about plugging up a WordPress Site without even customizing the CSS, but
something where you had to understand the technology you were using, like
hand-coding PHP and MySQL. Do you have anything in github?

3- What programming languages do you use? Have you attempted to learn anything
more special, like Scala or Lisp, or are you still mucking around with
whatever you began learning with?

I know the above sounds excessive, but it really isn't if you consider the
goals involved, which means you are to get a good-paying job, and you were
pretty much on your way anyways. Yes, it will probably take a tad more
convincing if you are older, have no experience, and don't have any recent
tough filters to prove your abilities to them. If these schools are to be
taken seriously by future employers, they have to prove that they were tough
to get into, because otherwise, saying you educate people to become junior-
level programmers in 3 months would actually be a joke, not sound like one.
The bar is set very high for these schools or they will go out of business, so
set the bar very high for yourself first, then apply. Don't blame _them_ for
your age or your gender, because it is not likely that is what is happening
here.

~~~
xiaoma
You asked a lot but since this goal means so much to me, I'll do my best to
answer. I don't believe rejected students would learn just as much outside the
school as in. If this were the case, there would be no value at all in
attending one.

    
    
        1- Did you take, and become certified on any of those MOOC courses?
    

Yes, I did. Maybe I could have spent that time finding one more piece of
contract work that would have let me raise the quality of my living
conditions/diet, but I took the Berkeley SAAS course and I did very well.

    
    
        2- Have you created anything of significance like a website? 
        I'm not talking about plugging up a WordPress Site without even 
        customizing the CSS, but something where you had to understand 
        the technology you were using, like hand-coding PHP and MySQL. 
        Do you have anything in github?
    

Possibly. I'm not sure how you define "of significance", and obviously I don't
already posses expert level skills of I wouldn't be so interested in training.

I've made several JS tools, three 80s style games in flash, and most my
projects that have been keeping me going have been WP customizations
(generally a child theme with some PHP and a lot of CSS work). Check my
profile and I'm sure you'll find one. Some of the above is on github, but
nobody is forking it or anything.

    
    
        3- What programming languages do you use? Have you attempted to learn
        anything more special, like Scala or Lisp, or are you still mucking 
        around with whatever you began learning with?
    

I've dabbled in tons, including lisp, but not scala. I worked through part of
Land of Lisp, though I did end up getting stuck at a point.

    
    
        Yes, it will probably take a tad more convincing if you are older, 
        have no experience, and don't have any recent tough filters to prove 
        your abilities to them.
    

I find your general tone towards me a bit disheartening, to be perfectly
honest. If the result of sharing any kind of personal set on HN is to be
implicitly blamed by commenters, it's a lot harder to be open with people
here. I'm not exactly sure why you would assume I have no experience or
haven't done anything tough.

I've learned to speak and read Chinese well, built and run a business in
Taiwan from 2006-2010 and got a job at a tech start-up in China 18 months ago
with fewer skills than I have now! Yes, it has been a very, very hard time
since moving back to the US this past 6 months, but I haven't exactly been a
slacker.

    
    
        The bar is set very high for these schools or they will go out of business, 
        so set the bar very high for yourself first, then apply. Don't blame 
        them for your age or your gender, because it is not likely that is what
        is happening here.
    

First of all, I am not and have not blamed anyone. Every individual I've dealt
with related these schools and most hiring managers and recruiters have been
very polite and in many cases helpful. And you could be right-- maybe a woman
with my skill set and background would have encountered every bit as much
rejection from interviewers and schools that I have... and received the same
sort of comments if she shared her failure on HN. The reason I don't like
articles like this is that they make it difficult not to wonder.

Can you elaborate a bit on "setting the bar very high for myself" or offer
something constructive? I'm a lot more interested in the "how to get in" than
the "why you didn't" kinds of answers.

~~~
dizzystar
I didn't mean to come across as condescending or discouraging. In regards to
my tone: that is how I am in general. I've had an extremely difficult life and
sometimes the warts of that shows. I simply accept that things are tough and
at the end of the day you have to fight through it. When I read your post, you
sounded like someone who was discouraged and at least I offered a little bit
of advice that may help you, so I'm not totally heartless yet. Hell, I wrote a
very long response to you and I am doing it again, so please take the
information and curse my tone to your computer.

I took issue with the apparent blaming of the schools for age and sex
discrimination because I don't believe that's what happened at all. I believe,
more than anything, blaming on a situation without objective proof is
irresponsible.

I really don't know why you didn't get in or how to get in because I do not
run these schools. With this thought alone, you'd see why I would be remiss to
give any concrete advice to get in aside from work at getting better every
day.

I'm hoping to be somewhat more encouraging than I sound because I am a 34
year-old-male who ran my first piece of Python code about a year and a half
ago. Regardless of my financial situation, I am not the least bit discouraged.
At some point I know I will be good enough to convince someone to give me a
chance at $$ and that is all I need. At the end of the day, I just love
jamming out code, but I don't love it enough to be homeless in SF while I
attend a school.

You have an impressive background and I admire you. I think it's great that
you are building sites for other people. I just looked through your profile as
well but I'll refrain from giving any reviews. This is not because I don't
think the work is bad, it's because this is already too long for a forum post.

In regards to "setting the bar very hard for yourself:"

I really hope you pick of Land Of Lisp again because from what I've read of
the sample chapters and of the reviews, that book is quite entertaining and
impressive. Maybe I'm used to looking at Lisp and doing mathy puzzles with
code, but I'm having a difficult time believing that book is harder than the
SAAS class. I think more than anything, grinding your way through something
that is very difficult for you is impressive.

I also think you should create a site (or some major multi-technology project)
from scratch. I'm saying no frameworks, nothing that writes any code for you.
Obviously, XAMPP is okay, but I'm saying just you, a blank page, and your
computer. There is something truly visceral about working beneath the
abstractions, and yeah... creating your own abstractions and building it all
by yourself.

I don't know what to say to you or anyone in regards to "set the bar very
high," but I'll tell you what I've done:

Work through SICP. Trust me, saying I did that book gets nods of approvals and
raised eyebrows from everyone. This book is very difficult but I managed to do
75% of the problems in the book, and it is well worth the effort. I don't know
how many times I found an answer to an exercise then looked up from my
computer and just sat their dazed at the concepts they revealed. Yes, these
concepts are hidden in the solutions, so if you decide to try it, reading it
is simply not good enough.

After doing most of SICP, I still wasn't sure how much I had actually learned,
and to be honest, I wasn't sure I learned anything "valuable" at all. I built
a website in Clojure + PostgreSQL to test my knowledge and I was very pleased
to see all that I had learned and figured out without ever being exposed to
odd concepts, especially routing. It felt really good and this experience
taught me that although SICP didn't feel "real world," I learned more from it
that I could have ever imagined. This is why I take issue from anyone who says
CS education is worthless.

Corman's Introduction to Algorithms is on my to do list and the book is in the
mail as we speak. I want to do this book in C because it somehow feels fitting
to learn about foundations while working in a foundation programming language.

I've learned how to do higher-level math like proofs and calculus and I'm
currently working through linear algebra.

I'm also going to finally dive back into learning CSS and I am going to learn
to do it responsive style. Very few people can do it, and I honestly believe
this will be cake after the torture I put myself through already.

~~~
xiaoma
The SAAS course was more recent, so it's possible that Land of Lisp would be a
lot easier for me than it was before. The "mathy" kinds of puzzles weren't a
problem as I was a math major back in the day -- it was some kind of
configuration issue. I remember having spent a lot of time googling and on
message boards before turning my attention elsewhere. For the half of the book
or so that I got through, it was really interesting. I still like how it
eventually teaches you how to build a whole web server from the ground up.

~~~
dizzystar
It might be helpful to install VM with some Linux if you haven't done so. I'm
not sure what the config issue was because I don't know much about Common
Lisp, but I wouldn't doubt the issue was something irt to Windows if that is
the environment you are using. You'll also discover that many items you want
to use in your projects may not be available on Windows at all, and with
Linux, you just do an install command and it just works.

I want to clarify that the reason things aren't available on Windows isn't
because of some belief system from the Open Source community: it is because
deploying for Windows is really tough.

As far as I know, it doesn't matter what distro you use. I went ahead and
installed Arch Linux and I love it.

------
RyanZAG
<https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/12-what-we-mean-by-hacker>

_"Hacker School made it very clear what their definition of “hacker” is
(curious go-getters) and what it is not (pompous know-it-alls)."_

 _"Someone who enjoys sharing what she learns with others. "_

 _"Someone who is friendly and communicates well."_

Bandwagon much? Don't go redefining 'hacker' just so you can jump your school
on the 'hacking is hot' phenomenon.

From a Google definition: "An enthusiastic and skillful computer programmer or
user.", and yes, skillful is a far more important part of it than "friendly
and communicates well".

That said (from a pompous know-it-all, no less!), the school itself seems
pretty awesome and big kudos to them! Just the kind of thing the world needs
more of.

~~~
nicholasjbs
I think our definition fits pretty well with ESR's and the definition of
"hacker" from the Jargon file[1]:

 _1\. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and
how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to
learn only the minimum necessary._

 _2\. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming._ (Though as we
point out, we don't think being obsessive is necessary.)

Also, in ESR's "How to be a hacker"[2] he includes both learning to write and
communicate well and sharing what you learn and build with others as
requirements for being a hacker.

[1] <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html>

[2] <http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4>

EDIT: To anyone reading the parent comment without clicking through to the
blog post it's excerpting, please note the parent comment ignores the first
two criteria we list:

 _Someone who is intellectually curious. Hackers enjoy tinkering and
understanding how things work. They revel in going deeper into things, and
love asking questions: How can I make my code easier to debug? What is making
my program slow? How does this work?

Someone who enjoys programming. We spend most of our time at Hacker School
programming, there aren't grades or tests to make you study, and you don't get
a degree or certificate for doing Hacker School, so it's important that you
like coding._

~~~
alecco
No.

You are a marketer/promoter/pusher. Junior programmers coding on fad
frameworks at borderline user level are far from hackers in every possible
definition of the word.

~~~
vitno
Look at the githubs of the people in the batches. There is very little "fad
frameworking" going on.

~~~
alecco
Links?

~~~
nicholasjbs
<https://github.com/jamii>

<https://github.com/darius>

~~~
alecco
Not framework coders, but still far from hackers. For example:

<https://github.com/darius/parson/blob/master/parson.py>

~~~
abecedarius
As the author, I'd welcome tips to make it better. (Though efficient
implementation is not a priority since the API hasn't settled.)

Both Jamie's and my work have been high-ranked on HN's front page, for what
it's worth; and I'd call the Hacker School facilitators hackers by any
reasonable standard.

~~~
alecco
I'm sorry for all this. I'm an ass.

------
nicholasjbs
Hacker School founder here. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has about
Hacker School or applying.

~~~
charlieflowers
Nicholas,

What do you think a family of 3 would need to pay for rent during Hacker
School? (Assume the goal is to live as cheaply as possible, but to be in a
safe area).

~~~
nicholasjbs
It depends on what your family of three would need (i.e., if you're a couple
with a young baby, one room would probably suffice; if you're a parent with
two teenagers, you might need two or three bedrooms).

When I last polled our students, they were spending $800-1,200/month
individually. Some people have been able to go below that ($600 is the
cheapest I've heard) and some have opted to spend more.

Assuming you need a two bedroom place, my guess is you could get a reasonable
one that's transit accessible and in safe part of Brooklyn or Queens for
1.5-2x the above. For example, here's a Craigslist post for a 2-bedroom
apartment for $1200 (<http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/sub/3504867065.html>)
and another for $1600
(<http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/sub/3509197277.html>)

I hope this helps!

------
charlieflowers
Who wouldn't love 3 months of hardcore programming and collaboration with
other smart, fired up people?

~~~
dustineichler
You'd think, but it's not for everyone.

------
rdl
I wonder what the value is of having it in NYC (or SFBA) vs. somewhere else,
ideally cheap and with minimal distractions, like a university campus over the
summer.

Also wonder if there's a good argument for doing a non-US hacker school to
solve visa issues -- is there anything going on like this in China now? India?

~~~
lnanek2
There are a ton of interesting tech things going on in NYC. General Assembly
runs events and classes, AlleyNYC similar, WeWork Labs has cheap office space
for startups, New Work Labs has a free night, NY Gaming Meetup, multiple
competing Java Meetups with technical presentations; group coding; networking,
NY Tech meetup, User Experience Meetup, iPhone meetup with tons of people
advertising gigs and looking, ad startups offering above even NYC rates to get
people into a distasteful subject - and those are just the things I've
encountered personally.

Honestly, if someone going to school meets a more established opportunity to
work at a real startup or with a real company with a production product, then
I think that's a good distraction anyway, since they'll move on to the real
deal, instead of just working on educational open source projects, and really
start their career.

------
alecco
The word hacker is so abused for marketing purposes it now means entry level
programmer of whatever trendy fad of the times. (e.g. node.js hacker, rails
ninja, mongodb god)

    
    
      * Originally (70s-80s) hackers were programmers/technicians who could
       modify programs or machines to perform tasks beyond their original
       intended use (for good or bad).
      * Afterwards (90s), journalists hyped the word to mean  security
       hackers, people expert on security issues of software (itself a
       subset of original hackers).
      * And then further journalist confusion, changing it to refer to
       people cracking into systems
      * In the last few years it became a glorified buzzword losing any
       useful meaning.
    

A lot of insecure people who need cool names use it to describe themselves.
There's no substance and no way to verify their claims. This is like ghetto
cars with neon lights and flaps.

~~~
doktrin
You don't provide any evidence to support your claim.

>> "hackers were programmers/technicians who could modify programs or machines
to perform tasks beyond their original intended use (for good or bad)"

That is incredibly vague. In fact, by that standard, I was a "hacker" in 8th
grade.

Is there some unspoken and arbitrary measure of skill in the "original"
definition you are referring to?

If not, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with any entry level programmer
referring to themselves as a hacker.

>> A lot of insecure people who need cool names use it to describe themselves.
There's no substance and no way to verify their claims. This is like ghetto
cars with neon lights and flaps.

That analogy isn't helpful. How does the so-called dilution of the "hacker"
term relate to "ghetto" cars with neon lights?

~~~
alecco
Evidence? Are you joking? 2600, Phrack, BBS archives. Hell, there's even a
half-decent page in Wikipedia.

Not some random 90s nobody like ESR disenfranchised by the same people who
made him famous (the slashdot crowd of the 90s).

~~~
alecco
But I bet the page will be _corrected_ by this fad's promoters.

------
yial
Where you place the most attractive people in the front row for each photo. ;)

But, in all seriousness, I think it is a fantastic idea to make women feel
more welcome in that field, as too many girls I know who are IST majors, or
something similar, frequently talk about how they really feel that it's more
of a "guys" area.

~~~
Adrock
Don't say ridiculously sexist and superficial crap and put an emoticon next to
it like that makes it ok. It's not ok.

~~~
brain5ide
Don't attach the sexist label to things so easily. That devalues it in the
mind of people that care not mindlessly.

~~~
kabuks
These women just spent 3 months of technical training, and the comment started
by remarking on their attractiveness and goes on to call them girls.

Not sure if they attached it 'easily', but that comment was squarely sexist in
my book. Even if it was well intentioned.

~~~
walshemj
I agree did you see the sewing needle in the log FFS along with craft word in
the seal on the wall.

"don't worry ladies its just craft like sewing a quilt"

they will be going on about how they have some "negro boys" in the next group.

~~~
walshemj
Obviously hit a nerve there

