4 ms·

Is a couple week "school" really going to produce the kind of potential hires that SV is looking for? From what I've heard, the interviews at the companies ther

Is a couple week "school" really going to produce the kind of potential hires that SV is looking for? From what I've heard, the interviews at the companies there allow only recent CS grads from top tiered universities who have been programming for fun since 12 to succeed, let alone excel. After casually programming for the past few years, I'm pretty sure I could probably figure out Ruby basics and bang out some half decent web app/data analysis tools (which I'm planning to do if I switch careers in the near future). From the sounds of it, that's about what they're doing in this program. Does that make me hire worthy to any companies in the Bay Area? (Honest question)

nicholasjbs 15y ago
A few clarifications, since I don't think it comes through clearly in the press we've gotten so far: 1. Our goal is to help people who love programming become even better programmers. We don't aim directly for employability or hiring. 2. We explicitly don't focus on web apps, prototypes, or products. Instead, most of the code people write at Hacker School is code for other programmers, e.g., frameworks, libraries, command-line utilities, etc. People at Hacker School work on projects that are technically interesting and one step beyond their current skill level. 3. Hacker School is three months, not a couple weeks. And we don't think people can become great hackers in three months. We do, however, think people can improve dramatically in that time if that's their primary focus and they're surrounded by smart, motivated and intellectually curious people who also love coding and want to grow.
- retroafroman 15y ago
  Thank you for the detailed response. Your words do a much better (and less sensational) job of explaining what it is you do than the article. It sounds like a cool opportunity and I may apply in the future.
  - nicholasjbs 15y ago
    You're welcome -- I'm glad to hear my comment was helpful. I hope to see you apply to a future batch!

nicholasjbs 15y ago

A few clarifications, since I don't think it comes through clearly in the press we've gotten so far: 1. Our goal is to help people who love programming become even better programmers. We don't aim directly for employability or hiring. 2. We explicitly don't focus on web apps, prototypes, or products. Instead, most of the code people write at Hacker School is code for other programmers, e.g., frameworks, libraries, command-line utilities, etc. People at Hacker School work on projects that are technically interesting and one step beyond their current skill level. 3. Hacker School is three months, not a couple weeks. And we don't think people can become great hackers in three months. We do, however, think people can improve dramatically in that time if that's their primary focus and they're surrounded by smart, motivated and intellectually curious people who also love coding and want to grow.

retroafroman 15y ago
Thank you for the detailed response. Your words do a much better (and less sensational) job of explaining what it is you do than the article. It sounds like a cool opportunity and I may apply in the future.
- nicholasjbs 15y ago
  You're welcome -- I'm glad to hear my comment was helpful. I hope to see you apply to a future batch!