For women who get into this program, great! You're set and will probably have an easy time finding work afterwards!
When recently moved back to the US with a basic programming foundation, I really wanted to get into this sort of school. I moved back with the primary motivation of becoming a top notch programmer. As a guy with my background, these kinds of programs aren't easy to get into! In general they all have a pretty strong desire to invite more women, and there are an awful lot of guys that want the training.
Without the option of this kind of top-notch program or others like it, I joined the local ruby meetup group and kept an eye out for any kinds of free instruction... and found that all were railsbridge (women only unless you're invited by a female participant). If you're already at a level where you can build some things, there are a lot more options like going to hack night and asking for feedback on what you've already built, but there's not much if you're not to that point yet.
If anybody reading this now is in the situation I was a couple of months ago, I strongly recommend the Coursera SaaS course through Berkeley. Obviously it doesn't compare to scholarships and in-person teaching, but there are free lectures, automated program graders, forums with active participants, study groups, and even human feeback on the quizzes. It's got pretty much all of the positives of Open Courseware, Code School (also great) and more videos rolled into one. It's open to people anywhere in the world, it's subtitled in several languages and everything except the optional textbook is free.
I'm not trying to hijack the thread-- this is a genuine attempt to help others who are in the same boat I was in until I found this.
Apparently the only way you can qualify for financial assistance is to be a woman. While I think that's great, and I understand why they are doing it that way (we really do need more women in programming), it leaves some men who validly need a hand up out in the cold.
We agree -- we'd love to be able to provide financial support to everyone we accept to Hacker School. It's another "what if" we've asked ourselves. We're not there yet, but we might get there someday.
Numbers: ~20% of undergrad CS majors are women. 23/51 hacker school students are women. Assuming that people applied in proportions roughly equal to the undergraduate degree ratio (a large assumption, I am sure), that means that 4 times the men are applying to only 1.2x more slots - that is, the average woman has ~3.3x better chance to get into the school than the average male. Why is it that balanced gender is worth (apparently) far more than the other qualities? Why is it that even with the large admission boost you offer financial aid - surely the former would be enough to attract enough women (or things are worse than I thought!)
Note that all of this is just curiosity. I'm happy to see such proactive courting of women in CS, but I've never seen anyone else push so hard for it without being explicitly for the advancement of women in CS.
EDIT: reading the site, one segment sticks out at me as seemingly answering my question:
>We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.
It's simple statistics that implies this, not sexism. Consider the following assumptions:
A) There are fewer women programmers than male programmers in the world.
B) Women programmers and male programmers have an equal skill distribution.
C) People apply to the program in ratios reflecting the "real world".
Therefore, the enrollment should also reflect the real world. Clearly, this is false, so one of my assumptions is false - C is the suspect one.
Anyway, I'm extremely happy with what you're doing. Keep up the good work.
Funding applicants based on sex, race, religion, etc. is very common among private schools of all sorts. Of course this results in sub-optimal funding distribution if your goal is to maximize, let's say, "total cumulative aptitude."
If, on the other hand, your goal is something different, for instance, promoting diversity, such a restriction is perfectly reasonable.
"What do you do about trans/intersex applicants, or do they not matter to you?"
Transsexuals identify with one gender or the other. I want you to guess how many intersex individuals have ever applied that don't also consider themselves either a man or a woman.
ETA: Having read the section on funding I see that the school itself is free, and that Etsy is providing small grants to defray the cost of living in NYC for female hackers. I don't think something like paying room for adults, even if others are neglected, should warrant such vitriol.
Oh, come on now. It's explicitly unfair. Some people in the community feel that there is a chicken and egg problem of having too few women programmers and that it is a bad thing. So HS is purposefully giving a hand up to the female programmers in order to ameliorate the issue. They don't have to be fair here when their goal is long term equality in the future.
Also, should they care if it's legal? How is being unfair in pursuit of a greater good definitely a bad thing? And I presume trans applicants could pitch to be covered as women as they either are or were at one time women, though I expect the most understanding way to treat trans people is as the sex they have changed to and identify with. Same with intersex. So it appears you're using an ugly rhetorical game to cast negative light without saying much at all. It's possible that HS has had no trans or intersex people at their gatherings so it's a moot point anyway.
In short. Fairness need not be ones highest ideal. There are reasons why fairness may need to be traded off for other benefits or fairness over another term. And sorry for my tone. This sort worried impracticality frustrates me. I would have just down-voted and flagged your comment had I been able to log into my own account.
Way to take this too far. This is a private company, Etsy, offering grants to women for, I guess, living expenses etc to be a part of the program. Those poor underprivileged males ... I mean, it's not as if going to Hacker "School" is going to make or break you. You are welcome to start a fund. Lighten up a bit on faux-indignation.
your kidding, right? It certainly is legal, colleges practice this all the time!
They give large grants to women, not because they are better, but because they are attempting to equalize the gender ratio.
The money is an extra. They won't accept you if you don't think you belong there. You are not entitled to any money. They are a private enterprise who are entitled to attempt to equalize the gender ratio... through whatever means they chose.
Whether gender-specific scholarships are legal is a question for lawyers and courts.
But regarding "equalizing the gender ratio", the gender balance for college undergraduates in the USA swung far in favor of women 10 or more years ago. Today, most colleges that want to 'equalize the gender ratio' would have to offer male-only scholarships.
You're aggregating up over all the possible degrees at all US colleges, in which case you're right, but come on. You know that in departments like computer science and pure math and various engineering disciplines and even physics the gender ratio is still heavily in favor of men. That's what's being addressed by scholarships. At many US colleges the female-only scholarships are typically conditional on entering one of the degrees with a predominantly male population and completing it.
So would male-only scholarships be appropriate in all the other female-dominated majors? And, because of the overall undergraduate imbalance, offering more male-only scholarships than female-only scholarships when netted over all fields? Simply to achieve gender balance, of course.
Sure, if achieving gender balance is desired. Racial balance also seems to be desired by most places, leading to implicit and explicit benefits for different races as well as genders. Just don't expect to see too many male-only scholarships. Few people seem to be concerned over the gender imbalance in, say for rhetorical purposes, English literature. Why do we want a greater balance in CS but not Eng. Lit? Regardless of why, the fact remains that we do, and thus we'll see tricks like scholarships trying to effect that change. Perhaps it would be better if it was all based on intellectual merit, but if you argue for that earnestly you'll be called any of a sexist/racist/elitist or something else. If that's really the path forward it will be a long time before we get on it.
"The result? Twenty three of the 51 students in our current batch are female, and Hacker School is much better for it."
Though I applaud HS's initiative and Etsy's sponsorship, it would've been nice to outline why HS is "much better" now that half the students are female.
I started writing about the benefits (and challenges) of having many more women in the batch (while simultaneously growing by 2.5x), but I felt the post was already way too long.
I hope to write a separate post on the subject before too long (maybe in September, after this batch ends and I have a bit more time).
NPR recently had a great report[1] on women in the sciences they said "When women were reminded — even subtly — of the stereotype that men were better than women at math, the performance of women in math tests measurably declined" so one might think that this living expense would reinforce that stereotype, however they concluded that "In order to boost the numbers of women who choose to go into those fields, you have to boost the number of women who are in those fields." Which is exactly what this stipend will do and hopefully that positive will out way any perceived negative. I think its a great experiment and you might want to reach out to the researchers in this report to see if they would be interested in what you're doing.
But how can you be a real hacker when you haven't been steeled by the flames of IRC and newsgroups? Maybe you should do some sessions where the experts call you a noob in very eloquent ways.
Seriously though, I'm glad this happened. I'm glad programming is being taken seriously as a craft and not ending up a side note of the curriculum. Keep us informed!
I'm a student in the current batch of Hacker School. I wrote a testimonial that is not up on the internet, yet, so I thought I'd reproduce it here. Hope you guys find it helpful.
tl;dr: go.
There are eight elements of Hacker School.
First, it is unusually supportive and safe. You can ask a question to clarify something you feel you ought to know, because you will get a gentle, illuminating answer. You can write a piece of code that you worry is shitty, then shape it into something beautiful with a fellow Hacker Schooler. You are isolated from all the people whose opinion might matter to you: your friends, your family, potential employers, the internet. In short, there are no negative consequences to showing your weaknesses.
Second, it is structured. If you feel awkward in social situations, you find that you always have a place. When you program on Hacker School days, there is always a desk to sit at. At the social gatherings, you discover that everyone at Hacker School is kind and inclusive. No one is ever left standing on their own.
Third, Hacker School is an uncontrollable situation. You are guided towards the things that it is important for you to work on. This invisible hand is the aggregate of the projects that other people are working on, the fellow students who walk up and offer to work with you on your project, the subjects covered in the Hacker School library, the languages your fellow students discuss at lunch, the juicy problem your deskmates are wrestling with, and the gentle guidance of the faculty. This invisible hand plainly shows you what you have been avoiding learning, what you thought was too hard, what you didn't know you needed to know, what you didn't know interested you.
Fourth, it is a place where programming is the most important thing in the world. Imagine Florence in the fifteenth century, except, instead of painting, everyone is inventing how to program, and instead of being surrounded by Donatello and Ghiberti and Botticelli and Raphael, you are working with the startlingly sharp programmers who no one has heard of, yet. The fact that it is socially acceptable to think about programming and talk about programming and work on programming means that programming is uppermost in your mind. Which means that you get better at it very fast. (This element was copped from Paul Graham's essay on aesthetic taste: paulgraham.com/taste.html)
Fifth, there are almost no constraints on what you work on. Your project doesn't have to make money, doesn't have to build your portfolio of open source code, doesn't have to be useful, doesn't have to appeal to some particular community, doesn't have to be cool, doesn't have result in something commensurate with the effort you put in. There is one constraint: work at the edge of your programming capabilities. Which is to say: work on something that makes you a better programmer.
Sixth, there are people who are better than you and people who are worse than you. Even if you are the most inexperienced programmer in the whole of Hacker School, you certainly know more than others about a particular operating system. Even if you are the most experienced programmer, you certainly know less than others about a particular language.
Seventh, you get to talk to and work with people who have truly brilliant minds. Some are fellow students at Hacker School. Some are drafted in as speakers or co-hackers. All are your peers.
Eighth, and most importantly, Hacker School is an expression of the faculty: Sonali, Nick, Dave, Alan and Tom. They are the people you'd want teaching you because they explain things clearly and they know a lot. They are the people you'd want to be friends with because they are nurturing and fun and funny. They are the people you'd want to have with you if you got into trouble because they would impose themselves on the situation and start fixing it. In short, they examine their environment and make it better.
And:
Having David Nolen explain the ClojureScript compiler was one of the intellectual highlights of my life.
The hours at Hacker School feel precious.
This is the fastest period of learning in my life.
We're open to and welcome programmers of all ages. We don't ask for age or keep stats on this, so we don't know for sure. Anecdotally, most of our students are in their 20s and 30s, but we've had some in their late teens and a couple in their 40s.
When recently moved back to the US with a basic programming foundation, I really wanted to get into this sort of school. I moved back with the primary motivation of becoming a top notch programmer. As a guy with my background, these kinds of programs aren't easy to get into! In general they all have a pretty strong desire to invite more women, and there are an awful lot of guys that want the training.
Without the option of this kind of top-notch program or others like it, I joined the local ruby meetup group and kept an eye out for any kinds of free instruction... and found that all were railsbridge (women only unless you're invited by a female participant). If you're already at a level where you can build some things, there are a lot more options like going to hack night and asking for feedback on what you've already built, but there's not much if you're not to that point yet.
If anybody reading this now is in the situation I was a couple of months ago, I strongly recommend the Coursera SaaS course through Berkeley. Obviously it doesn't compare to scholarships and in-person teaching, but there are free lectures, automated program graders, forums with active participants, study groups, and even human feeback on the quizzes. It's got pretty much all of the positives of Open Courseware, Code School (also great) and more videos rolled into one. It's open to people anywhere in the world, it's subtitled in several languages and everything except the optional textbook is free.
I'm not trying to hijack the thread-- this is a genuine attempt to help others who are in the same boat I was in until I found this.
https://www.coursera.org/course/saas