5 ms·

It would seem buying up talent is like buying up land. There is only so much of either to go around, and the price is just going to get higher and higher.

pg 14y ago
Actually there are several efforts to increase the number of programmers, e.g. http://hackerschool.com http://hackerschool.com, http://insightdatascience.com http://insightdatascience.com, etc.
- beagle3 14y ago
  My impression of hacker school is that it mostly makes talent more visible, not really increases the pool. But maybe this is a distinction without difference.
  - nicholasjbs 14y ago
    We're definitely focused on increasing the pool. We've had a number of students come to Hacker School with minimal (e.g., ~2 months) of programming experience and leave as professional devs. In general, the goal of Hacker School is to help people become dramatically better programmers, regardless of where they start. Some people come in without much programming experience, and some people come in with substantial programming experience. Across the board our students report that Hacker School is one of the most educational and productive periods of their lives (here's what a very experienced student wrote about her time in the current batch: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335460 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335460)
    - beagle3 14y ago
      Great to hear! Can I hijack this thread to ask -- seems like everyone who participated and posted about it wants to come back. How do you manage the exponential/fibonacci growth?
      - nicholasjbs 14y ago
        How do you manage the exponential/fibonacci growth? We actually had exponential growth for our first four batches, but that's not super impressive when you consider our first batch only had six students :) In truth, every batch is an experiment, and each time we're terrified we won't get enough qualified applicants.
- lachyg 14y ago
  And http://devbootcamp.com/ http://devbootcamp.com/, we've graduated and got jobs for 15~ programmers so far. Another 40 graduating next week.

pg 14y ago

Actually there are several efforts to increase the number of programmers, e.g. http://hackerschool.com http://hackerschool.com, http://insightdatascience.com http://insightdatascience.com, etc.

beagle3 14y ago
My impression of hacker school is that it mostly makes talent more visible, not really increases the pool. But maybe this is a distinction without difference.
- nicholasjbs 14y ago
  We're definitely focused on increasing the pool. We've had a number of students come to Hacker School with minimal (e.g., ~2 months) of programming experience and leave as professional devs. In general, the goal of Hacker School is to help people become dramatically better programmers, regardless of where they start. Some people come in without much programming experience, and some people come in with substantial programming experience. Across the board our students report that Hacker School is one of the most educational and productive periods of their lives (here's what a very experienced student wrote about her time in the current batch: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335460 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4335460)
  - beagle3 14y ago
    Great to hear! Can I hijack this thread to ask -- seems like everyone who participated and posted about it wants to come back. How do you manage the exponential/fibonacci growth?
    - nicholasjbs 14y ago
      How do you manage the exponential/fibonacci growth? We actually had exponential growth for our first four batches, but that's not super impressive when you consider our first batch only had six students :) In truth, every batch is an experiment, and each time we're terrified we won't get enough qualified applicants.
lachyg 14y ago
And http://devbootcamp.com/ http://devbootcamp.com/, we've graduated and got jobs for 15~ programmers so far. Another 40 graduating next week.