HackerX

Got an invite-only ticket to HackerX.

• There isn’t a lot of information online as to people’s experiences, so I was hesitant, but I thought to be a fantastic event.

• The event is one that takes place about once a year, typically either in the “Full Stack” or “Front End” categories. It targets developers with experience mainly, but for whatever reason, I was screened, which was good, and it cost me nothing.

A room full of devs

• The way it works is that you show up, enjoy some great eats and drinks, and are given a name-tag with a number. I was in group one, so we were allowed to line up first.

• The general pattern is basically starting at one end of the room, and going to each and every employer. You have to, so that everyone gets a fair shot. As such, the pick was pretty solid.

• We then entered a room where we were given five minutes each to talk to about fifteen companies. The companies I spoke to were:
  • Centerfield (Host company)
  • Hireclout (Sponsor)
  • Optimity Advisors (Sponsor)
  • Service Titan
  • Kareo
  • MolecularMatch
  • AXS
  • CU Direct
  • Beyond Limits
  • USAePay
  • The Baby Box Co.
  • Latham & Watkins
  • Renew
  • GOAT
  • Maestro.IO
• Surprisingly, they were all really very welcoming and friendly. One company (Hireclout) asked for my resume via email before I even attended the event, which helped speed things along, since we only had five minutes per company.

My experience

• I was up-front about the fact that I was greener than the other people in the room, and surprisingly, everyone was quite welcoming and tried to accommodate me. One even straight up asked if I was available this Winter to come intern with them. It was really refreshing.

• What was also interesting was that even though the event was more full-stack, they were also interested in my interest in data analysis, and functional programming. They encouraged it. Even Latham, a law-firm, spoke about data analysis with me, and said that my name actually stuck out on the list of developers (okay, so there were about three female developers there lol).

• I like that they didn’t focus on “you need to know React”, but rather were trying to see how you could fit, and emphasizing thing like “our company is for someone who likes varied problem-solving.

• I also met a lady from a company who works at a company at which my friend once worked (I found out she just left), and found out that my friend was transitioning to becoming a Product Manager instead. Interesting.

So…

• I have some following-up to do with a lot of people. One company in particular really stuck out for me. No one seemed to mind that I was working on an Associate’s. There was one pair of recruiters that did warn me that if I did choose data science, I may have to continue on to my PhD. They even positively identified a financial institution that may be interested in hiring me for an internship that they would follow up on. It was just really refreshing and a wonderful experience overall.

Conclusion

• On my end, I’d have to say, it was 100% worth my time. The organization itself and all the companies were respectful of everyone’s time, treated us really well, and the sponsor companies and all companies in general were really wonderful.
• Sure, you may not be a match for every one, but it was eye-opening and just a really positive experience for me.

Things to do

• I have to do an exam today. Yeah…C++ lol (completed. I “mash that up” haha).
• It’s been difficult to do my C++ stuff during the day, (lol it’s difficult to hide a giant IDE at work) so I may just chip away on my html instead.
• And, that’s it.

Randomly

• This cool person in the Haskell community showed us the Survey Report, and I was able to learn about a Haskell internship opportunity at Los Alamos Laboratory, as well as another possible data analysis one.

• Projects the Haskell community is working on are just wild. My eyes were popping out of my head as I pored through the report. The projects are amazeballs!

Katas

• count number of zeros from 1 to number

def count0(n):
    arr = ""
    count = 0
    # contained numbers in one large string
    # broke it up into a list of indiv digits
    # for every zero string, increase count
    for i in range(1, n+1):
        arr += str(i)
    list1 = list(arr)
    for i in list1:
      if i == "0":
        count += 1 
    return count