Advice for New Hacker Schoolers
“Oh, I envy you, Wesley Crusher. You’re just at the beginning of the adventure.” — Captain Picard
I just spent 3 months in New York attending Hacker School. I was kind of scared to simply jump on a plane and come to an impossibly expensive city without a job or really a plan, but I also knew it was the right decision.
How did it go?
Friends
The key difference between learning on your own and coming to Hacker School is the people that do it with you. The most important thing I did during this time was make friends with smart people that I could learn from and have fun with.
There were around 60 people doing this batch of Hacker School. We formed a pretty diverse bunch: PhDs and undergrads, musicians and dog agility trainers, ivy league engineers and liberal arts philosophers, people who eat data sets for breakfast and people who used to play poker professionally. We were all over the gender spectrum. 30% of us were not from the US.
Imagine the possibilities. The possibilities!
I was so excited about this that the first day I didn’t even turn on my laptop, I just walked around the space saying hi to everyone. Some people seemed happy to talk, others were more like “wtf who even are you.” By the end of the day, I had helped some people, confused others, and got called “Pedro” twice. I was proud.
Take a moment to notice that your batch will be the only time most likely ever in which that particular group of people will be together in the same room with three months to spend playing with computers. Everyone there has a particular kind of expertise. You should know what you want to learn, but don’t get too specific or attached to your plans — there’s a good chance that whatever project that comes up from talking to others will be more interesting and enjoyable than what you can come up with on your own.
With these people I mostly wrote a lot of code, but we also visited museums, took walks along the river, played board games, climbed rocks, sang Disney songs in Korean karaokes, danced, sat in the park doing absolutely nothing whatsoever, and all sorts of other cool stuff.
The people of Hacker School is what makes Hacker School so awesome.
“Sounds like you had fun, Pedro. What would your advice be?”
Questions
Help will always be given at Hacker School to those who ask for it. This is probably the most important thing I learned during my time there: just ask your question! It’s fine, you are in a safe space. Sure, you still need to do your homework first, but there’s a difference between asking for help and spoon feeding, and being self-directed is not the same as playing hero. I didn’t know the difference before, I got that part wrong.
One advantage of getting to know your fellow batchlings early on is that you get a sense of who to ask what questions to from the beginning. During the first few weeks of my batch, I could always point people to whoever was most likely to help them. “I think I’m gonna write a recommendation system,” they would say, and “Oh! Rad Person is writing their masters thesis on exactly that! You should talk to them!” I would answer. I got that part right.
It’s for this reason that you should try not to miss presentations on Thursdays. It tells you what everyone is into, so you know who to talk to if you are stuck with something. It will also give you ideas of who to pair with on what (see next section though).
As the awesome hacker schooler Julia Evans explained, asking questions is more efficient for everyone.
Regrets
There are several ways to do Hacker School right. For the first few weeks, everyone will be trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. So much curiosity with so little structure can be overwhelming — at Hacker School, your next focus can literally be anything.
A common source of regret in my batch was “aawww, I got the hang of it so late, I feel like I wasted half the batch!” It takes time, my friend. You need some fucking around first to find a comfortable pace. Be prepared to wander a little during your first few weeks while you try to figure it out. It took me almost half my batch. Don’t worry about “wasting” those first few weeks. It takes time.
What else should you not worry about?
1. It’s OK if you don’t pair
Pair programming is a heavily recommended technique at Hacker School. There’s a whole section about it in the manual, and the most important bit is this:
Most Hacker School alumni wish they’d spent more time pair programming during their batch. We learned this after the second batch, and have shared this fact with every batch since. Despite this, lots of people still tell us after Hacker School that they really wish they’d paired more.
I paired a loooot (people make jokes about this), and that worked very well — for me. Some of my friends didn’t pair very much or at all, and they also improved like hell.
Pairing isn’t for everyone. The idea of unveiling your thought process to others can make you feel exposed and vulnerable, specially if you suffer from impostor syndrome[1]. And if you are socially awkward, then it’s that much taxing.
Know that there are different learning styles[2], and so it is OK to not pair. Definitely try it a couple of times (the earlier the better), but if it turns out it is not for you, that’s perfectly fine — you didn’t fail Hacker School.
An alternative for you might be code reviews. You get valuable feedback minus the anxiety that comes from essentially thinking out loud in front of someone else.
2. Delay job hunting
…as much as you can. Honest to Turing that this is an actual thing written on one of the Hacker School windows:
Disclaimer: I wrote that.
Forget about jobs at first. Yes New York is expensive, yes interviewing is a P in the A, but let future you experience that very particular kind of misery. Right now, your focus should be on learning.
In Summary
Hacker School is full of possibilities, and figuring out how to make the most of it will take some time. For me, it was about writing code with other people. Asking a lot of questions and pairing helped me, it might help you.
Above all, learn a lot, build cool stuff, and never graduate.
More Advice
There’s the Hacker School official manual, and I recommend this post by another alum.
[1] I recommend this talk if you do.
[2] Make sure to attend Mel Chua’s talk on the subject if she happens to be around.
Photo of the entire batch property of Maja Frydrychowicz.
