Re: Wondering About Flatiron School

On 15 December 2012 23:20, Kevin Y. <[e-mail]> wrote:

> HI Peter, thanks for you input.
> Just wondering, at the risk of looking naive (and I am at this point),
> what are the most important elements of a candidate you look for? Yeah,
> I did not expect the 'degree' from the school would help at all. It was
> more of the connections the school may provide.
>
>
Well we are a RoR shop and so an ideal candidate would be someone with a
few years RoR experience. Having said that none have come forward over the
past two years when we were recruiting (maybe London is too much of a
backwater, but I suspect it is that our industry sector - sports data - is
not interesting / sexy enough).

What we ended up with were CS or hard science graduates (maths, physics)
with little or no Ruby experience who showed an interest in computing
beyond what was needed for their degree. It was this interest beyond the
needs of their degree that swayed us. One had written some Facebook apps
just for the hell of it. Another had taught themselves Android development
and created a scientific app that probably only twelve people in the world
will use.

An interest in computing without immediate commercial gain. The ability to
teach yourself new skills. A desire to learn. These things made us want to
interview them, the degree (while I would like to say having a degree is
not important it does show an ability to study and think analytically)
subject area is of less importance. I'm not sure how we would view a degree
in Medieval Literature but one guy in another department has a degree in
Theology so I suspect that it wouldn't be a problem.

So what we are looking for is:
1) The ability to study and think analytically - a degree is a good proxy
for this
2) The ability to teach oneself new skills
3) The creation of applications with those skills that have made it into
the wild - application of those skills
4) An interest in computing beyond marketable skills
5) Experience in a commercial computing environment (around 1 year is good)

But thats what it takes to be interviewed by us, other people will have
other criteria. We are a small shop so making a bad hire would be a real
pain but with the criteria I have given here we have not made a hire that
we regret in the slightest.

Ask yourself what adding Flatiron would add to your CV in light of this. I
suspect that by itself it would add nothing.

So the real question is "I have $10k, how can I make myself employable as a
RoR developer?"

Sorry, I have no answer for that.