

Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks - thisgirlangie
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/09/hackbright-academy/
It’s probably too early to talk about how many of the recent graduates actually get jobs, but co-founder David J. Phillips (who also co-founded location startup Banjo) shared some earlier data. Eight out of 12 students in Hackbright’s first class, were looking for immediate employment, he said, and all eight of them got offers from companies like New Relic, Survey Monkey, Cisco, and Bump.
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meaty
10 weeks is not enough time to learn _any_ skill.

I wish people would stop these boot camps with ridiculous claims. We've had a
couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly
tell them 'no way' and explain why.

A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an
easy way to make quick cash (hint: it isn't - writing software is hard and
laborious and pays crap for the first couple of years, if you can stomach it
that long).

~~~
davj
Thanks for your feedback. This is not a boot camp. Have you ever committed
100% of your time to learning a new skill over a short period of time?

~~~
meaty
No, I believe learning a skill is an investment, which is why I take my time
(sometimes years) and study for a long time before I even put pen to paper.

My latest learning exercise was postgresql. I've done a proper engineering
evaluation on it which has taken a whole year, but i tell you, i know it
inside out now. I am confident i can handle any edge case or problem. Can your
10 week old developers even handle a simple edge case failure efficiently?
That's where the skills are important or there is a roadblock every 30 minutes
in this industry.

~~~
kaonashi
What does a proper engineering evaluation entail?

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meaty
In my case, a simplified view: reading the documentation, building a list of
scenarios based on proposed functions and associated risks, testing each one
and documenting it in a concise manor. Then building something serious,
testing it, breaking it predictably and unpredictably and reworking
conclusions from above. Also doing research on best practices, bad practices,
performance reducing functions and hints/tips, integration paths etc.

When I reliably can answer most stackoverflow questions on the subject, I am
then confident that I know what I'm doing and then will sell my skills.

~~~
rdl
I think it would be insane for someone with little or no experience in the
field to devote years to a specific skill (say, complete mastery of Postgres),
before working on problems in the real world.

Even in areas where failure has high costs (say, medicine, or war), you don't
go off and try to master a specific skill before doing anything -- you master
some basic skills, practice using those (in increasingly realistic
environments), then learn more advanced skills. For one thing, you don't even
know beforehand where you may have particular strength, and you also don't
know what opportunities will arise.

Even a junior developer with basic knowledge can make meaningful (and thus
compensated) contributions during the learning process. I'd rather spend 10
weeks or 6 months or whatever building some skills, then get a job and learn
while being paid, vs. spending my whole life in isolation trying to become a
zen master and write the one perfect line of code.

Breadth first, then depth.

~~~
wladimir
_Breadth first, then depth_

For "deep" areas such as mathematics, medicine, and theoretical computer
science one needs an extensive theoretical background before being able to
advance the field. A depth-first approach may be the only way of learning a
useful subset. This may also apply to something like "database theory in
general".

However for "product skills" (such as learning a specific database package or
API) there's something to be said for a breadth-first approach. Especially
nowadays, where today's hot skill can be neigh useless tomorrow. If you spend
years only perfecting some skill you may be too late to profit from it! Also
as the field is moving so fast, by the time you learned the PostgresSQL manual
from beginning to end, there has been a new major release that invalidates
many of the best practices that you spent so much time learning...

~~~
rdl
Yes, but even more so:

You don't even need to be able to "advance the field" to contribute
meaningfully.

Take medicine. It's possible to teach someone some specific skills quite
quickly (I probably have 200 hours of first aid training, essentially much of
EMT-B plus lots of specific training in trauma, specifically dealing with
massive hemorrhage from traumatic amputations, dealing with GSW, tension
pneumothorax, etc., and various diving related issues, and some extremely
basic radiology knowledge to assist technicians and rads in debugging a PACS.)
With that level of training, or even 4 hours of really basic first aid
training, you know enough to help. I won't be writing any dissertations on the
best way to deal with a specific kind of trauma, but I can do a pretty good
job of stopping bleeding in most cases. You're not going to have a top-flight
trauma surgeon in every car. The 200-hour tech isn't going to be operating on
his own (ideally), but can be a part of the solution. For some fields, like
datacenter operations, experience is worth more than formal training, too.

Plus, there actually are a surprising number of cases where a relative
newcomer to a field actually does end up advancing the theoretical limits.
Maybe it's due to not knowing and accepting the limits of the field at the
time, or maybe it's because that moderately passable junior programmer also
happens to be a world-class expert in some other domain which just happens to
be similar to the problem at hand, but it's not all that uncommon.

I'd still prefer any pending neurosurgery on me be done by someone with a good
amount of experience, credentialing, and expertise, but it's a rare Django app
which requires that level of caution :)

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eLobato
Will sound like an asshole to many people, but:

    
    
      Hackbright Academy Turns Men Into Developers In 10 Weeks
    
      Hackbright Academy Turns Blacks Into Developers In 10 Weeks
    
      Hackbright Academy Turns Whites Into Developers In 10 Weeks
    

Do we really need MORE discrimination? If I go ahead and try to join in, they
will say "sorry, no men accepted"? That sounds equally as bad to me as "sorry,
no woman accepted" or "sorry, no latinos accepted".

Can anybody explain?

I honestly hope the girls will get the skills they're looking for in 10 weeks,
and I support that, but I truly don't get why do they have to discriminate
against. Maybe so they get media coverage?

~~~
zedshaw
Well, what you're seeing is a backlash from the way programming has been
taught thus far. For whatever reason all computer science education is geared
toward someone who's already had about 6 years of self-education. Typically
that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and
so never went into computer science.

Now what you're seeing is companies meeting the demand from these new groups
because the education techniques for teaching computer science are changing.
At first it's going to be classes like this focusing on these groups demanding
these kinds of environments, but soon it will just spread to how all CS is
taught.

Incidentally, Harvey Mudd university is basically demonstrating that simply
changing the education model so that it works for people without prior
programming experience accomplishes the same thing:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-
the-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-the-access-
code.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Quote:

> To reduce the intimidation factor, the course was divided into two sections
> — “gold,” for those with no prior experience, and “black” for everyone else.
> Java, a notoriously opaque programming language, was replaced by a more
> accessible language called Python. And the focus of the course changed to
> computational approaches to solving problems across science.

So I predict most of these "for women only classes" will fall away and be
replaced with better introductory material.

~~~
fiblye
> Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn
> programming and so never went into computer science.

I understand that poorer people have no opportunity to learn programming and
other less-immediately applicable topics outside of class, but I don't see
what's stopping women from learning how to code. Most middle class people
today spend their entire days on facebook--why is it "harder" for a woman to
take some time to learn how her computer works when countless men begin
learning in their late teens/early adult years?

~~~
zedshaw
I think a big part of it is that there is a very strong hatred of
intellectualism in the US, to the point that people who learned to use
computers are called nerds and other vile things as well as abused and beaten
for it. I think previously the potential of computers as a career wasn't
strong enough to overcome this with many young kids, boys or girls, but more
so girls.

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shurane
Training programmers in 10 short weeks? Albeit these have experience with
programming via codecademy, but 10 weeks? That is a fantastic turnaround and
sounds a bit too marvelous. How does it work? This is just the first batch,
but does it work consistently? This is fascinating.

Do the programmers at Hackbright have any particular traits? Ambition, drive,
or a ridiculous work ethic? Surrounding themselves with the help of coworkers,
or something else?

I'm somewhat incredulous at the short time span, but maybe that's enough
because of the small class size and perhaps the involved teaching style. And
if that's enough to let graduates intern at a company... well.

This program definitely looks exciting.

~~~
smsm42
Looking into the article, they don't start from zero:

 _It helps that Hackbright students usually aren’t starting from scratch, but
have instead developed their initial skills using Codecademy or by attending
development workshops. After all, Phillips said, Hackbright is for people who
are serious about programming as a profession, and you can’t decide that
you’re serious until you’ve tried it out._

So as I see it's for somebody who knows some basic programming but wants to
get some skills that would get her hired.

~~~
MichelleGlauser
I think you would be surprised to know what level I started at. Everything I
had learned about backend development was passed up within two or three days,
and that Friday we went over HTML and CSS, which passed up everything I knew
about that. Hackbright is, of course, no easy road. In fact, I can easily say
it was harder than all of my AP courses in high school, harder than moving to
a German city where I knew no one, harder than deciding to jump into the
marriage boat (trust me, that was difficult), and harder than even the
decision to make such an investment. And that's why it's worth it. Of course
we'll all continue learning, just as every programmer does, but Hackbright was
a fabulous kick in the right direction.

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jerrya
Is this even legal?

My understanding from the article at techcrunch and the hackbright about page
suggests hackbright is charging tuition ($7500) for participation in the
program.

It's late for me, so maybe I am forgetting something, but what is the legal
basis for being able to discriminate on the basis of sex for an educational
program, especially from an organization that doesn't appear to be a non-
profit, or accredited in any manner.

Seems like a great program. I know some young men that would benefit from such
a program, the intensive environment, the location within the heart of the SF
Bay hiring region, the networking, etc.

~~~
zedshaw
There's quite a few same-sex educational organizations around. I think you're
confusing this with equal opportunity employment, which only applies to
certain sized companies or ones that take Federal money.

~~~
jerrya
Well, I think I am comparing it to any company selling any product, of which
very few seem allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex.

~~~
smsm42
Some definitely are. I don't think there are many male waiters in Hooters, are
there?

~~~
jerrya
That's employment discrimination, not discrimination of who your customers
are. The case of Hooters vs. the EEOC is discussed here:
[http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2009/04/can-men-
be-...](http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2009/04/can-men-be-hooters-
girls-when-can-businesses-hire-only-women.html)

Perhaps a better comparison would be to women only gyms. If you google "are
women only gyms legal" you'll come up with a slew of articles suggesting women
only gyms are probably not legal, up until the various state legislatures pass
specific laws making them legal.

I am not a lawyer, I have no good idea if hackbright is operating legally or
not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find what they are doing is not legal.

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belorn
Women only courses and equality in education don't normally mix well with me.
The whole subject is however rather interesting, being a very political
subject but also one where experiments and statistics tend to go against
common opinion.

Okey, this is from a Swedish perspective, as that is the only perspective I
got. Anyway, the Swedish state educational overseeing body has made several
attempts to improve equality in education, normally marked at getting more
women and colored people in white men dominated areas. The biggest attempt,
which was started in the 1990s, were a rather simple rule. It said "If a
student applying for a class would be a minority in a the class thanks to race
or sex, that student shall receive a small bonus in the application". No
judgment call was used in the applying of the bonus, but in 2007 it ended, and
the primary reason it ended was because the target group (women and colored
people) was not in the group actually normally receiving the bonus. Rather,
95% of the time, it was a white male, applying to a class where he would be a
minority in.

This is actually not that extremely surprising if one consider that 2/3 of the
students in Sweden are women. It also not that surprising given that every
areas of education except engineering and one form of math (abstract-math past
3rd year university), have women as the dominating group. Classes are rather
clustered in women and men density. The state overseeing body for education
did suggest after reviewing the program that maybe they should start some men-
only courses in areas which are highly dominated by women students. That
suggestion however got turn down rather immediately, as it was viewed
ludicrously impossible.

Maybe there is some pedagogical value of women-only and men-only classes.
There clearly are anecdotal evidence on it, and the numbers do tell that men
are more willing to attempt entering a woman dominated class, than a women
trying to enter a men dominated class. But as a method to get more equality in
education and encouraging a 50/50 setup, based on the Swedish attempts I must
say it does not work as intended. To reach that goal, I think further studies
of what actually work is needed. Something great this academy could do is to
create a research study on the effects, with an control group, and maybe even
a men-only class to match.

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douglascalhoun
Congratulations to David, Christian, Charles, and of course the graduates of
Hackbright!

I remember visiting your classroom when the Summer cohort was just starting to
take those first uncertain steps. Seeing them now, successfully working and
growing in their first dev jobs is truly inspiring!

From one dev training program to another, keep up the good work!

doug at catalystclass.com

~~~
davj
Thanks, Doug!

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alexholehouse
Not necessarily a response to this article, but more generally about
"learning" (complex) things such as programming languages, the impact of
impressionist art, particle physics etc.

With all these things, I would argue, that you through a kind of 3rd order
polynomial experience of time vs. your confidence in your own knowledge. At
first you know nothing, and you're aware you know nothing. After some short
amount of time you've learnt a huge amount, relative to what you did know, so
you feel like you have a good grasp on the topic. But, over _more_ time, you
begin to realize how much you actually don't know (which may reflect everyone,
or just reflect yourself, the latter meaning you can learn from others, the
former meaning you better get your thinking cap on). Hopefully then over EVEN
more time you begin to slowly increase your knowledge base, but this time from
a more informed perspective.

The point is, I guess, that it's hard to assess your own knowledge of a topic
at this very moment in time unless you've spent a decent amount of time
getting your head around it's true complexities (where both, "a decent amount
of time" and the true complexity of the topic will vary HUGELY from case to
case).

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smsm42
I wonder what's special in this training program that makes it more suitable
for women?

~~~
davj
Hackbright may not be for everyone. We have received positive feedback
regarding the composition and community surrounding our classes. We create a
positive and productive environment to maximize the effectiveness of the
program. The quality of instruction is high - and with a strong, supportive
community, we have seen some success so far.

~~~
smsm42
_We create a positive and productive environment to maximize the effectiveness
of the program_ \- this is very generic. Of course everybody would try to
create productive environment and maximize the effectiveness - did you ever
encounter an education establishment that tries to create negative and
unproductive environment and minimizes the effectiveness of their effort? The
question is _how_ you do it - and _how_ it is specifically fit to women. This
is the interesting topic. I understand if you don't want to reveal trade
secrets, etc. but there must be something beyond genetic platitudes that can
be said about it.

Why Hackbright may not be for everyone? So far what you explained is certainly
for everyone - everyone would want high quality instruction in a positive
environment and a supportive community. So what is different?

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stuartmemo
I'm pretty sure they're still women after they become developers.

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plinkplonk
Interesting that these guys train in Python/Django rather than Ruby/Rails,
like the other 'bootcamps' do.

~~~
MichelleGlauser
I'm a graduate of the most recent class. I've done a bit of rails, and I now
understand why some programmers look at Rails and scorn the "magic." I think
the point of technology is to make things easier for people, and since Rails
makes it really easy for just anyone to make a site within minutes, that's
great--for someone who doesn't want or need to go into anymore depth of
understanding about what's going on behind the scaffolding. I'm glad we did
Python--it's a good basis language.

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lowglow
Congratulations, David and Christian! I hope your entire class rules the world
soon!

~~~
davj
Thanks, Dan!

