I constantly forget where I bury my nuts, but at least they sometimes grow trees.
I’ve been reading a difficult book. It’s called The People’s History of the United States . It’s difficult because it tells the story of America from the perspective of the oppressed. As a financially secure, white, heterosexual, cisgendered man, I come from an unbroken lineage of men, who with many other similar men, benefitted immensely from the oppression of millions of…
Permission granted : leongersing : I don’t know what it is with my generation in America these days but I find myself acting like a broken record. Reminding folks of the same things over and over again. I decided to make it simple and share it with you now. There is no one to gain permission from. There is no one to impress. There…
Last week, Jeff Casimir pointed me at a blog post he had written about coding bootcamp intensity, and invited me to respond . At the risk of sounding hypersensitive, I’m going to take a close look at his post and respond to both the explicit and the implicit messages he’s sending. I like Jeff. He’s a good guy with a good school. I react strongly against some of the messages…
“What advice would you give to someone considering this industry to be (increasingly) successful in it?” My answer: Follow your energy. If you find something interesting, dive deep into it. Get extremely good at the first programming language you get paid to work in. Develop a reputation for learning rather than a reputation of expertise. As you move from team to team and/or job to…
What Misogyny Is : sorayachemaly : There is a lot of confusion about what misogyny is. It’s a system whereby women are subjugated and dehumanized. We are all part of this culture, so one of its notable and defining features is the degree to which women themselves internalize ideas about women’s inferiority and act in misogynistic…
DBC: this strange and beautiful place : katherineimogene : I earned these tags, and am very proud of my journey to this moment. I’ve taken a few days away to reflect - and sleep..a lot. I’m going to tell you about the worst week, and then I’m going to tell you how Dev Bootcamp has changed my life. Okay? Ok. Here are some things about week eight of…
Journalists and bloggers have sensationalized Holacracy in the past couple months with headlines like “ How Zappos is getting rid of managers to retain a flat startup culture ”. In the process, they’ve spread a lot of misinformation, and a lot of people now mistakenly believe that Holacracy is way to flatten a company into a non-hierarchical, leaderless, ambiguous collective. A…
This post is going to be a stream of my consciousness about my gradually increasing awareness of the oppression that exists around me, specifically sexism. This is my personal blog and I’m using this post to remind my future self about where I stood on this day. Almost every day of my life has been spent surrounded mostly by caucasian people who aren’t super worried about paying the…
Experiences with sexism : mariabpiper : Two days ago, I attended the Engineering Empathy session about Sexism, and during the session, it became apparent that many of the men in the room doubted whether sexism existed or whether it was a widespread problem. Although not all women face or admit to being affected by sexism, I have…
The Last Thing We Need : leongersing : From the moment of our birth we are told the difference between right and wrong, good and evil and are given measuring sticks for success. The need to accurately predict patterns of behavior have led to the proliferation of the species. But when do we stop? When do we know that the wisdom that led…
apprentice-us : My blog post about apprenticeship over at Wired’s Innovation Insights: http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/old-school-solution-skills-gap
One of my biggest takeaways from launching Dev Bootcamp in Chicago in 2013 was the realization that Dev Bootcamp exists to efficiently transition people from paying to learn to paid to learn . There are few things more life-changing than that transition. I remember how profoundly it changed my life when I started getting paid to learn to be a programmer when I was 26. Using what I learned this…
On the morning of April 22nd, a group of 6 co-workers welcomed 15 students into a large office space. One of these co-workers was the Director of the office. That Director was me, and I was scared. Together, those 15 students paid about $180,000 to be in this office with me and my co-workers. We had 9 weeks to launch their careers in software development. They expected jobs. It was on the news ,…
I never saved anything for the swim back : avik2013 : GATTACA most memorable phrase, to the end of scene looking at the stars. _______________ Vincent: You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton:… I saw this movie on a date when I was 16. This scene burned itself in my mind, and since then when I’ve been tired, or wanted to save something of myself for later, such as an idea or…
DLG + DBc: Heads down : Words can’t express how much this post means to me. dottedlinegirl-dbc : It’s finals week of DBc— or final project week, anyway. We present on Friday, which, for my team at least, means we’ll be spending all of Thursday moving our code to production and debugging and putting on what final touches we can sneak in, which means we have one day left to identify and…
liz learns ruby: Conversations about wizardry, gender, and diversity : feministy : Earlier this week, I ran into a brick wall of sexism . What happened after that was infinitely more interesting than the event itself. Fellow boot and member of the cohort below me, Eric spoke to me during our lunch hour: What can I do to help make this cohort better? Elliott , Dev…
Incoming Dev Bootcamp student Wendy Sanchez-Vaynshteyn emailed me yesterday, concerned about whether she was truly ready to start Dev Bootcamp on June 24th. In her words: “Hi Dave, I’ll get straight to the point: I’m scared that I have not learned what I should have learned by now to be ready for Dev Bootcamp.” She went on to describe all the reasonable reasons as to why…
Dev Bootcamp has a 60-day remote preparatory period that includes an assessment at the halfway mark. We use this assessment to gauge whether students are ready to start. Today I read a conversation between a student schedule to start May 13 and my co-founder Jesse Farmer . It’s a great example of why I’m thrilled to be a part of this venture. Student: Hey there, I didn’t see…
Diana Kimball: A Day of Dev Bootcamp : dianakimball : I was supposed to spend yesterday in an airplane, hurtling from San Francisco back to Boston. Instead, I ended up in a fifteenth-floor conference room in Chicago with 30 aspiring web developers, getting them excited about coding. What? How? Rewind: It’s April 2011, and Jesse Farmer and I meet…
I couldn’t possibly write down all the lessons I learned in 2012, but as the new year starts, there a three that stand out in my mind. First, watching Simon Sinek’s TEDx talk for the nth time helped me understand something about the goal I discovered for my life a couple years ago . Simon talks about getting to the “Why” of what we do. On this, my nth viewing of…