Interview with Hack Reactor
Where I rant and share questions my experience from my interview with Hack Reactor (sort of).
📅️Mon, Dec 29, 2014
📖10 min read ∙ 1969 words
Where I rant and share questions my experience from my interview with Hack Reactor (sort of).
📅️Mon, Dec 29, 2014
📖10 min read ∙ 1969 words
Where I rant and share questions my experience from my interview with Hack Reactor (sort of).
I keep looking for the key out of my novice programming level, but nothing seems to be clicking in the right place. It’s an icky situation.
The reasons I decided to consider these ‘coding bootcamps’, which have garnered both positive and negative public opinions is because I think it’s going to provide the bow for that key I was describing earlier.
I’d have to take care of the important bits of the key of course, but it would be inconvenient if the key didn’t have a bow, wouldn’t it? I’m going to avoid going off a tangent here now…
So, in lamest terms, the way I’m feeling right now about my programming skills is similar to feeling like Big Head
from the TV show Silicon Valley. Richard
and Big Head
can relate to each other. They’re buddies and they both work (or worked) at the same company. But their skills level are completely off. Richard really gets algorithms and data structures. He really gets them. But Big Head, he can only make these shady MVPs that turn out to be pretty sexist.
I mean, I can’t even make MVPs yet (not even shady ones), but you still get the point.
You know, a simpler analogy might have been comparing a hare
and a turtle
(me being the turtle). I just don’t feel like I’m moving fast enough in my learning process, and the situation becomes ickier and ickier.
Anyways, I had an interview scheduled with Hack Reactor today.
As quick preparation, I went over what a closure and callback was. I had seen these topics repeatedly mentioned in posts throughout Quora and the blogs of HR students.
So, what is a closure? That is the question.
closure
, I’ve come to understand, is a function that ‘closes over’ local variables.callback function
, on the other hand, can be used as a closure, but a callback function itself is when the function is called within itself in order to be be ‘called back’ later.Node
works with closures and callbacks all the bloody time.Unfortunately, the interview never took place over some confusion over my aliases. Whoops. I ended up rescheduling… 😔
However, even though there were some discrepancies over the setup of my interview, I was still able to meet up with someone. The interviewer asked that I don’t reveal their name and that I should share this article with them. So cheers, interviewer! 😁
The interviewer in question was a Hacker in Residence and a recent grad of the program, having graduated in December. The interviewer now works part time for Hack Reactor and on personal projects. Their #1 goal now is to basically be an entrepreneur/consultant/free-lancer. Being a full-time software engineering would just be part of that goal.
Answers have been paraphrased or are otherwise taken verbatim.
I’ve decided to categorize the questions I asked into 4 sections: questions specifically Pertaining to Hack Reactor
, Student Experience
, Logistics/Numbers
, and Personal Cohort Experience
(what the interviewer personally experienced in his cohort).
Pertaining to Hack Reactor
Overall Student Experience
Logistics/Numbers
Personal Cohort Experience
[I completed my technical interview last Friday with Christopher T. and Katherine G. acting as a shadow. The whole session was supposed to last exactly an hour.]{.s1}
We jumped right into the technical interview and after Christopher thought I was tested enough (mainly on callbacks and objects) using CodeShare, he gave me exactly 10 minutes to ask him about his experience about Hack Reactor.
The first question I asked was about his background before he came to Hack Reactor. He told me he wasn’t comfortable answering that since he didn’t really know me. I was a little taken aback and no longer knew what could be defined as an appropriate question at that point so I didn’t really ask any more questions. To be fair, he did mention how amazing his experience at Hack Reactor was. It was also made clear I had a limited amount of time, so after that he told me that admissions would be getting back to me within a week and that was that.
Well, “curiosity killed the cat” and I decided to look up my interviewers on LinkedIn (weird, right?). Turns out not a lot is really private anymore, but I’m okay with pretending it is.
I felt pretty bad about how my interview went and decided to send them supplemental material such as links to my LinkedIn, GitHub, etc.
Admissions replied back saying they would get back to me by the 20th.
Today, they finally got back to me and this is part of the email they sent me:
I am writing to let you know that after a lot of deliberation, the Admissions team at Hack Reactor have come to the conclusion that our program is not the right fit for you at this time. We would recommend that you complete at least three months of personal study prior to scheduling another interview. In this time, you should look to master the concepts laid out in the emails we have exchanged to date, and feel confident in your ability to write basic web applications in JavaScript.
All in all, it was definitely an eye-opening experience and I’m glad I was able to be a part of it.
I knew already beforehand that no matter what, I’m going to keep bettering myself and riding the waves of technology and you know, just being me.
Surf’s Up! 🏄
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt-dpATRP_4
I also have shared my interview experience with bootcamps such as