darrellsilver

"Have a real project you want to build" and "You have to throw yourself in or you will fail." are spot on.

At Thinkful (http://thinkful.com/) our students spend more than half their time on projects they start from scratch, using real tools for exactly this reason. As a result they have 10x the engagement and completion rates vs other online ed tools (MOOCs et al).

Failing is learning, but failing is tough. We make that easier.

"Forget Codecademy" <- This isn't so simple.

You've gotta get started somewhere, and a safe place, in your browser, that doesn't require arduous setup ain't too shabby.

As Zack points out, there's a true difference between someone who "thinks they should code" and one who really wants it. Codecademy welcomes all comers, so it's hard to tell the difference. That shouldn't necessarily be an indictment those who start there.

At Thinkful (http://thinkful.com/) we send students to some Codecademy lessons, along with hundreds of hours of real-world projects and other resources.

I kid you not: While you don't know me from Random Startup Dude, this is exactly what we do at Thinkful.

Check us out: http://www.thinkful.com/ or even email me directly: darrell at thinkful.com

Definitely – This is exactly what we're seeing. I think people are more open to feedback when working with Thinkful because we're educators not recruiters.

Good question. I don't know off hand, but will keep an eye out as we work with more UK employers. If you want to follow up email me at darrell [at] thinkful.com.

I think we see more engagement from hirers (both the hiring manager and potential colleagues) because we're coming at the process as educators. I've certainly seen some share of "not a fit", but that rate goes down once there's an interview, or even a phone screen.

Thanks for the insight. I'd definitely love to learn more. Frankly, I'd like to hear a thorough challenge to my central thesis in this essay that "The recruiter has little incentive to share that feedback with candidates other than goodwill and keeping the relationship strong with the candidate."

I continue to find that employers want a way to provide more feedback, though are currently prevented from doing so.

Someone with more insight into being a successful recruiter surely has a deeper understanding than mine, on this and other issues like the "numbers game" element.

Agreed. We hear this a lot. Maybe I should revise the post to be more clear on this point... everyone wants to give this feedback, but it's an HR minefield.

Exactly! They wish there was a way to do it, but know doing so would open a huge can of worms.

Hirers want nothing more than increase the quality of candidates they interview, which is why providing a safe way to gather this feedback is so valuable.

The key paragraph comes toward the end:

Reid also said binational gay couples should be allowed the same family preference privileges under the bill that heterosexual couples would receive, although this might make passage more difficult in the Republican-controlled House.

Definitely agree with some of that. Telling people who "don't know otherwise better" to do most anything is dangerous, let alone something as extraordinary as changing their career.

My point is: For many, the most dangerous attitude to have about a so-called "steady" pay check is that it will remain steady, and that they'll remain engaged in their work for years.

For many people, especially those early in their career, the biggest risk of all is to not try new jobs, roles and challenges. Basically, becoming prematurely specialized.

Startups, especially, are great at solving that risk, and thus lowering career risk overall.

This looks like a great way to learn, too! The REPL is a fantastic place to play around.

Awesome.

Good call

Can't say I've ever really found a personal use, but in my StatArb days it was invaluable.

Want to calculate the 180 day rolling VWAP only between noon and 2pm for every NYSE stock? Yeah, there's a function for that.

Also, it's a hilariously illegible language, and most anyone who's proficient at it is as nutty (and brilliant) as Arthur ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitney_(computer_scient... ), the founder of the company.

Here's the link to this CNN story: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/29/google-finance-apple-...

That. is. hilarious. Google should obviously sue for the lost revenue from those fake 800m views.

Fair question. We don't think you can learn from scratch any of these topics in three weeks, let alone all of them, to be employable at any of them. What we're talking about are people who are proficient in a given language or topic already, and who want to see a crash course, and get a taste, before deciding what to do next.

Our candidates are basically already very employable, but there's an extra risk we help employers avoid: that a new hire won't enjoy or become proficient in this new subject quickly (read: cheaply).

Thinkful is all about cost savings for employers, and candidates finding what they're really interested in.

Know java really, really well? Maybe you'll enjoy scala. But perhaps give it a trial run for a few weeks (along with some other cool stuff) before jumping in to a job for several years.

Excellent question.

Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator.

Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the financial sector use a hell of a lot of fancy tech (they're the first "big data" after all), and there's a lot of expertise that's been locked up there for too long.

When I left finance (4.5 years, 4 years ago... hells yeah) I had all sorts of engineering skills, but knew nothing of the companies, how to evaluate employers, or what exact tools were most in demand or growing.

Helping people answer those questions more quickly than I could is our mission.

Awesome. Were you recently laid off?

Agreed. Finance trains you extremely well for many challenges. Sometimes it's bureaucracy and that has to be untrained :).

Thank you! We're offering this course as a way for talent to level up.

As to the potential in the talent pool, you're judging people on the wrong factors: Big banks may not have the slick interfaces of a Square or Simple, but they also have the most complex, least-error tolerant customers and regulators.

Banking functions without downtime, and the world in which does so is extraordinarily complex. Ignoring either of those when you discuss the potential of the people that make it work is silly.

It wasn't his personal address -- it was his easily google-able, systematically defined (firstname.lastname@nbcuni.com) corporate email address.

What would have happened if we had sold .com .net and .org to Tandy, DEC and Iomega?

The author's follow up to this article a couple weeks later is pretty excellent. By some fluke of timing, the Thiel article was published shortly before a fantastic profile on Occupy Wall St.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/the-po...

Another lesson from this article: If your engineers refer to those who make decisions as "the execs" instead of "we": Quit.

To me, the best counterpoint to Arrington's remarks is to understand where he's coming from. He's a blogger/journalist & VC. The biggest dreamers and swing-for-the-fencers make the best stories / investments.

Of course, the journalist has it even better: He gets good copy when the home-run hitter swings and misses. :)

Is this "passivity" a critique or praise of Obama? Not to go too far off-topic, but...

Despite the economy and foreign policy being by far the most important issue throughout his presidency, his administration has been quite active and successful on LGBT issues.

They've repealed DADT, changed the rules for LGBT in foreign service and passed Matthew Shepard hate crimes legislation.

He's done all this without making LGBT issues a public spectacle, with a Congress that hates him and a public that hasn't made up its mind. It's for these reasons that HRC provides its full-throated support for Obama.

Again -- I'm sorry for derailing the SOPA discussion, but we should keep our facts and impressions well-founded or our primary arguments will fall flat.

When I asked friends to donate for Amit, I had a hard time asking them to lie when donating. This is the limit of "lying for a good cause", especially when the person doesn't know Amit.

This is a huge problems -- been to a couple NYC amit events (thanks, New Work City!) -- and did my best to inform people. Same with donating blood.

Careful not to put an ec2 host IP address directly in your DNS provider. Given the caching in DNS, if/when you change EC2 instances you'll be given a new IP, and your site will be down (or looking at the old server) while DNS updates.

Better to use amazon's Elastic IP. Simply 1) create one, 2) assign it to the EC2 instance of your choice, 3) add the Elastic IP as your A record as the parent post suggests.