I believe that my joke (perhaps in poor taste) isn't being taken as I intended. I'm a Python programmer, and my favorite feature of Python is the community. https://www.python.org/community/diversity/ I was only trying to make light of an otherwise painful reality.
There's a need for women's coding schools, and their alums will only make our field better. Congratulations to Hackbright Academy on an acquisition well deserved.
I guess people assume you're trolling. Perhaps you are, but actually the question is valid in the context of the current time we're in, especially recent news like restroom laws[1], Chariot for women[2]. These issues practically beg the question, in fact. As asked about this instituion, can a man who identifies as a woman drive for Chariot?
It's entirely on-topic, because it's a question all gender-specific groups must be confronted with, and if they refuse to answer, that needs to be an issue.
I volunteered at Hackbright for multiple classes. I supported the mission - more diversity in tech - with my personal time for hours per week. However, after a while, the idea of an army of unpaid "volunteers" to mentor students seemed at-odds with the school's startup growth and profit goals. Their policy on recruiting graduates even seemed to imply that we could owe them money if we hired a student.
I don't regret having helped Hackbright for free. I helped some ambitious students enter the tech world and begin new careers. It just saddens me that many of the shoulders on which this for-profit institution stood were ignored.
This is a huge discussion in the the alumnae community right now. While Hackbright has never been a non-profit, the equation for volunteering felt different when it was an independent startup with a strong mission. Alumnae volunteer hundreds of hours mentoring current and past students, making connections, talking to prospective students, etc. Some of us even help with admissions! I'm very interested to see how this will affect Hackbright's access to that kind of unpaid emotional labor.
a for-profit entity will externalise any cost it can. why? in order to maximise revenue streams, nothing else. recruiting a volunteer workforce was a somewhat clever -- though disreputable -- business strategy on the part of Hackbright, and it appears to have worked really well for the folks who are now cashing out with this Capella deal.
i'm not speaking to the OP in particular but to everyone when i say this: out of respect for yourself and your own career, don't donate free labour to a for-profit entity. just don't do it.
I can't speak for all the folks who volunteer, but I was willing to give my time because I saw the impact that Hackbright had on a lot of lives. It was something I was willing to put time into to support, even though I understand the realities of running a for-profit business. I don't think Hackbright could have had those impacts without the amazing support of its volunteers, which is why many folks are a little upset about what they perceive as selling out.
It's not always a bad thing if you go into it with that in mind, but it's definitely a fine balance.
Probably! For many of us alumnae, it was giving back to something that had a direct impact on our lives. Many of us already work with other groups, and/or will shift our efforts to those groups now.
I don't know of any non-profit bootcamps for women/underrepresented genders in the bay area :) The work that Hackbright does takes a lot of one-on-one time and a lot of money, and that's hard for a non-profit/volunteer model to support (I used to run a non-profit and have been a part of many volunteer groups).
There are, however, a ton of neat projects doing great work around adjacent or overlapping issues, and I'm working on a list to help provide alternatives for folks who can't stomach supporting Capella. Feel free to post suggestions :)
Plus the fact it's an inherently transphobic and non-binary-phobic institution due to its promotion and inclusion of only those who identify as female.
Really, it's just a corrupt organization all around.
$18M for a 25 person company that raised seems like an acquhire. I wonder how much of the goodwill & volunteers that kept Hackbright going will transfer over to Capella.
Disclaimer: I have a hackbright grad on my team (she's great) and a few friends who've done the program (and are mostly happy).
"chances of graduates getting hired at entry level is higher for women"
This is highly debatable. I hear a lot of men saying that, and I encourage you to read more about the very real challenges and biases that women face in the tech industry (and the rest of life, too, not just jobs). Even if there's pressure now to hire more diverse teams, it doesn't make up for the lifetime of sexism, or the faulty pattern matching of the hiring team.
A fool and his money (or in your case, time) are soon parted.
The history of people being interested in computing goes back centuries, perhaps even millennia.
Before the 50s most people interested in computing could only work with theoretical computers.
In the 50s they had to enter a university and write code for vacuum tube computers.
In the 60s computers got more common at companies and you could get a job operating and programming them.
In the 70s hobbyists built their own home computers from scratch or from a kit they bought.
In the 80s computers started becoming a household staple.
In the 90s most children grew up with a computer.
In the 2000s people not only had computers but also access to a global information network.
If you are interested in programming in the year 2016, all you have to do is type a few letters and you will find hundreds of websites explaining programming to beginners.
Yet, some people in the tech industry are convinced that the poor, poor people who don't have tech jobs never had the opportunity. This is wrong. They were simply not interested.
Companies have been pushing this "tech jobs for everyone" agenda for some years now. This is understandable, since a bigger supply of programmers means lower wages. To this end, they even made secret wage-fixing agreements http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/03/apple_wagefixing_clo... .
What is not understandable is how easy it is for programmers to believe that they are on a moral crusade while all they are doing is lowering their wages and job security. Perhaps people in the tech industry aren't that smart after all.
You could cut the bottom three paragraphs off this comment and replace it with three new ones about "open source", and this comment would fit right in to a message board in 1998.
Except that in the case of open source, there is a clear counter argument. Open source increases developer productivity - this effect raises developer wages. Which effect dominates is unclear but I strongly suspect it is the productivity increase.
The same is not true for increasing labor supply.
(I do not support wage increasing protectionism as advocated by this guy, Trump, shiv sena, French taxi terrorists, etc - I'm just saying that the argument doesn't apply as easily to open source.)
I just realized something. We are such a wealthy and privileged society that there isn't much real motivation to take a high demanding and stressful job like software development.
You're playing on the Indian/Chinese are good at C.S. trope, but really isn't it possible that life is just harder there and they are forced/highly motivated to MAKE themselves good at C.S. in order to improve their quality of life?
It makes me rethink my perspective that "yes everyone should learn to code because it makes your life better (money, independence, etc)!". Honestly we talk so much about depression, anxiety, poor work-life balance, in this industry WHY the hell are we trying to drag more people down with us? Is the compensation really worth it compared to alternatives? Aren't there actually a lot of jobs that pay $80k+ (or equivalent Bay Area spending power) in the world?
> a high demanding and stressful job like software development.
That sounds like privilege privilege. Maybe ive been incredibly lucky, you you've been incredibly unlucky, but I would not call our industry high demanding or stressful.
Admittedly much of the pressure is internal (I take responsibility for the successes and failure of my work, which increases anxiety and influences me to work longer hours), am I an outlier?
I honestly believe the industry pushes this towards the norm with a mixture of the "full-stack-engineer" and "start-up culture" motifs.
By the way I'm also asserting that the high rates of depression, anxiety, and mental health disorder, prove that SWE is a demanding field.
Have you considered not working at a web startup? It's a big world, there are a lot of software engineering jobs that are nothing at all like what you describe.
Still, you're working inside, for a steady, generally hefty, paycheck, with very low chances of catastrophic physical injury, with very low exposure to harmful chemicals and carcinogens. It's a high-demand field, with a lot of options.
Beats the pants off of back-breaking manual or industrial labor.
I certainly think there's a huge problem with a lot of software jobs being essentially pointless, with an enormous disconnect between the time and effort expended and the tangible results of that effort, which takes a psychological toll. So much of what software and IT does is digging holes and filling them back in, or battling imaginary rules and processes, working on top of a fragile, rickety stack of other software that fails if you look at it cross-eyed.
How about the questions about trans- and non-binary-exclusivity which are being downvoted and ignored? If you can modify threads, can you raise those questions as well?
There are serious questions about this business which are being ignored, and the culture here is reacting to that. A company which profits off volunteer labor and promotes an absolute gender binary should not simply be lauded, unless Hacker News is purely a press release distribution mechanism.
Hackbright doesn't promote an absolute gender binary. There's simply no way to argue that if you have any real world experience with them, or bothered to read the linked materials on their inclusion policy.
Of course it does. It is specifically for those who identify as female, which is inherently promoting a gender binary.
Also: What about them using unpaid volunteers as labor to fund their for-profit enterprise? Is that something you're OK with, or something you want us to ignore?
Women's coding school ? Can someone explain what happened to this world. Why should there be special places for women apart from rest rooms ? Aren't women fully emancipated already, don't they demand equality ? Isn't equality already served to women ? So they demand equality with men, but at the same time there is this need for coding school that only women can attend. Seriously ? Oh the irony. I think those women, that are interested in tech should go into tech and follow their dreams and of course it's nice to have women in tech. But, to somehow suggest, that men are to blame for the fact that there is less women programmers in the world; which places like this indirectly suggest just that, then this is just a spit in the man's face. The truth is, not that many women are on AVERAGE interested in programming. FACT! And there is nothing wrong about that. I don't see any nursing school for men. There is probably more female nurses in the world than men, but I don't see any male loud mouths that want to capitalise on that by convincing someone somewhere that there is injustice going on, because there is too many female nurses in the world !! There you go , I've said it. Now down vote me if you are soft, fuzzy and you grow your beard just right.
I see more crap than just those two comments, and the ratio of comments actually related to the article is seriously low (I realize I'm not helping on that front).
I do think this is a pretty good example because there's a mix of subtle sexism and silly trolling, all because the article happens to relate to women. It's not even a post about diversity! It's about an acquisition! Honestly though, I came back here to delete that comment, because it's not a big deal and I didn't think most people would get it. I'm leaving it the way it is because in your reply you countered with the fact that this is a very well behaved post considering the topic, and frankly, that's depressing.
I don't think it's silly trolling. It's subtle and overt sexism. It is a big deal. It shows a few people can derail productive discussion and flag posts off of the frontpage.
If my comment is subtle sexism, then what is the existence of women coding school? Probably unsubtle sexism, or shall I call it blatant sexism ? My intention was not to come across as a sexist, which I am most certainly not.
Don't forget the transphobia and non-binary-phobia inherent in the fact this is a company exclusively for females, and how that transphobia and non-binary-phobia is being continued here in the form of comments mentioning it being downvoted and hidden by the moderation staff.
One positive about this: Capella is an accredited school, meaning that there may be a way to allow Hackbright students to take out government backed student loans for the program, or even get Pell grants. Many students currently rely on outside loans, and would benefit from lower interest rates and grants.
The cynics among us will of course acknowledge that that makes it much easier for Capella/Hackbright to make more money.
This may be an incorrect association, but Capella is lumped into the same grouping in my mind with Kaplan, DeVry, University of Phoenix - maybe not total degree mills, but the kind of places that have late-night commercials on Adult Swim...
It's definitely a credibility hit, and those are the kinds of companies I associate with Capella, too. I believe Hackbright turned down an offer from Kaplan, which went on to buy DevBootcamp. Despite their predatory practices, however, the government has given them a seal of approval on which Hackbright can now hitch a ride.
That makes Hackbright more accessible to folks without the resources to pay 15k+ and spend at least 3 months without a job in one of the most expensive regions in the US. That's huge, because of Hackbright's commitment to taking in students with a variety of backgrounds, races, and economic statuses (no word on how that will be affected by a corporate buy-out).
Student loans are of course their own kind of mess; there's income-based repayment, less stigma, and even forgiveness, but it's also harder to get out of through things like bankruptcy.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 407 ms ] threadEdit: Apologies, couldn't resist.
There's a need for women's coding schools, and their alums will only make our field better. Congratulations to Hackbright Academy on an acquisition well deserved.
How about people who don't identify as either gender?
Do they set themselves up as arbiters of who qualifies as a woman, and, if so, what criteria do they use?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/04/1... [2] http://safeher.com/
you're an idiot. go to idiot academy.
I attended Hackbright an am non-binary, and found it to be a welcoming environment for a variety of gender expressions.
I don't regret having helped Hackbright for free. I helped some ambitious students enter the tech world and begin new careers. It just saddens me that many of the shoulders on which this for-profit institution stood were ignored.
http://www.wired.com/1999/10/volunteers/
i'm not speaking to the OP in particular but to everyone when i say this: out of respect for yourself and your own career, don't donate free labour to a for-profit entity. just don't do it.
It's not always a bad thing if you go into it with that in mind, but it's definitely a fine balance.
I don't know of any non-profit bootcamps for women/underrepresented genders in the bay area :) The work that Hackbright does takes a lot of one-on-one time and a lot of money, and that's hard for a non-profit/volunteer model to support (I used to run a non-profit and have been a part of many volunteer groups).
There are, however, a ton of neat projects doing great work around adjacent or overlapping issues, and I'm working on a list to help provide alternatives for folks who can't stomach supporting Capella. Feel free to post suggestions :)
Really, it's just a corrupt organization all around.
Their funding doesn't seem to be listed on CrunchBase, but $18M is substantial, more than an acquihire, which suggests there's something I'm missing.
Disclaimer: I have a hackbright grad on my team (she's great) and a few friends who've done the program (and are mostly happy).
Definitely a profitable move to fund women's coding school given chances of graduates getting hired at entry level is higher for women.
This is highly debatable. I hear a lot of men saying that, and I encourage you to read more about the very real challenges and biases that women face in the tech industry (and the rest of life, too, not just jobs). Even if there's pressure now to hire more diverse teams, it doesn't make up for the lifetime of sexism, or the faulty pattern matching of the hiring team.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/24/tech/innovation/women-at-i-o
http://www.cio.com/article/2971293/apple-intel-cite-gains-in...
The history of people being interested in computing goes back centuries, perhaps even millennia.
Before the 50s most people interested in computing could only work with theoretical computers.
In the 50s they had to enter a university and write code for vacuum tube computers.
In the 60s computers got more common at companies and you could get a job operating and programming them.
In the 70s hobbyists built their own home computers from scratch or from a kit they bought.
In the 80s computers started becoming a household staple.
In the 90s most children grew up with a computer.
In the 2000s people not only had computers but also access to a global information network.
If you are interested in programming in the year 2016, all you have to do is type a few letters and you will find hundreds of websites explaining programming to beginners.
Yet, some people in the tech industry are convinced that the poor, poor people who don't have tech jobs never had the opportunity. This is wrong. They were simply not interested.
Companies have been pushing this "tech jobs for everyone" agenda for some years now. This is understandable, since a bigger supply of programmers means lower wages. To this end, they even made secret wage-fixing agreements http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/03/apple_wagefixing_clo... .
What is not understandable is how easy it is for programmers to believe that they are on a moral crusade while all they are doing is lowering their wages and job security. Perhaps people in the tech industry aren't that smart after all.
The same is not true for increasing labor supply.
(I do not support wage increasing protectionism as advocated by this guy, Trump, shiv sena, French taxi terrorists, etc - I'm just saying that the argument doesn't apply as easily to open source.)
You have totally ignored cultural inertia and social factors. Do you think Indians are Chinese are born with natural curiosity for computer science?
You're playing on the Indian/Chinese are good at C.S. trope, but really isn't it possible that life is just harder there and they are forced/highly motivated to MAKE themselves good at C.S. in order to improve their quality of life?
It makes me rethink my perspective that "yes everyone should learn to code because it makes your life better (money, independence, etc)!". Honestly we talk so much about depression, anxiety, poor work-life balance, in this industry WHY the hell are we trying to drag more people down with us? Is the compensation really worth it compared to alternatives? Aren't there actually a lot of jobs that pay $80k+ (or equivalent Bay Area spending power) in the world?
That sounds like privilege privilege. Maybe ive been incredibly lucky, you you've been incredibly unlucky, but I would not call our industry high demanding or stressful.
+ Work on weekends regularly
+ SRE + DevOps + Back-end roles
+ Painfully aware of current company's runway
Admittedly much of the pressure is internal (I take responsibility for the successes and failure of my work, which increases anxiety and influences me to work longer hours), am I an outlier?
I honestly believe the industry pushes this towards the norm with a mixture of the "full-stack-engineer" and "start-up culture" motifs.
By the way I'm also asserting that the high rates of depression, anxiety, and mental health disorder, prove that SWE is a demanding field.
Beats the pants off of back-breaking manual or industrial labor.
I certainly think there's a huge problem with a lot of software jobs being essentially pointless, with an enormous disconnect between the time and effort expended and the tangible results of that effort, which takes a psychological toll. So much of what software and IT does is digging holes and filling them back in, or battling imaginary rules and processes, working on top of a fragile, rickety stack of other software that fails if you look at it cross-eyed.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553178 and marked it off-topic.
There are serious questions about this business which are being ignored, and the culture here is reacting to that. A company which profits off volunteer labor and promotes an absolute gender binary should not simply be lauded, unless Hacker News is purely a press release distribution mechanism.
Also: What about them using unpaid volunteers as labor to fund their for-profit enterprise? Is that something you're OK with, or something you want us to ignore?
The cynics among us will of course acknowledge that that makes it much easier for Capella/Hackbright to make more money.
So I'm not sure it's a real credibility boost.
That makes Hackbright more accessible to folks without the resources to pay 15k+ and spend at least 3 months without a job in one of the most expensive regions in the US. That's huge, because of Hackbright's commitment to taking in students with a variety of backgrounds, races, and economic statuses (no word on how that will be affected by a corporate buy-out).
Student loans are of course their own kind of mess; there's income-based repayment, less stigma, and even forgiveness, but it's also harder to get out of through things like bankruptcy.
Especially with people like you spamming for them.
Do they accept transwomen?
How about people who don't identify as either gender?
Do they set themselves up as arbiters of who qualifies as a woman, and, if so, what criteria do they use?