Finally Done With The Data Incubator!

We’ve hatched!

The Data Incubator accepts less than 4% of their applicants as fellows. I was one of the fifty something fellows, out of 1900+, accepted to this past Winter cohort in D.C. I thought getting in was the hardest part of the program but, man, was I wrong. Those eight weeks, in particular the first four, were rough as hell. There was so much to learn and so little time. During the first four weeks I’d come into the office at 7:30am and leave no earlier than 8pm. And yes, most of us were there also on Saturdays (and the occasional Sunday). Honestly, the main reason why I got through it, was because I made amazing friends and we helped each other throughout the whole program.

The toughest part of the program was definitely having to learn MapReduce, Hadoop and AWS in less than a week, because you know, we had a week to complete most of our projects. Learning Scala and Spark was a bit more fun and we had the last four weeks to do so, but after suffering through MapReduce (or Mr. Job, how we usually called it), Spark was a walk through the park.

I also started the program with working knowledge of SQL and an intermediate level of Python but now after the Data Incubator I feel like

It was not all work and no play, at 5pm almost everyday we would bring out the beers and whiskey and code at a more leisurely pace for the rest of the evening. Funny thing, we bought so much alcohol from the liquor store across the street that on our last day Sachin and I got a discount for being loyal customers. Let that sink in, we were loyal customers at a liquor store. We explored every restaurant in the area, lots of bars in Adams Morgan and became close friends with the ladies that work at the Firehook bakery downstairs. We even had jam sessions at the office, here’s proof if you don’t believe me: https://www.instagram.com/p/BB_NkNhoHS-/?taken-by=nel_abdiel

To all the 2016 Winter D.C. fellows, thank you for your help and friendship.

Before I leave I have to give a huge shoutout to the staff also for all their help. Alyssa, Megan, Sarah and Ariel, you all are the best, thank you for all your help through all this process.

Cheers,

El Nel

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