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Hacking My Tech Career at Hacker School

paul-jean
September 18, 2014

Hacking My Tech Career at Hacker School

I attended the Winter 2014 batch of Hacker School to reboot my tech career and meet kindred spirits. It was an awesome way to hack my tech career.

paul-jean

September 18, 2014
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  1. Hacking My Tech Career
    at Hacker School
    Paul-Jean Letourneau
    Champaign-Urbana CODE TechMix, Sept 18th 2014




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  2. Overview
    1. Why I applied to HS
    2. Getting into HS
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  3. Overview
    1. Why I applied to HS!
    2. Getting into HS
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  4. Why I applied to HS
    • Around 2012 got pinged by a
    FB recruiter
    • Awesome! FB wants me!
    • Silicon Valley here I come!
    !
    !
    !
    !

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  5. “Data Scientist”
    • FB: we want “Data Scientists”
    • Me: I’m a “Data Scientist”!
    • What IS a Data Scientist??
    • Who knows!
    • But look! I make pretty
    graphs! ———>

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  6. Look how pretty!

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  7. FB interview… EPIC FAIL
    • FB said “nope you’re not”
    • I didn’t know open-source
    tools like R
    • My statistics were rusty
    • My algorithms needed work

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  8. View Slide

  9. Learn online things!
    • So I took a bunch of classes
    online:
    • statistics!
    • data analysis!
    • machine learning!
    • startup engineering!
    • data structures!

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  10. But something was missing

    • Learning stuff online was good
    • But so lonely!
    • I missed people …
    • I wanted to learn with other
    people!
    • Wasn’t there an internship, or
    something I could do???

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  11. This thing called “Hacker School”
    • My wife remembered reading
    about this thing called
    “Hacker School” in Wired or
    something
    • Whoa, these people look
    happy!
    • The application deadline was
    … yesterday :(
    http://archive.wired.com/geekmom/2012/12/hacker-school-experience/

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  12. Overview
    1. Why I applied to Hacker School
    2. Applying to Hacker School!
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  13. Applying to Hacker School
    • I found out about Hacker
    School the day after the
    application deadline,
    • about Dec 15th 2013
    • But luckily they do rolling
    admissions
    • So I buckled down and wrote
    my application in a couple
    days
    • I submitted it on Dec 18th

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  14. Application questions
    • CracklePop:
    • For all integers from 1 to 100, print:
    • “Crackle” if divisible by 3
    • “Pop” if divisible by 5
    • “CracklePop” if divisible by both 3
    and 5

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  15. Coding project
    • “Link to a program you’ve written from scratch”
    • I sent my WordPress client for Mathematica:
    https://github.com/paul-jean/blog-this

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  16. Essay questions
    • “Why do you want to do Hacker School?”
    • “What would you like to work on at Hacker School?”
    • “What is the most fascinating thing you’ve learned
    in the past month?”
    • “What do you want to be doing in 2 years?”

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  17. Response
    • I got an email from Nick (Hacker
    School CEO) about 2 weeks later, on
    Dec 28th ——>
    • He sent a link where I could
    schedule a 30 min Skype interview
    with a Hacker School facilitator
    • I chose Zach ——>
    • This turned out to be an informal chat

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  18. Pair programming
    • Then I scheduled a pair
    programming session with Dave —>
    • They asked me to provide some of
    my own code for us to work on
    together
    • The goal was to fix or improve
    something within 30 min or so

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  19. Pair programming
    • I had recently written some Java code for printing
    a binary tree to a terminal
    • We worked on generalizing it to multi-digit labels
    on the nodes
    https://github.com/paul-jean/code-dojo/tree/master/20131226-array-to-bin-tree

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  20. Follow-up
    • Dave said he’d try to get back to me by the end of
    the day
    • Let the nail-biting begin
    • Dave’s email crushed my soul …

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  21. “I’m super sorry …”
    Boohoo! … this is definitely a rejection letter

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  22. No wait! Woohoo!
    ….

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  23. View Slide

  24. • Hacker School was 3 months
    • That was too long for a leave of absence from Wolfram
    • So after 7 years I resigned
    • Kind of terrifying

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  25. View Slide

  26. Overview
    1. Why I applied to HS
    2. Getting into HS
    3. Day 0!
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  27. Day 0: meet the space
    • The Hacker School space is in
    Lower Manhattan, in SoHo
    • It’s a big open work space
    • A row of desks and some
    meeting rooms
    • The meeting rooms are named
    after famous computer
    scientists
    • e.g. Lovelace, Babbage,
    Church, Turing

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  28. View Slide

  29. View Slide

  30. View Slide

  31. Day 0: meet fellow Hacker
    Schoolers

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  32. Day 0: meet the facilitators

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  33. Day 0: introduction to
    Hacker School
    • The facilitators gave us a
    presentation
    • They described the
    parameters of the school
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    www.hackerschool.com/about

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  34. What is Hacker School?
    • 3 months full-time
    • free
    • “writers retreat” for
    programmers
    • ~60 people
    • coding and collaborating
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    www.hackerschool.com/about

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  35. • a “social experiment”
    • unstructured
    • self-directed
    • project-based
    What is Hacker School?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    www.hackerschool.com/about

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  36. Hacker School is NOT
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    www.hackerschool.com/about
    • NOT a bootcamp
    • the stated goal is to learn
    deeply about what interests
    you
    • NOT for learning a specific
    tool (e.g. Rails)

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  37. How does Hacker School
    make $$?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    https://www.hackerschool.com/manual#sec-recruiting
    • Hacker School is also NOT a
    nonprofit
    • Companies pay them to
    recruit HS graduates
    • Companies pay them 25% of
    the first year’s salary

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  38. How does Hacker School
    make $$?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?
    https://www.hackerschool.com/manual#sec-recruiting
    • During Hacker School, focus
    on learning what you’re
    passionate about
    • After Hacker School is over,
    they will help you find a job
    (if you want one)

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  39. “We don't run Hacker School
    so we can recruit, we recruit so
    we can run Hacker School.”
    https://www.hackerschool.com/manual#sec-recruiting

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  40. Day 0: the four social rules
    1. No feigned surprise
    2. No well-actually’s
    3. No back-seat driving
    4. No subtle-isms
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?

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  41. No feigned surprise
    • acting surprised when
    someone says they
    don’t know something
    • “What? You don’t
    know what the stack
    is?!”
    • people need to feel
    comfy saying “I don’t
    know”

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  42. No well-actually’s
    • someone says
    something that’s
    almost correct
    • … and you’re like
    “well, actually …”
    • that’s usually more
    about grandstanding
    than being precise

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  43. No back-seat driving
    • people are having a
    conversation
    • and you interject with
    advice from across
    the room
    • more disruptive than
    helpful

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  44. No subtle -isms
    • racism
    • sexism
    • homophobia
    • transphobia
    • ‘nuff said

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  45. Day 0: hopes and fears
    • We all sat in a group and
    voiced our fears
    • … and our hopes
    • The facilitators wrote them
    down and posted them on the
    wall for the entire batch
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?

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  46. Day 0: schedule
    • School in session Mon - Thurs
    • Mandatory group check-in at
    10:30 AM sharp
    • Check-in groups will rotate
    every 2 weeks
    • Tech talk every Monday night
    • Optional job prep sessions on
    Fridays
    ?
    ?
    ?
    ?

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  47. Day 0: Zulip chat client

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  48. Overview
    1. Why I applied to Hacker School
    2. Applying to Hacker School
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on!
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  49. • Andrea sent a message out on
    Zulip asking if anyone wanted
    to work in Scala
    • Me!
    • So we paired on a Boggle
    word puzzle solver

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  50. http://paul-jean.github.io/2014/05/17/gol-react.html
    • In the second week,
    Jake asked me to pair
    on the Game of Life in
    Javascript

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  51. • Later on I asked Mary to
    help me refactor my
    Javascript code into a more
    functional style
    http://paul-jean.github.io/2014/05/17/gol-react.html

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  52. • But then Damian offered to
    pair with me to refactor it
    again
    • This time we used D3.js
    http://paul-jean.github.io/2014/05/17/gol-react.html

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  53. • BUT then an alum Thomas stopped
    by the space
    • He said he’d pair with me on React.js
    • So we refactored my Game of Life
    again! Now using React!
    http://paul-jean.github.io/2014/05/17/gol-react.html

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  54. • React.js is known for making
    DOM (browser screen)
    updates very efficiently
    • So I wrote a Chrome
    extension to highlight the
    updates
    • Only the cells that change
    color are updated on each
    step:
    http://paul-jean.github.io/2014/05/17/gol-react.html

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  55. Pure Javascript vs React.js

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  56. Code all the things!
    • GOL in HTML5 canvas
    • GOL in functional Javascript
    • GOL in D3.js
    • GOL in React.js
    • GOL in Clojure / ClojureScript
    • GOL in Python
    • chart animations in D3.js
    • Clojure hackathon
    • LudumDare game hackathon
    • Boggle solver in Scala
    • url shortening server in node.js
    • Chrome plugin to highlight DOM mutations
    • mergesort in Javascript
    • memoization cab driver problem in Javascript
    • hash table from scratch in Java
    • phone book app in node.js
    • file-based prefix tree in node.js
    • linked list in Javascript
    https://github.com/paul-jean

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  57. View Slide

  58. Other Hacker Schooler’s projects
    • distributed hash table
    • video BitTorrent client
    • interactive fiction game engine
    for the sega genesis
    • hopscotch hash table in
    assembly
    • radio signal visualizer
    • panoramic 360 video player
    for the Oculus Rift
    • Arduino door lock controller
    • real-time collaborative coding
    platform
    • recursive descent parser
    • graph database engine
    • BitTorrent client Go
    • monadic parser combinators
    • wifi-enabled remote-controlled
    car using Arduino

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  59. Overview
    1. Why I applied to Hacker School
    2. Applying to Hacker School
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt!
    6. What I’m doing now

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  60. Job fair
    • At the end of the batch, there
    was a job fair
    • Companies gave
    presentations and mingled
    over drinks




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  61. Job hunt
    • Sonali gave me personal
    coaching through the
    interview process
    • Her advice was frank,
    practical, and super-duper
    valuable!
    • I interviewed with both HS and
    non-HS companies




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  62. Overview
    1. Why I applied to Hacker School
    2. Applying to Hacker School
    3. Day 0
    4. What I worked on
    5. Job hunt
    6. What I’m doing now

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  63. PhotoShelter NYC!
    • I’m now a Developer at
    PhotoShelter!
    • I’m working on front-end web
    • Mainly Javascript
    • Working with an in-house MVC
    framework
    • Porting view layer to React.js

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  64. View Slide

  65. The PhotoShelter family

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  66. www.hackerschool.com/apply

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