8 ms·

Hacker School: Summer 2012 Applications Open + Etsy Scholarships

106 points by nicholasjbs 15y ago

brendannee 15y ago
Want to know what Hacker Schoolers work on? I made a visualization of hacker schoolers github projects: http://hs.bn.ee http://hs.bn.ee
- ericd 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      Neat. Any chance you're looking for a job?
talos 15y ago
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 15y ago
  That is sort of the point of the Etsy sponsorship! See http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-supporting-women-in-technology/ http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-suppor...
kellyreid 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...]. EDIT: MaxGabriel pointed out this article claims more women in a group improves performance [not equal numbers]. Thanks for the correction.
    - kellyreid 15y ago
      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.
rabc 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Thanks! It means a lot to hear such kind words. We'd love to have you apply :).
iqster 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 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.
prophetjohn 15y ago
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 15y ago
  My accounting professor is the head of accounting at Etsy. He definitely enjoys the culture.
monkeygus 15y ago
do you need a special visa to attend if you are non-US resident?
- nicholasjbs 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Awesome. I will definitely be applying for the etsy scholarship, sounds like a great opportunity.
- euccastro 15y ago
  If your country of citizenship is eligible for the Visa Waiver Program [1] you just need to fill a form [2] online, declaring you're not a terrorist, drug dealer, child abuser/abductor, etc. [3] It is probably a good idea to get some health insurance for your whole stay, unless your country has some kind of arrangement with the U.S. to this effect (and I don't know if any country does). You can get insurance from your travel agency or separately online. Check the terms of your home insurance or credit card, if any. Some include some sort of travel insurance. [1] http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html [2] https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ [3] Seriously!
evoxed 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Just sent a reply!
cinquemb 15y ago
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 15y ago
  We mean hacker in the pg (http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html) esr (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html 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/dp/1593271441 http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-The-Art-Exploitation-Edition/d...)? It's my favorite book on the subject.
  - cinquemb 15y ago
    No i haven't but ill definitely look into it since it sounds pretty cool ha
mythrowawayacct 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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. :)
- euccastro 15y ago
  I object to a 'top female programmer' award not because of the lack of symmetry, but because it reeks of condescension. These scholarships don't give an artificial pat-in-the-back to anyone. Women are helped in aspects unrelated to those in which applicants are evaluated. In any event, I'm interested in hearing about the alternatives you, and the females you've spoken with, propose.
kenrikm 15y ago
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!
Jun8 15y ago
Do you have a HS yearbook of sorts, why dont you feature the alumni more prominantly?
j2labs 15y ago
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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3436007
- thomasballinger 15y ago
  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.
ruswick 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
2bithacker 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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!

106 points by nicholasjbs 15y ago

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

ericd 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Neat. Any chance you're looking for a job?

talos 15y ago

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 15y ago
That is sort of the point of the Etsy sponsorship! See http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-supporting-women-in-technology/ http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-suppor...

kellyreid 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...]. EDIT: MaxGabriel pointed out this article claims more women in a group improves performance [not equal numbers]. Thanks for the correction.
  - kellyreid 15y ago
    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.

rabc 15y ago

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 15y ago
Thanks! It means a lot to hear such kind words. We'd love to have you apply :).

iqster 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 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.

prophetjohn 15y ago

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 15y ago
My accounting professor is the head of accounting at Etsy. He definitely enjoys the culture.

monkeygus 15y ago

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

nicholasjbs 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Awesome. I will definitely be applying for the etsy scholarship, sounds like a great opportunity.
euccastro 15y ago
If your country of citizenship is eligible for the Visa Waiver Program [1] you just need to fill a form [2] online, declaring you're not a terrorist, drug dealer, child abuser/abductor, etc. [3] It is probably a good idea to get some health insurance for your whole stay, unless your country has some kind of arrangement with the U.S. to this effect (and I don't know if any country does). You can get insurance from your travel agency or separately online. Check the terms of your home insurance or credit card, if any. Some include some sort of travel insurance. [1] http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html [2] https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ [3] Seriously!

evoxed 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Just sent a reply!

cinquemb 15y ago

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 15y ago
We mean hacker in the pg (http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html) esr (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html 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/dp/1593271441 http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-The-Art-Exploitation-Edition/d...)? It's my favorite book on the subject.
- cinquemb 15y ago
  No i haven't but ill definitely look into it since it sounds pretty cool ha

mythrowawayacct 15y ago

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 15y ago
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. :)
euccastro 15y ago
I object to a 'top female programmer' award not because of the lack of symmetry, but because it reeks of condescension. These scholarships don't give an artificial pat-in-the-back to anyone. Women are helped in aspects unrelated to those in which applicants are evaluated. In any event, I'm interested in hearing about the alternatives you, and the females you've spoken with, propose.

kenrikm 15y ago

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!

Jun8 15y ago

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

j2labs 15y ago

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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3436007

thomasballinger 15y ago
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.

ruswick 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

2bithacker 15y ago

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 15y ago
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!