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Comment by lquist | Hacker News Reader

One negative signal for us is if you previously programmed and then stopped (e.g., you studied CS and then become a product manager).

Interesting. Why is this a negative signal?

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It depends on the specifics of the situation, but it can be a sign that the person doesn't actually like programming. This isn't always the case -- e.g., we've had alumni who had stopped programming to raise families -- but it's frequently true (e.g., for people who study CS and then get an MBA. When they apply to Hacker School it seems more often than not they're looking to find a cofounder or learn enough to hack together a prototype and aren't interested in programming as a craft, which is totally cool but not a fit for Hacker School).

What about people who have switched from programming into management, rejected that, and have gotten back to programming :)

That's totally cool :)

(The thing that would make us skeptical is if the person just said they wanted to get back into programming, but hadn't actually done it.)

here here. That's a global maximum.

Folk with mental illnesses such as depression or ADD are going to raise false positives here. In my case, depression cost me my twenties.

You can't really ask people "hey, have you ever had a mental illness that you may be super uncomfortable about discussing". Not just because it's problematic, but because it'll probably open you to something involving expensive typists (people call them "lawyers" for historical reasons too tedious to enumerate).

I'm not sure how to get around this. Maybe a blanket statement of some sort.

All the applicants get interviewed. Hard to believe the facilitators wouldn't say, "So hey, you quit programming for five years. What's up?" Also, I know that they're not necessarily looking for work experience--if someone loved programming but waited tables for five years, they'd still probably have some personal projects for fun they'd have worked on. If not, they probably wouldn't be a good fit for Hacker School anyway.

Plus, and I'm only going on my own experience and observations, the mentally-deranged fit right in at Hacker School.

Not passionate about programming 〈/guess〉

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