Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/09/hackbright-academy/

by thisgirlangie • 14 years ago

20 81 14 years ago

It’s probably too early to talk about how many of the recent graduates actually get jobs, but co-founder David J. Phillips (who also co-founded location startup Banjo) shared some earlier data. Eight out of 12 students in Hackbright’s first class, were looking for immediate employment, he said, and all eight of them got offers from companies like New Relic, Survey Monkey, Cisco, and Bump.

douglascalhoun• 14 years ago

Congratulations to David, Christian, Charles, and of course the graduates of Hackbright!

I remember visiting your classroom when the Summer cohort was just starting to take those first uncertain steps. Seeing them now, successfully working and growing in their first dev jobs is truly inspiring!

From one dev training program to another, keep up the good work!

doug at catalystclass.com

davj6• 14 years ago

Thanks, Doug!

lowglow• 14 years ago

Congratulations, David and Christian! I hope your entire class rules the world soon!

davj6• 14 years ago

Thanks, Dan!

shurane2• 14 years ago

Training programmers in 10 short weeks? Albeit these have experience with programming via codecademy, but 10 weeks? That is a fantastic turnaround and sounds a bit too marvelous. How does it work? This is just the first batch, but does it work consistently? This is fascinating.

Do the programmers at Hackbright have any particular traits? Ambition, drive, or a ridiculous work ethic? Surrounding themselves with the help of coworkers, or something else?

I'm somewhat incredulous at the short time span, but maybe that's enough because of the small class size and perhaps the involved teaching style. And if that's enough to let graduates intern at a company... well.

This program definitely looks exciting.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

I'm just waiting for the guys who decide, "If Hackbright can train full-fledged programmers in 10 weeks, we can do it in 5"

nhebb• 14 years ago

5 weeks? That's practically a lifetime! Nothing tops "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes":

http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Minutes-2nd/dp/067...

davj6• 14 years ago

Thanks for your message and the kind words. This is our second batch. We trained 12 students in our first class, and 16 in the second (graduated on Friday). Our students do have the qualities you mentioned: ambition, drive, strong work ethic, and technical aptitude. I think it helps that they are surrounded by a supportive and encouraging community.

irahul7• 14 years ago

Please tell me someone fat fingered(the comment above is in gray), and this relevant, non-rude comment isn't really getting downvoted.

smsm426• 14 years ago

Looking into the article, they don't start from zero:

It helps that Hackbright students usually aren’t starting from scratch, but have instead developed their initial skills using Codecademy or by attending development workshops. After all, Phillips said, Hackbright is for people who are serious about programming as a profession, and you can’t decide that you’re serious until you’ve tried it out.

So as I see it's for somebody who knows some basic programming but wants to get some skills that would get her hired.

stchangg• 14 years ago

FWIW, a friend of mine graduated in this cohort.

She has a physics degree from Duke, and back when we were freshmen together, was considering majoring in CS, among other technical majors. I'm not sure how representative she is of the batch, but for people with existing technical skills/background, 10 weeks of focused coding practice + feedback could be a pretty big help.

MichelleGlauser4• 14 years ago

I think you would be surprised to know what level I started at. Everything I had learned about backend development was passed up within two or three days, and that Friday we went over HTML and CSS, which passed up everything I knew about that. Hackbright is, of course, no easy road. In fact, I can easily say it was harder than all of my AP courses in high school, harder than moving to a German city where I knew no one, harder than deciding to jump into the marriage boat (trust me, that was difficult), and harder than even the decision to make such an investment. And that's why it's worth it. Of course we'll all continue learning, just as every programmer does, but Hackbright was a fabulous kick in the right direction.

meaty10• 14 years ago

10 weeks is not enough time to learn any skill.

I wish people would stop these boot camps with ridiculous claims. We've had a couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly tell them 'no way' and explain why.

A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an easy way to make quick cash (hint: it isn't - writing software is hard and laborious and pays crap for the first couple of years, if you can stomach it that long).

davj6• 14 years ago

Thanks for your feedback. This is not a boot camp. Have you ever committed 100% of your time to learning a new skill over a short period of time?

meaty10• 14 years ago

No, I believe learning a skill is an investment, which is why I take my time (sometimes years) and study for a long time before I even put pen to paper.

My latest learning exercise was postgresql. I've done a proper engineering evaluation on it which has taken a whole year, but i tell you, i know it inside out now. I am confident i can handle any edge case or problem. Can your 10 week old developers even handle a simple edge case failure efficiently? That's where the skills are important or there is a roadblock every 30 minutes in this industry.

ht_th• 14 years ago

Yes, fairly simple skills. I would concur with my grandparent that it is impossible to master a complex skill set in just a short amount of time. That's not to say that it is useless. On the contrary: it gives your graduates a basis companies can work with to turn them into productive programmers for the company. Especially because your students will have a solid background in some other field (?). That can make them valuable employees if they are able to take the hurdle of working as a underpaid entry-level programmer for a while.

dools3• 14 years ago

I learned enough C in a semester to get a (pretty crap) job writimg Javascript and PHP having never programmed before.

Given that was first year university with a bunch of other courses on my plate, I would say 10 weeks is ample.

EDIT: Just to add to that, in the following year I learned to program the Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller in a single semester well enough to build a 48 note midi controller (with Hyperterminal text based interface!) and the year after that learned PIC assembly language in a single semester well enough to build a miniature device to track an object in 3d space using sonar and infrared, including an integrated user interface with buttons and a little LCD screen. All of these projects were only a single university semester which is about 13 weeks, and with normal course load outside of that. I'd say the amount you can accomplish in 10 weeks if you focus solely on that in terms of programming experience would be enough to make you useful in many entry level positions.

EDIT AGAIN: I should also note that I taught a course in database design to students in Ghana with skills ranging from never have seen a computer before, to those who had used word and excel before. Most of them didn't own a computer. In 4 weeks, using only the mysql command line client and notepad, all of them were able to design and implement a basic database. A couple of them would have been useful as juniors writing SQL for reporting purposes or learning DBA stuff on the job (depending on the size of the company of course...) but they showed incredible progress in just 4 weeks.

meaty10• 14 years ago

I get what you're saying (I designed a 4-bit CPU at university, prototyped it in basic TTL and got it fabbed and it worked (!) in two semesters) but it doesn't mean I'll ever be able to throw a useful microcontroller core out of the door or that the work I did was of any merchantable quality.

Progress is good but if you throw someone into industry too early, then you're going to hurt the reputation of the education methodology (which in this case deserves it) and the company who is employing them.

zedshaw7• 14 years ago

> 10 weeks is not enough time to learn any skill.

What? So, all of the military training methods don't exist? Military bootcamps are 6-8 weeks and you learn a massive fuck-ton of skills.

Hell, college courses are less than this in hours spent and people learn crazy amounts of stuff.

So how can you conclude that it's not possible to learn any skill despite a fairly huge amount of available evidence to the exact contrary proving you wrong?

meaty10• 14 years ago

In military boot camps, you learn enough not to get killed or court martial, not how to do a job properly.

(ex British territorial army)

I'm not saying it's not possible, but the marketed result versus the actual result here is disparate.

bradleyjg• 14 years ago

Bootcamp isn't about skills, it's about breaking down the civilian mentality and then building back up a military one.

For those destined to be more than cannon fodder, the skills training comes in advanced courses that last months or occasionally years (e.g. nuclear sub courses).

knowtheory2• 14 years ago

You're also forgetting that they've got an application process.

It's not like they're taking random people off the street and claiming that they'll be competent programmers at the end of 10 weeks.

They are almost assuredly selecting people with the aptitude, interest, and determination to become a programmer, because, well, in the end, these programs are setup to turn out programmers who companies can hire. For example, I would be rather surprised if most the folks entering the program had never dabbled in programming.

irahul7• 14 years ago

> We've had a couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly tell them 'no way' and explain why.

If you aren't accepting candidates, won't it be better to explain(if you do explain) what you needed which they lack instead of profiling(Victims of these schemes). You haven't run into comp sci graduates who aren't suitable for the job?

> A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an easy way to make quick cash

Most of the programming jobs aren't very involved. I will bet my life on at least 70% of working programmers unable to explain dynamic programming, let alone actually use it. In fact, it's very rare that I run into someone who can reduce a problem to a recurrence and solve it.

In an ideal world, that would be unacceptable. In the not-so-ideal world which we live in, programming jobs tend to vary a lot and there are a lot of jobs which do just fine with Django/Python knowledge.

meaty10• 14 years ago

We do indeed explain that to them and provide them with material so that they can improve rather than just kicking them out of the door. We're good like that. We just can't hire them.

Most programming jobs are very involved. Most vocal positions that are promoted on the Internet aren't. There are a hell of a lot of people churning out masses of code that runs things behind the scenes without so much as a though to expose it on TechCrunch or whatever nor follow any fashion or fad.

GotAnyMegadeth• 14 years ago

I learnt leroc in 10 weeks (1 hour a week) well enough to dance at a free style.

I learnt bass guitar well enough to play 4 Guns N Roses covers at an open mic night and go through to the regional stage, in 8 weeks.

I learnt to pogostick in less than 4 weeks - bouncing 1 mile for sports relief without stopping.

I learnt to cook well enough in 1 week that I could could cook at least 21 different meals with a decent success rate.

I learnt Java/Android in 8 weeks and released my first app (721 downloads so far!).

I learnt to ride a bike in a weekend.

I learnt to drive in 1 week.

I learnt how to work behind a bar in one evening.

In fact I'd go as far as to say that (to the nearest whole percent) 10 weeks is long enough to learn any skill to a competent level.

irahul7• 14 years ago

> In fact I'd go as far as to say that (to the nearest whole percent) 10 weeks is long enough to learn any skill to a competent level.

I agree with most of your post. Learning Java in 10 weeks(5 days/week with about 5 hours/day) is more than enough. You sure aren't going to learn all nooks and corners, but you can learn a lot of general purpose programming and Java programming.

But "10 weeks is long enough to learn any skill" is as invalid as "10 weeks is not long enough to learn any skill".

MichelleGlauser4• 14 years ago

I will remember not to approach any company where you work, Meaty, because of your lack of faith in people being able to dedicate themselves and learn quickly. It also sounds like you would never invest in any employee, which makes it clear that you would not be the right one to work with anyway. Developers are in demand so much right now that I have no idea how you find the perfect candidate. The market will not get any better without the investment of employers. I am by no means proficient after graduating from Hackbright on Friday, and I hope that every company I talk to knows that, but I have a wonderfully firm basis that will help me build an amazing career I never dreamed of. I think that is actually noble of the founders of Hackbright to change peoples' lives so quickly and wonderfully. It is my understanding that every programmer continues learning, and that is just what I intend to do.

I come from an arts background, and I am glad. A couple of years ago, I realized that though I was interested in technology and analyzing autobiographical internet writing, I was more interested in making the magic happen, but I didn't have the tools to do that and I was floundering. It's actually pretty awesome that we with "business and arts backgrounds" have been able to hack it with such different experiences.

I cannot even begin to describe how flustered I am by your silly comment that "it's an easy way to make quick cash":

1. I don't think it's easy at all. 2. Quick cash with San Francisco housing costs? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. 3. I had no idea how much programmers make going in. It wasn't the money that motivated me; it was learning something that truly interested me out of which I could hopefully make a career. 4. It pays better "crap" than the crap I was getting paid before. With a Master's degree, managing experience, language skills, international experience, a project management internship, editing knowledge, and a boatload of other very valuable skills, I was making around $24,000 a year with no benefits whatsoever, and that was after about a year and a half of searching for a job. Try doing any kind of thriving on that. So even though money wasn't the motivating factor, I think we can easily agree that I have tripled or quadrupled my value as an employee. That doesn't sound like it "pays crap" to me.

irahul7• 14 years ago

> The market will not get any better without the investment of employers.

I won't know anything about how the market will get better, but please don't count on your employers for your personal growth. If the employer does that for you, that's an added advantage. Also, the way your employer shapes you very rarely aligns with your optimal growth. An ideal employer is a facilitator viz. RailsConf will be paid by the company, buy whatever books you want etc.

> but I have a wonderfully firm basis that will help me build an amazing career I never dreamed of.

It will help you eventually, but unless Hackbright has arranged interviews for you, be prepared for not hearing back from the employers. People who have formal education for at least 4 years in computer science secure an interview once in a while, and a desirable job takes many such secured interviews. From the employers perspective, if many such formally educated people turn out below par, a 10 week training program doesn't really excite anyone.

My unsolicited advice is start building things - small tractable things which you can build in less than 3 weeks. Build it and put it on github. It might not work for big companies, but small companies are more likely to give you a chance if they can see your code and verify that you can build things.

ellaVader• 14 years ago

If Hackbright didn't have the capability to teach skills in a short period of time, we wouldn't have jobs, wouldn't have our own working apps, and certainly wouldn't be winning any prizes at hackathons.

Before the first program was half over, these two students won 2nd place: http://www.women2.com/two-student-programmers-build-their-1s...

Another example is the ESPNW event that took place before the second program was over: http://www.twilio.com/blog/2012/11/female-hackers-represent-...

smsm426• 14 years ago

I wonder what's special in this training program that makes it more suitable for women?

davj6• 14 years ago

Hackbright may not be for everyone. We have received positive feedback regarding the composition and community surrounding our classes. We create a positive and productive environment to maximize the effectiveness of the program. The quality of instruction is high - and with a strong, supportive community, we have seen some success so far.

smsm426• 14 years ago

We create a positive and productive environment to maximize the effectiveness of the program - this is very generic. Of course everybody would try to create productive environment and maximize the effectiveness - did you ever encounter an education establishment that tries to create negative and unproductive environment and minimizes the effectiveness of their effort? The question is how you do it - and how it is specifically fit to women. This is the interesting topic. I understand if you don't want to reveal trade secrets, etc. but there must be something beyond genetic platitudes that can be said about it.

Why Hackbright may not be for everyone? So far what you explained is certainly for everyone - everyone would want high quality instruction in a positive environment and a supportive community. So what is different?

plinkplonk• 14 years ago

Interesting that these guys train in Python/Django rather than Ruby/Rails, like the other 'bootcamps' do.

MichelleGlauser4• 14 years ago

I'm a graduate of the most recent class. I've done a bit of rails, and I now understand why some programmers look at Rails and scorn the "magic." I think the point of technology is to make things easier for people, and since Rails makes it really easy for just anyone to make a site within minutes, that's great--for someone who doesn't want or need to go into anymore depth of understanding about what's going on behind the scaffolding. I'm glad we did Python--it's a good basis language.

alexholehouse• 14 years ago

Not necessarily a response to this article, but more generally about "learning" (complex) things such as programming languages, the impact of impressionist art, particle physics etc.

With all these things, I would argue, that you through a kind of 3rd order polynomial experience of time vs. your confidence in your own knowledge. At first you know nothing, and you're aware you know nothing. After some short amount of time you've learnt a huge amount, relative to what you did know, so you feel like you have a good grasp on the topic. But, over more time, you begin to realize how much you actually don't know (which may reflect everyone, or just reflect yourself, the latter meaning you can learn from others, the former meaning you better get your thinking cap on). Hopefully then over EVEN more time you begin to slowly increase your knowledge base, but this time from a more informed perspective.

The point is, I guess, that it's hard to assess your own knowledge of a topic at this very moment in time unless you've spent a decent amount of time getting your head around it's true complexities (where both, "a decent amount of time" and the true complexity of the topic will vary HUGELY from case to case).

jerrya3• 14 years ago

Is this even legal?

My understanding from the article at techcrunch and the hackbright about page suggests hackbright is charging tuition ($7500) for participation in the program.

It's late for me, so maybe I am forgetting something, but what is the legal basis for being able to discriminate on the basis of sex for an educational program, especially from an organization that doesn't appear to be a non-profit, or accredited in any manner.

Seems like a great program. I know some young men that would benefit from such a program, the intensive environment, the location within the heart of the SF Bay hiring region, the networking, etc.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

It doesn't seem like they're offering any degree or claiming to, simply giving training for a fee is fair game.

zedshaw7• 14 years ago

There's quite a few same-sex educational organizations around. I think you're confusing this with equal opportunity employment, which only applies to certain sized companies or ones that take Federal money.

jerrya3• 14 years ago

Well, I think I am comparing it to any company selling any product, of which very few seem allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex.

eLobato3• 14 years ago

Will sound like an asshole to many people, but:

  Hackbright Academy Turns Men Into Developers In 10 Weeks

  Hackbright Academy Turns Blacks Into Developers In 10 Weeks

  Hackbright Academy Turns Whites Into Developers In 10 Weeks

Do we really need MORE discrimination? If I go ahead and try to join in, they will say "sorry, no men accepted"? That sounds equally as bad to me as "sorry, no woman accepted" or "sorry, no latinos accepted".

Can anybody explain?

I honestly hope the girls will get the skills they're looking for in 10 weeks, and I support that, but I truly don't get why do they have to discriminate against. Maybe so they get media coverage?

tommorris2• 14 years ago

> Can anybody explain?

Yes, historically, some groups have been discriminated at and put at a social and economic disadvantage on the basis of intrinsic factors.

Putting right an unequal playing field looks unfair only if you don't see that it is an unequal playing field.

eLobato3• 14 years ago

The fact that black people were treated bad in the past wouldn't justify if you were treated as an slave just to compensate for what your ancestors did.

I don't see why this is unequal nowadays for women or other minorities but it IS unequal to men (don't think anyone can't see that fact). Equality should be the goal, not being treated differently depending on your gender.

ealexhudson• 14 years ago

Perhaps they sense a gap in the market for courses aimed at women who are incredibly interested in tech but would like to study amongst some fellow women as well.

This may not be equal access, but it certainly is equal opportunity. Something has to do be done about the millions of brilliant women who are turning away from tech.

knowtheory2• 14 years ago

It feels a little odd to do so, but let me point out that there are piles of these sorts of training programs that dudes can also apply to.

shantanubala• 14 years ago

The simple fact is that many women feel uncomfortable going into a field that is dominated by men.

Assuming you're a white male, do you feel out of place when you're in an area where everyone is a woman? How about when everyone is black? Have you walked through a neighborhood where everyone is Latino?

Being in an ovewhelming minority sucks in an irrational way. There's no logical explanation other than, "we want to feel like we belong." There are some psychological explanations for this, but you're not going to be able to give people a sense of belonging just by pretending the problem doesn't exist.

So yes, we need to do our best to make people more comfortable, and if it involves creating a female-only class where women can interact with each other, does it really harm you at all?

eLobato3• 14 years ago

I am latino (Spanish), though white looking male. Been an immigrant everywhere I lived for 3 years and my accent though slight is noticeable. I never felt anything like what you said, but then again it might just be me.

It doesn't harm me, again, I hope these women become outstanding programmers, it's just I don't fully grasp how this is socially acceptable. The Swedish guy who posted here made a good point. I understand the causes, but as we develop as a society, these kind of things become less and less affirmative action and rather become more discrimination. If you ask me, I would understand something like this in Arabia Saudi and I'd even be involved if I lived in there.

FlemishBeeCycle• 14 years ago

You're placing entirely too much importance on particular categorizations, "comfort" has much more to do with "what you're used to", than the idea that people are constantly fretting about how population densities in their environment match up to their own self-identification.

As a bi-racial male of the darker persuasion (which in America is basically "not-white"), I find myself much more comfortable around predominantly "white" groups because that has been the most common environment for myself throughout my life.

zedshaw7• 14 years ago

Well, what you're seeing is a backlash from the way programming has been taught thus far. For whatever reason all computer science education is geared toward someone who's already had about 6 years of self-education. Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science.

Now what you're seeing is companies meeting the demand from these new groups because the education techniques for teaching computer science are changing. At first it's going to be classes like this focusing on these groups demanding these kinds of environments, but soon it will just spread to how all CS is taught.

Incidentally, Harvey Mudd university is basically demonstrating that simply changing the education model so that it works for people without prior programming experience accomplishes the same thing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-the-a...

Quote:

> To reduce the intimidation factor, the course was divided into two sections — “gold,” for those with no prior experience, and “black” for everyone else. Java, a notoriously opaque programming language, was replaced by a more accessible language called Python. And the focus of the course changed to computational approaches to solving problems across science.

So I predict most of these "for women only classes" will fall away and be replaced with better introductory material.

fiblye• 14 years ago

> Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science.

I understand that poorer people have no opportunity to learn programming and other less-immediately applicable topics outside of class, but I don't see what's stopping women from learning how to code. Most middle class people today spend their entire days on facebook--why is it "harder" for a woman to take some time to learn how her computer works when countless men begin learning in their late teens/early adult years?

irahul7• 14 years ago

> For whatever reason all computer science education is geared toward someone who's already had about 6 years of self-education.

I think exclusion, implicit or explicit, is bad. Especially when the course doesn't demand for any prerequisites still punishes those who don't meet the criteria. But I also think rewarding self-starters and not punishing them for being self-starters is a worthy goal. We really need two different courses for different groups.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

To me "Turns Women Into Developers" is an offensive phrase, as your other variations highlight - it implies that "Women" and "developers" are categories that don't overlap. However, it seems to be techcrunch's poor choice of words, not Hackbright academy's.

supervacuo• 14 years ago

It makes me so, so happy that someone else picked up on this.

belorn• 14 years ago

Women only courses and equality in education don't normally mix well with me. The whole subject is however rather interesting, being a very political subject but also one where experiments and statistics tend to go against common opinion.

Okey, this is from a Swedish perspective, as that is the only perspective I got. Anyway, the Swedish state educational overseeing body has made several attempts to improve equality in education, normally marked at getting more women and colored people in white men dominated areas. The biggest attempt, which was started in the 1990s, were a rather simple rule. It said "If a student applying for a class would be a minority in a the class thanks to race or sex, that student shall receive a small bonus in the application". No judgment call was used in the applying of the bonus, but in 2007 it ended, and the primary reason it ended was because the target group (women and colored people) was not in the group actually normally receiving the bonus. Rather, 95% of the time, it was a white male, applying to a class where he would be a minority in.

This is actually not that extremely surprising if one consider that 2/3 of the students in Sweden are women. It also not that surprising given that every areas of education except engineering and one form of math (abstract-math past 3rd year university), have women as the dominating group. Classes are rather clustered in women and men density. The state overseeing body for education did suggest after reviewing the program that maybe they should start some men-only courses in areas which are highly dominated by women students. That suggestion however got turn down rather immediately, as it was viewed ludicrously impossible.

Maybe there is some pedagogical value of women-only and men-only classes. There clearly are anecdotal evidence on it, and the numbers do tell that men are more willing to attempt entering a woman dominated class, than a women trying to enter a men dominated class. But as a method to get more equality in education and encouraging a 50/50 setup, based on the Swedish attempts I must say it does not work as intended. To reach that goal, I think further studies of what actually work is needed. Something great this academy could do is to create a research study on the effects, with an control group, and maybe even a men-only class to match.

stuartmemo• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure they're still women after they become developers.

Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

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