University of Waterloo Students Win Facebook's Hackathon | Hacker News Reader

University of Waterloo Students Win Facebook's Hackathon

velocity.uwaterloo.ca

162 pointsmeangeme114 comments

For the last year I've been aware of the impact of Waterloo in tech and have conducted some research into why this might be so. Two things I've discovered:

1. Academic staff own any IP resulting from their research, making it very attractive and easy to recruit top academics. Almost all other universities assume ownership of IP.

2. An intern program that requires students to take an internship every other semester, enabling students to gain valuable experience within top-tier tech companies.

It would be great to hear of any other reasons for their success.

I think those are two very strong reasons. However, at the end of the day, Waterloo puts its students through the meat grinder. My nephew studies there and I am blown away by the stuff he is getting taught in first and second year.

The thing that surprised me was when he tried to apply to Silicon Valley start-ups, he got very limited response. I think part of it is that people don't realize how awesome Waterloo is.

Top-tier major US employers all know about Waterloo's reputation, and recruit very heavily there. Most startups are completely unaware of Waterloo, but so many Waterloo grads earn their stripes at a major top-tier employer (Google, Facebook, MS, etc) that many of them (including myself) graduate out into the greater world of US startups.

My startup (8 people) recently started interviewing at Waterloo, and the quality of students is every bit as good as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, or CMU. Right now Waterloo is the best-kept secret in startup recruiting, but given how good the students are I doubt it will stay that way for long.

I agree on the second part, I can get interviews with google/microsoft/facebook, etc, basically the big tech companies. But its far more difficult getting interviews from start ups in SV

Not sure what term you're in but startups - particularly the smaller 2/3 team ones, can't absorb more junior developers. But if you're in 3A and above you should be strong enough to hit the ground running.

There's also immigration issues. To get a J-1 visa the host company needs to meet certain requirements.

In any event as a Waterloo alum currently doing a YC-backed startup in SF, we'll be posting jobs in the next co-op round.

I thought Canadians could work on a TN visa in the US with minimal complications.

To get a TN Visa you need 3 years work experience in the relavent field (there's a list) and it's on the whim of the agent you face.

1.5 years for me to go~ (currently in TO).

> To get a TN Visa you need 3 years work experience in the relavent field (there's a list)

This is completely inaccurate unless you mean without a post-secondary degree. Tons of new grads head south on a TN straight after graduating, even if they didn't do co-op.

Close. TN Visa requires a relevant degree but U.S. Labor department policies equate 3 years of work experience with 1 year of university. As such, interns generally don't have a degree or 12 years of work experience, so they can't get a TN. The standard internship visa is J1.

Disclosure: currently living in Waterloo as I was unable to obtain a TN.

I stand corrected. I remembered my situation was different - I had a diploma (3yrs) in design, instead of the common degree (4yrs), so I needed 3 years to make up the 1 missing year. My apologies~

True, but if you're looking at those co-op/internship terms, the best you'll get is a J1 because you don't have your post-secondary degree yet.

I am currently in Waterloo because I was unable to obtain a TN (lack of relevant degree). I recommend you re-check the laws because things may not be as rosy as you believe.

3 years of work experience is equivalent to 1 year of university. So, if you have no degree, you'd need 12 years of work experience.

To follow up on Omar's comment - there are some YC startups operating in Canada ;)

Some of those startups know lots of silicon valley companies looking to vet through the crowd of international talent. Working somewhere local is a great place to start.

Americans tend to be ignorant about Canadian or otherwise foreign universities (I am an American who went to college in Canada).

The story is that Bill Gates would personally phone the #1 graduating student of Waterloo every year to offer him a job, no questions asked. In some circles, Waterloo's very highly regarded.

For better or worse because of the university's reputation they now attract the best students coming in and, guess what, they graduate the best students at the end. Like many great universities they benefit from selection bias. If you're a Canadian kid who wants to get the best CS or engineering education then U Waterloo is on your shortlist. (That said, it's not the only really good school for CS or engineering in the country as some U of T grad will probably be quick to point out.)

Waterloo is the MIT of Canada, so it attracts top Canadian tech students. It's also in the most populated region of Canada, so it being close to home (but not too close) for most students helps too.

The university also has an on-campus tech incubator for ground-level projects and an off-site workspace for early/medium-stage projects. Through the incubator the university also provides seed-level funding for students to turn projects into businesses (BufferBox was one recipient).

That co-op program is responsible for me being in software development. I started in CivEng, but every co-op term I had was a programming position. So I happily dropped CivEng and started doing what I had been doing on my own from a young age.

The co-op program is also the primary reason I chose Waterloo. You can't beat paying for school as you progress through your terms. Back then you could earn enough during a work term to fully pay for next term's fees and books.

For folks who don't quite understand the difference, the 4-month alternating co-op program at Waterloo is distinctly different from the long-term 12-16month co-op employment program at University of Toronto (aka Professional Experience Year).

Both have obvious strengths and weaknesses when looking at the employment time horizon vs. employment variety. When I applied to both schools in the mid-90s I viewed the longer employment term at UofT as higher value and ended up there.

In retrospect, I underestimated the value of Waterloo's 4-month co-op programs. At the time, I feared I wouldn't be able to work on projects requiring longer-time horizons having heard second and third-hand anecdotes of some students getting crappy 4-month co-op assignments.

In terms of defraying tuition costs, I figured earned salary was about equal between the two options (4-5 Waterloo co-op terms == 1 UofT PEY term).

"In terms of defraying tuition costs, I figured earned salary was about equal between the two options (4-5 Waterloo co-op terms == 1 UofT PEY term)."

I can see why you would assume that, but that is not the case. With PEY, you get 16 months of work, with coop you get 24. That right that there is 1.5 times the pay. Now take into account that employers look at previous work experience and no. of years in uni to determine pay, and what you get is a constantly increasing pay wage for coop. My first coop job paid me $18 an hour, my current one pays me $35 an hour. Most PEY students who get their first job after 2nd year get $22 an hour salaries (which is how much I made in job 2), with a raise halfway through the term to maybe $23/$24 (around what most people make in job 3). This means that for the remaining 3 coops, you are making money at a much higher rate.

Additionally, what you miss out on in PEY is the opportunity to jump around. You get an offer at one company and you stay there, or maybe yo switch to another company in 8 months. So you might be stuck doing QA for the entire length of the job. With coop, you keep getting a raise in terms of responsibility.

The one good thing about PEY is that you can, as you mentioned, work on longer term projects. But with coop, you do have that option as well if you go back for multiple terms at the same company and work part time while in school.

You forgot about Marginal Tax Rates. Take-home income with 4 Waterloo co-op terms far exceeds a 16-month PEY, even at the same hourly rate.

4 Waterloo co-op terms would spread out over a course of 2-3 years. So the tax rate you fall under would differ from that of a full 16-month PEY because you may be making less money over the course of the same year.

Yes, that was my point. By spreading out the income over a longer period, you pay less in taxes and thus have more take-home pay. Helps a lot with paying tuition/loans off.

You're counting the months of employment experience, but you're omitting other things like the amount of interview experience (six co-op cycles means six times to get an interview at Google, Facebook, etc.) and opportunities to refine your resume.

The shorter employment cycles also provide an opportunity to try different "styles" of company to see what you like best. Throughout university I've been employed in government, at a multinational corporation, at a startup of nine employees, and at the company I cofounded. This experience, combined with living in different cities (Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo) for each, has been invaluable.

This. I can't tell you how useful it is to have learned to be completely comfortable doing interviews. Through my co-op experiences, I've probably done 25 to 30 interviews at all sorts of companies, and different styles of interviews. And all this before I graduated. Very useful!

These factors are really where Waterloo shines. At my school I had 3 6-month internships so I got just a taste of those things I think; more chances to interview and refine would have been great.

I agree the co-op system is one of UWaterloo's greatest advantages. Not only do students earn money to pay tuition, they get work experience at global tech companies (Microsoft, RIM, Amazon, Qualcomm, Nvidia). Many undergrads graduate with an offer from one of the companies where they interned.

You can still do it.

Waterloo is well known in Canada for having an exceptional Mathematics program (if I'm not mistaken you graduate with BMath, not a BA/BSc with a math major).

Waterloo is correspondingly one of the only universities with a whole faculty devoted to math. It's one of the reasons I chose to study at Waterloo: I get a lot more math in computer science than I would elsewhere.

You're correct, it's BMath.

As for #2, that's common in Canada.

UBC, SFU, and most of the top-tier schools here have what we call a "Co-op" program that is open for both undergrad and grad students.

Typical placement is 4 months long but some companies prefer 8 months (2 terms). Students start their co-op program probably by the end of their second year so that they at least have some foundations.

Most schools have their internal websites where companies can post job-descriptions and students can apply to these jobs.

I don't know if this is true for all provinces but at least in British Columbia, the government subsidized these co-op programs by paying half (or even more?) of the students salary (oh yes, co-op placements are paid internship). This is a BIG BIG plus as it makes placement easier to swallow for the companies.

I've done 16 months of co-op with various roles (Build, QA, Integration, Dev) and greatly appreciated all parties (school, employers/companies, government) that make this happen.

I would think, massive investment from RIM back when their situation was not as bad.

The influx of money helps the university finance research and various enterprises, which in turn results in yet more success stories, and yet more investments. It's a virtuous circle I guess.

Culture is also a big reason. People at Waterloo talk about engineering/CS/whatever non-stop. A colleague of mine went back to do his PhD at Western and his biggest observation was that the kids in the hall weren't talking about what project they were working on, they were talking about parties and clothes and whatever. While selection certainly helps with this, the culture of a school also has a huge impact in this regard.

Blanket statements make Breakthrough sad :(

Your colleague probably did not base that on the engineering or CS buildings. Plenty of times I've bumped into a colleague and had a long-winded discussion about software radios, or have fun debates regarding our favourite programming languages - not to mention the projects we've got on the run...

Absolutely agree. Late at night in the labs in MC, it is not uncommon to hear students arguing about functional vs. OOP paradigms or the relevancy of SQL in "big data".

I couldn't agree more!

There is also a large focus on entrepreneurship. There's a lot of support for students to start their own businesses. Such as an incubator residence (http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/). I also know that when my brother decided to leave school to work with a startup in the area the school told him that if he ever wanted to finish his degree he just needed to tell them.

This ties into #1 and important to also mention:

Undergraduate students also own all of their own IP. If you want to commercialize something you've worked on in school, you don't even need to deal with a tech transfer office: you just do it.

Huge incentive. More time to focus on the idea, less time spend on how to protect it.

and less worries from investors if you are commercializing something based off of work done in university. No worry that in a couple years when things are taking off the university is going to come back looking for their cut.

Couldn't agree more. Plus, UW has an awesome startup culture!

I'd say #3, similar to other top schools, is that your fellow classmates inspire you with the work they do and the projects they create. It's hard to not want to push yourself to really improve your skills when you see your friends win a global Facebook hackathon, work at top-tier companies, release projects that get over half a million users; it's a huge motivator for me personally. I bet many others feel the same way.

Something missing from the list is how vibrant it is: it's a hard-working student body + people who attend the school for tech + local companies.

-Waterloo grad

My understanding is that Waterloo has been a Microsoft and RIM software talent poaching ground for over a decade. The Waterloo Engineering and CS programs are known for their extremely high quality and rigour.

The recent string of higher profile alumni successes reinforces this reputation and serves as a beacon for Canadian high-school graduate intake. Now if only they would do something about the concrete jungle they call their campus :)

Waterloo was a MSFT poaching ground when I was an undergrad in 1992... well before RIM was even on the scene. Macleans magazine has consistently ranked it the best engineering school in Canada. They've been winning ACM programming contests since the math building had the dinosaur pit (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/redroom/).

As for campus being ugly... hey, you can't have everything.

It has now become a Google/FB/MSFT/Amazon poaching ground.

While Waterloo has been a talent poaching ground for Microsoft and RIM for a while, and more recently for Google, Facebook and the likes. The thing i think that really gets overlooked is the startup community in the area.

With an incubator residence on campus (http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/)

Another new incubator in the region (http://hyperdrive.communitech.ca/#applyNow)

An organization dedicated to helping startups in the are (https://www.communitech.ca/)

The recent successes of companies like BufferBox and Kik, have showed that startups can succeed and thrive in the area.

Great links, it's a solid place to kickstart an idea.

I talked to an MS recruiter a couple years ago who said they hired more graduates from Waterloo than any other school.

I agree that it's mostly a concrete jungle, but there are some new buildings going up. The new Quantum Nano Centre just opened a few months ago, and it looks pretty spiffy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAZXcVLMMG0

No kidding. The buildings are getting nicer but there is almost no green space left on campus.

Waterloo seems to be killing it this week (BufferBox acquisition, virtual brain, Facebook Hackathon)

Maybe I'm getting old (closing on 30) and nostalgic but the new generation of Waterloo students are making me proud and seem to be going further than my classes.

Although, I'm also gaining a little pride myself. I did was a research assistant at CTN and built the first UI tool for building the brain model. And I just joined Facebook and had the Waterloo students win the hackathon next door on my second week :)

Indeed, big things in the pipeline!

yeayea, waterloo ;)

If you are interested in browsing the source for our hack it is on GitHub: https://github.com/sgreenlay/PYLONS.

Congrats on the win, and cool publicity... but how can I get in there at 12k$ a year, plus a rent and food and other expenses. How much will it pay off, versus my education at the University of Ottawa?

Given that I learn much more by myself, reading reference books, taking online courses with coursera, doing projects by myself. Is there any return on investment that I could expect from an education there, instead of my current university?

Waterloo has a co-op program where you switch off every four months between working and school. The co-ops can be very well compensated, so many students graduate with little or no student debt.

Came here to say this. I finished w/ $40k in the bank but the experiences gave me so much more.

How many years did it take for you to earn your B.S. with all the constant co-oping?

An example schedule for an Engineering student is:

Year 1: School, coop, School

Year 2: coop, School, coop

Year 3: School, coop, School

Year 4: coop, School, coop

Year 5: School, school.

4 years and 8 months. Order may vary slightly.

It takes an extra 8 months to get your degree. Your 4-year degree basically turns into a 5-year degree.

That sounds fantastic. When I graduated, I was absolutely thrilled to be working on "real stuff that matters". It would have been a great morale booster to be able to properly mix that in with school

It should also be noted that several programs at UW are offered in the regular sense (i.e. no co-op) as well. Engineering is the only faculty with mandatory co-op for all undergraduates.

Got the exact same things in many other canadian universities. uOttawa has it, for instance. I'm doing it, too.

The thing with the university of waterloo is the opportunity for where you coop. How many people at UOttawa get jobs with Facebook, google, apple, MS, twitter and various startups in the valley with jobs paying in excess of $30 an hour?

To give you an idea of how popular UW is in the valley, right now apple has 50~ interns, about 35~ of which are from Waterloo, and a couple from BC. The rest are from the states. And this is the case in many of the companies down here.

I'm a uwaterloo alumni. I have to say that the single greatest reason to attend a university such as Waterloo is to meet like-minded people who are as passionate as yourself. Learning is not just about knowledge, it's about building experience.

I'm of the opinion that you learn way more by actually doing things at a start-up, small business, or Facebook or Google, and that Waterloo is great for giving you the opportunity to do that. Sure, the lectures are useful for theory of computing and algorithms, but if you're here wanting to learn how to program or how to write SQL, you're wasting your money and time.

That said, the last UOttawa student I knew who transferred to Waterloo failed their first term here, so don't do it just because people on HN said so.

>doing projects by myself.

Probably not given that limitation. I didn't go to UofW but I spent about a year in Waterloo on an internship. In terms of the experience that you'll get out of it, one of their biggest assets is probably the type of students that they draw - if you won't be working and learning with/from them, then it probably won't be worth it.

'by myself' I meant of my own initiative/not part of a course. I love working/learning from other people.

As someone interested in recruiting from Waterloo, but not from the school/area - where are the best places to make job postings / network?

Well if your looking to hire Co-ops from the university here is the link https://uwaterloo.ca/jobmine/employers

Be wary the CECA has been known to give smaller employers sub-optimal advice. You'll want to get someone who understands the process to help you through it. If top students don't understand the benefits of working for your particular organization it's possible that they'll pick a safe job at a Google or Microsoft over you, and you'll get a mediocre student (or worse, none at all) after the first round of matching.

This is very true. The system is not optimal from an employer or employee standpoint. But it is especially difficult if you are not a company with a recognized name on campus. As a student it is difficult to weed through a couple thousand job descriptions accurately.

Exactly, I'm a student at waterloo, and there were over 900 job postings for Software/Computer engineers. It's pretty much impossible for a student to read through every one, so you have to make sure yours stands out.

That!

The university has it's own job site for co-op students, Jobmine. You can find more info here, https://uwaterloo.ca/hire/

Definitely visit that link if you're looking to hire Waterloo co-ops. As a Waterloo co-op myself, Jobmine is the most important resource we use to find jobs.

There are two local jobsites:

http://techjobswaterloo.com

http://waterlootechjobs.com

The latter seems to break posting up between StartUp or non StartUp.

Check http://communitech.ca which is an organization which supports tech companies in the area.

We have an internal job posting, you can access it here at jobmine.uwaterloo.ca; there are separate postings for co-op and alumni students.

This is one of the most active sites: http://waterlootechjobs.com/

"Show me the gender distribution of my friends" - 178.72% Male

178 is the number, and 72 is the percentage. Unfortunately the comma is easy to mistake for a period.

Sounds like an i18n nightmare waiting to happen; in some locales, the comma is the period and vice versa.

I'm the stupid one :(

False. There are many women in Waterloo, of which I am one. My chemical engineering class was about 32% female, but many of the programs at Waterloo have more women than male in them.

Who says they weren't just using a 200% scale, like alcohol proof? :)

While Waterloo often does seem to be about 178.72% male, parts of engineering are at parity (chem eng was 50/50 a few years back) and there are entire other faculties with lots of lovely people for you to make friends with.

Sounds about right for a Waterloo CS student.

I was just in Waterloo at a database technical conference and most of the folks I worked with were very smart people with BMaths from UW. Google, Sybase , SAP, Oracle, Intel, etc.. all have offices to snap up the technical talent there.

Winning for Waterloo hackathon or global hackathon? it's not clear in the article

Facebook's global university hackathon.

There were 17 teams apparently, here's a better article: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/01/facebook-universit...

Technically, they've won both. To qualify for the global hackathon, they had to win the local one first.

Actually facebook has been recruiting a lot too, they had a meetup for facebook interviewees the day before the official interviews, there were 100+ students there, I was really suprised

Scott talked about the win on CTV National News tonight, you can watch it here! http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=820148&playlistId=1.1...

Congrats Jinny, Scott and Fravic!!

Hello Melvin.

In the US, there is Drexel University which also has an awesome co-op program. Many students here had worked in employers like Fb, Google, MS, Amazon, ... and then have fulltime offers.

So if you want to stay in the US and have the co-op, go to Drexel.

U waterloo:Expect my graduate school application in a few weeks time

Are there details about how others did etc.?

Regards, Bitter UBC grad...

UIUC was 2nd. I was on this team. We did a Street Fighter browser-based game controlled by webcam. You can play against friends over the internet in realtime.

MIT was 3rd with a chrome extension called "minimap" that allows you to scroll in your browser with smartphone or webcam. Also allows you to have a "minimap" next to your scrollbar that shows a preview of the entire webpage

CMU got an honorable mention for a real time strategy (?) game called "The Hackers" that is based on managing a team for a hackathon.

UBC was there, but I've forgotten what their hack was. Sorry! Was really tired and nervous during demos!

Facebook showed me the time of my life. Eager to apply for a job there...

UBC made a "pager" for facebook using a LCD display and controlled by an arduino. We built the hardware, case, and were able to push "pokes", wall posts, and messages to the pager. From the pager, we had two buttons that would push back to either dismiss the message or "like"/poke back.

Good job Waterloo. Water Water Water - Loo Loo Loo!

it's Water Water Water - Wu Wu Wu

Proud to be a UW student!

What does this have to do with ninjas or quotes?

icewater: Ninjaquote was our winning project for the regional Waterloo Hackathon. It was a name chosen at the (nearly) last minute, when the domain with the name that we originally wanted wasn't available. :) -- Jinny

as a Waterloo grad this year, gratz!

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