Comment by dhruvp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhruvp | Hacker News Reader

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Hi all,

My name is Dhruv (dhruv@udacity.com) and I lead the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree program here at Udacity. I'm happy to answer questions directly on this note (email me!). I think this program will be very different from our existing Nanodegrees as we have real industry partners who are extremely invested in making sure the program is high quality from the get go. This is because they want to be able to increase their hiring pipelines as soon as possible. We've been determining what projects/content to create by asking our hiring partners (and Sebastian Thrun) what they would want to see in a portfolio of someone they hire. We then work back from there and iterate to create the content. So far, folks at Mercedes-Benz, Otto, NVIDIA, and a few other auto companies have gone over our syllabus, given us feedback, and helped us iterate. I'm trying my hardest to make this program something I would myself take to get into the field or learn more about it(I'm an Engineer by trade who moved into this role!).

Hi Dhruv, are you able to speak a bit about the scholarships available for this nanodegree? I'm a current graduate student researching machine learning, so this course is right up my alley and interest but I have concerns about the cost ($2,400USD on a student income is... a lot). I just applied for the program because I saw that scholarships are available, but could not find much information other than that.

Will you make the learning material available for those not taking the course?

In the foreseeable future we will not. However, our hope is to do that eventually (probably at least half a year away) as we do with all our content.

So, (honest question, as I have been accepted) other than the certification, what do those who take part gain?

Hey Dhruv, thanks for answering questions.

In what degree is the material tailored for cars vs other forms of autonomous vehicles? Would you say the knowledge transferable to, for example, autonomous drones?

Hi Dhruv, I got an email said the course start at the end of Nov, but when register I remember the post said it start around Oct, can you please clarify that? Thanks

Hi Sean,

We had way more demand than we expected so while you may have applied for October, we were only able to get you a spot for November. We're doing this to make sure that you have all the support you need in the program. If we tried to take everyone in the October batch we wouldn't have been able to deliver the quality we wanted as our human support services are not quite ready for that scale yet but will be ready by November. Hope that answers the question!

Hi Dhruv,thanks for taking time and answer my question, I weren't keep track the application, so I didn't realize the changes. One more question, so is this nanodegree also has the same guarantees that helping someone to land on a related job within 6 months after graduated?

There are three cohorts at the beginning, 500 starts in October, 1500 in November, and 2500 in December. I'm at the November batch like you, paid the fee already.

For mine, it says December 12.. I guess they have different terms? Dhruv, could you confirm?

Hey rerock,

That's exactly right. We have terms opening on different months so that you have a community of students you do the program with.

I recieved an email as well, however mine says January of 2017. I haven't seen anything about registering either.

Hi Dhruv,

What percentage of students who complete the program would you expect to be able to get a job as a Self-Driving car engineer?

Hi wburgo,

It's hard for me to give a number for a few reasons:

1. Not everyone applying actually wants a job. A lot of people are taking this program just out of curiosity and interest. 2. It really depends on where you live. People in the Bay Area, Germany, and the Michigan area are going to be closer to employment opportunities than other.

That being said, we are optimizing the entire program to be such that the projects you create are things that employers want. And we've verified this by building the program with employers from the beginning.

Hi Dhruv, for those who live outside the US and would love to have an opportunity to work in this field is there any way to achieve this after taking the nanodegree? I live in the UK at the moment so what are the chances of getting a job as a Self Driving Car Engineer in the Bay Area? Zero or something better?

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