| Hacker School founder here. I'm sorry to hear you had a negative experience applying :( A few thoughts: 1) Our interviews are definitely short, which is a consequence of our wanting to give as many people an interview as possible. Even with our interviews as short as they are, we typically spend 200+ hours doing interviews each batch. So while we'd love to do longer interviews, it'd mean interviewing many fewer people, which we don't think is a good tradeoff (either for us or for applicants in general). 2) Again, because of time constraints, we can't give everyone detailed, specific feedback. However, if you email me (nick [at] hackerschool.com) the email address you applied with, I will do my best to get you specific feedback on your code. 3) I'm the first to admit that our admissions process is far from perfect. It's undoubtedly one of the hardest, most psychologically draining parts of running Hacker School. Even if we assume we get it "right" 95% of the time (which is probably way too generous to us), it still means we're going to make dozens of mistakes each batch :( 4) We occasionally will ask people questions along the lines of "what's the hardest thing you've worked on?" We've found this usually leads to a discussion of interesting challenges and problems people have faced, how they've approached them, etc. It's in no meant to be "dickwaving" or in any way arrogant. I hope whatever other path you've ended up on to continue growing as a programmer has been fruitful and enjoyable! |