I really hope that some day there is an all female or at least half female hacker house. I really like the idea of a hacker house and love being around smart tech people but some guys don't know how to act around women (I'm sorry but there are guys like that out there and many of them are hackers). It is even worse if you are one of the only single woman in a close community. I've heard from male friends that live in hacker houses that I would feel uncomfortable even though I am a relatively reasonable person and am used to living in messy spaces with other people. Also its nice to be around other women in case you need an emergency tampon or advice on whether you should wear your pumps or your wedges or want to bitch about what its like to be a female hacker.
I find the assumption that girls are less messy than boys kind of naive and stereotypical. I suppose messy is ambiguous, does it mean clean or organized?
I remember living in the dorms my first year of college, and I was amused to note that the average boys dorm room was more organized and the average girls dorm room was cleaner. Of course, that is just my experience.
I find women are messier but also clean more. So more stuff left lying around but less grime. Where as guys will put stuff away but won't even know if there is a mop in the house.
Completely generalising here based on my own experiences.
If you are living in a house with 10+ people then it is going to be messy (messy being unclean at times) and if you can't handle that then you shouldn't live in a hacker house whether you are a girl or a guy. I was trying to make the point that I am a pretty chill person and wouldn't mind a mess yet people still tell me not to live in a hacker house.
I've been living in a hacker house in Palo Alto for ~5 months now. There has been at least one female resident the entire time I've been there. None have ever complained about the messiness or behavior of the male inhabitants. On the contrary, we all get along well and if anything the woman have been more tolerant than average of others' messes and disorganization (probably just a coincidence).
In talking with my roommates about other hacker houses they've lived in, nobody has ever mentioned problems with men treating women improperly. I visited one of the houses in SF that was ~30% women and it seemed like everybody got along well and cleaned up after themselves.
The only material gender difference that has come up for us is that men are generally heavier so they make more noise when they walk around barefoot.
Your anecdote is helpful, but it's worth keeping in mind that just because "None has ever complained" doesn't mean that they didn't experience problems. Hopefully, they didn't; but they may have, and simply felt uncomfortable bringing them up.
As a guy, I'd love to live in a 50:50 gender ratio house with smart, creative folks. Had that experience in college living in the student cooperatives; was a great time, with lots of creative energy and many lifelong friendships formed. Would be great to do it again as an adult. Living together in a cozy house with 10-40 other people sure beats lounging around in a dank apartment by your lonesome self.
I agree that the gender split is very important, as it fundamentally changes the feel of the environment. I wouldn't want to live in a house with mostly guys, I don't think.
It makes me happy that the other replies point to these kinds of houses existing, but I kind of feel like I'm not "hacker" enough to look for a place like this yet. (Only one tiny project finished & for sale, no startups or anything to my name. Also, I'm hella lazy with my projects! Not sure how much this matters to these hackerhouses, but, well, they have "hacker" in the name, so...)
It'll never happen if everyone just hopes as we do. Take your idea, use it to inspire yourself, and if you have the chance... Make it happen. I'm sure there are many individuals that will appreciate and welcome your idea.
My experience has actually been the opposite! Most hacker houses I've lived in have been run by women and seem especially friendly and welcoming to women residents.
I spent four months in a hacker house that was run by two women; for about half of that stay the house was at least half female. Eventually people rotated out and in and the ratio skewed towards being more male, though.
I tend to agree that a lot of guys don't know how to act around women. And I would suggest that some improvements to how we train men to behave could be made. Generally speaking it takes years to properly train a man to behave appropriately so this may seem like a daunting task. However, if it isn't done we have situations like you've mentioned where men don't act appropriately and fine women like yourself are forced to not participate.
There are all female houses on airbnb, but I'm not sure if they'd qualify as hacker houses. Given that it's SF, I'd guess that that a large amount work in tech though.
Can you elaborate on this? IMHO women should be treated equally when it makes moral sense. I.e. women's bathrooms need to be larger because of the various things they need to do in there, not just societal norm things but things like changing tampons, pads.
The menstrual cycle also affects productivity and is essentially a reoccurring medical issue that needs regular treatment.
As for the greater issue being discussed about the male centric nature of hackerspaces and hacker houses, alot of this has to do with proven social psychology facts about how the average man reacts to women that don't fit societal stereotypes. Lots of papers on that.
I believe that we could also write papers about how average the woman reacts to men that don't fit societal stereotypes. This is not a women's issue at all and I don't see the relevance of it in this discussion.
The whole point is the original claim that men don't know how to act around women, as if there was some special way of dealing with women that makes them inherently different from men in a way that could go against the expectations of modern gender equality politics.
The relevance is that men currently dominate the hackerspace "scene". How men react to women that don't fit societal norms would tend to dictate how women in tech are going to be treated.
>The whole point is the original claim that men don't know how to act around women, as if there was some special way of dealing with women that makes them inherently different from men in a way that could go against the expectations of modern gender equality politics.
This is a general statement, there are deviations of course: Men tend to (often aggressively) challenge each others ideas, building off of the criticism. Women prefer a more nurturing approach. Hell, I would prefer a more nurturing approach :)
I don't think cleanliness is the biggest issue when it comes to shared bathrooms since both men and women can be clean or messy. As a woman I would be most concerned about periods. Some women try to hide when they are on their period for various reasons. If you are sharing a bathroom either everybody will know you are on your period (and the guys would have to be okay with tampons and such) or you would have to hide all of your feminine products which would be annoying.
I think all of these reasons are pretty weak. What I do know is that it creates a uniquely horrible situation for people who are transgender/transitioning. I admit that periods are the closest thing to a biological reason to have differences in bathroom facilities, but mostly I think that it's a holdover of 19th century sexism.
Women's public restrooms are almost always much worse than men's- this is something that has been echoed by every janitor I've ever talked to and accurately reflects my own experiences as well.
That's not to say any public restrooms are generally good, but the idea that women are somehow cleaner than men really needs to die.
That's weird, all the janitors I know have said its true that women's bathrooms are better kept than men's, and my own experience and friends anecdotes also reflects that. Perhaps there's a demographic aspect to it.
That's an interesting thought- I've primarily talked to people living in the US midwest who dealt with bathrooms used primarily by lower to middle class individuals. Perhaps more upscale locations force a higher standard?
The assumption I've always been given is that women are more prone to hovering (germs!) along with the obvious biological differences that allow for more..erm...variety in terms of mess making. Seemed a sensible enough explanation to me, but it's very possible that there's more to it.
My daughter is a student at a top-20 college in the country and shares the bathroom with 3 other girls. They are all as messy (if not more) than my son's male roommates (also in college).
Another note, I remember reading somewhere that the amount of bacteria found in bathrooms is much higher in ladies-rooms than mensrooms. May or may not be the result of overall messiness, though :-)
Interesting - I was thinking of public bathrooms, I'm not really familiar with any single-sex private bathrooms, where generally I'd assume women would have a lot more 'stuff' in general so would tend to be messier. You are probably referring to this paper[http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/90/156/07_1_m.html], which seems to be the only study ever done (and I can't find the actual paper, just people citing it). Says that women's bathrooms are tidier and smell nicer but have more germs, possibly because they touch more surfaces, they bring in children who are obviously little germ bombs, and they just use them more often (and the children angle would probably affect traffic numbers too).
I don't think you read danr's logic correctly, but I could be wrong.
I interpreted it as "The reason women want to be treated differently [from how they are NOW] is that the world is a sexist place." Not, "The reason women want to be treated differently [from MEN] is that the world is a sexist place."
Either you are wrong or danr shifted goalposts, then. lohengramm's point pretty clearly is talking about women being treated differently from men, not women being treated differently from how they are now.
If finding that we live in a sexist world is a good reason to be even more sexist, then you can throw away every movement that tries to do the opposite.
"some guys don't know how to act around women", it was said. Well, people should know how to act around people, no matter gender or race. This statement does not collaborate to end with any kind of discrimination: it is already discriminating.
You need to realize that what you perceive to be sexism for the benefit of women is actually affirmative action because of the discrimination they suffer from.
On one hand this seems pretty reasonable. I'm assuming you're going to be out between 20 and 40k if you use a recruiter in the bay area. You can play a lot of games like this if you have 20 to 40k. Reading between the lines it seems like they also select for single/childless people, unless you really expect people to show up with their spouse and children.
Stepping back a moment, I'm stunned and thankful to be an engineer in an environment where lots of people are willing to throw stuff like this at me in return for the possibility I might deign to work with them. Sure beats spamming dozens of companies with resumes and beating my way through hr.
I'm thankful and I'm not. On one hand, it's nice to know you're in-demand and can easily earn income. On the other hand, as a working developer, the subtext of a lot of this stuff is frankly pretty offensive.
"Let's throw some stupid, token perks at these developers who don't know how to negotiate for salary so they'll come build my dream!" How about, pay people commensurate with the value they create for your organization and/or demand (in cash, or if you're cash-poor, equity), and stop playing stupid games -- you'll have plenty of candidates.
I like the idea of moving some of the risk from the job-seeker to the job-offerer. If the developer gets a hotel room for a week in SF and the trip ends up not resulting in a job, he or she is out hundreds of dollars, and that risk might discourage people from visiting from outside of the bay area. There might be a huge number of developers right on the edge where it doesn't quite make sense for them to take a trip to SF, but free room and board would bring them in. Employers are already throwing tens of thousands per employee at recruiting, so this little investment might make a huge difference compared to other recruiting tactics.
I assume it is the fact that there is a bottle of Macallan 12 whisky behind him? Yup, that makes me uncomfortable as well. You don't drink whisky without a proper glass.
I actually do code in the bathtub, but not like that. You can't reliably hold a laptop on your bare bent legs -- the lack of friction caused by leg hair will make it slide towards you (and into the water if the water is too high). If the guy were to put both hands on the keyboard and code, the laptop would not stay in place.
The only way to do it comfortably is to sit with your legs straight and flat in front of you (in a tub style bath, not a deep jacuzzi like pictured), raise the water level to about .75 inches (2cm) below the laptop (resting on your flat thighs), then lower the flow of water to a hot trickle and open the drain to match the in-flow. The hot trickle is to keep the temperature at a steady state of hotness.
My tub-style bath is not wide enough for my laptop to accidentally fall into the water to the side. The only way it could come in contact with water is if I sloshed around from side to side to make waves, which I don't do.
My brother marks his undergrad's papers from his bathtub, and frequently computes there. He has a wood board that goes across the tub. A compromise of ergonomics, but, he maintains its still the best.
So the legs would be like 4 inches and fit into the inside walls of the tub preventing the edge from slipping off the small ledge between the tub and the wall.
That way I could still code with the bathtub more than half full.
I'm about as far from a handyman as you can get, but I did manage to make one of these myself. The legs are only about 2" tall, but it sits snug with less than 1/8" wiggle room. While I don't use mine for bringing the laptop to the tub, it has been a delight for books and drinks.
Some occasional drops of water might hit the back of the case on my screen, but that doesn't really affect anything. Nothing gets over the screen and into the keyboard or any other openings.
Cool, commendable effort. One frustration I have is the (possibly soft) requirement for showing your work ala github profile or something else. I've noticed quite a few job postings where they ask you for a github profile. All my code belongs to my employer and I can't put stuff up on github. Not sure how people who are in this stupid situation deal with the new reality that github is your resume these days?
I've been on the same boat (NDA's and stuff) .. my best recomendation is to get involved on opensource and contribute.. I've got tons of good feedback from doing that.
I have yet to go to an interview and the employer looked at my github or portfolio. I know it's pushed hard but so far it hasn't mattered in the least.
I think it is. Most good people I interviewed so far had something on there from pet projects. I wouldn't expect that code to be brilliant, but just the fact that they know how to use git, maybe even react to issues / PRs is a good start.
I personally have a lot of small cruft on mine (old blog migration scripts), a commandline video downloader that has a few issues, ...
None of that code was done on company time, but most people I know and like to work with find a few hours on a Saturday from time to time to just hack up something.
> Most good people I interviewed so far had something on there from pet projects.
So the good people who didn't are just SOL? I say this as someone who actually has crap published, albeit nothing complicated.
Furthermore, The "Github is your resume" crowd always claims they want to use it to see examples of how you code, meaning at least some of whatever you put there is supposed to be production-quality and representative of what you do or would write at your day job. They have a point, because otherwise Github is basically useless as a screening tool.
This marketing approach comes from the time-sharing vacation condo industry. It's common to offer a free weekend in a vacation condo in exchange for two days of listening to high-pressure sales talks.
Thankfully, I can guarantee that no one who visits will be subjected to high-pressure sales tactics. Because that would be just lame on both sides - founders want to hire people who are excited to work for their startup.
Yeah, it's easy to see how you monetize something like this (hiring a good programmer has $$$ attached to it) and you don't need a hard sell to make it work. It seems like it'd be more like speed dating, where there's an intense sell from both sides but it's low pressure because either side can back out easily.
Thanks! I actually think someone should make a business out of this - that would be a cool recruiter! But we're just doing it as a free service to the startups we've funded over at Wefunder.
A similar cool idea would be if someone would create working spaces in awesome locations. that way, a company can pay all my expenses to get there and work (during work hours).. and I get to tour the area, learn the culture, try the food on my freetime/weeekends.
First place : Valle Sagrado near Machu-Pichu Peru.
"A third of firefighters live in the city, while 16 percent live in San Mateo County, 11 percent in Sonoma County and 8 percent in Alameda County... This could matter tremendously in an earthquake if emergency responders aren’t able to make it into the city."
Remember, the 1989 earthquake happened on a clear, windless day. Not so 1906.
Solid recruiting tool! Finding top notch Engineers anywhere is tough no matter where you are - props to people who come up with an innovative approach.
Our startup based here in NYC is doing something similar, lets do a hackersurfing coast-to-coast marathon?
Given that this was supposed to happen over a year ago, how realistic is "In October 2015, the Law changes: Startup investing won't be just for the wealthy"[0]. Specifically the October 2015 part?
There's a (small) issue with the application form. I linked my linkedin profile, but didn't include the http[s]://, and it threw an error, but then continued submitting the form anyways.
Everything I submitted was kosher, but just in case you're getting any incomplete forms and wondering why.
Shows the desperation to hire quality employees, but for anyone with solid skills it's a questionable offer, as they likely count on you getting guilt tripped into giving them preference when it comes to job offers while you save peanuts on housing and food (I'd guesstimate that anyone with solid skills could land a six figure job within 2 weeks).
I wouldn't be comfortable staying in a house with strangers when I'm already stressed out for being away from home and worrying about days full of difficult interviews. I think the social pressure would crush me and I'd rather stay in a hotel and take time to recharge. It looks like a nice idea for extroverts though.
I had the same reaction. If I'm going to be in interviews (however informal) all day for multiple days I'd need to lock myself away in the evening to recharge. I get the impression dinner, drinks, hanging out in the evening would be a part of this as well.
Interesting idea otherwise. Never been to San Francisco/SV and would love to get a taste of what the environment is like there. Maybe an AirBnB for a few days in a hacker house?
More of the same that other people are saying -- this is awesome. Don't want to jinx it, but I can't see this not going well, if you get the pay model right and expand when you get the chance and partner with some of the companies constantly flying engineers out for interviews.
Great idea! How are you about startup founders visiting? Coz I just applied for a couple of days next week!
(ps: Anyone else going to the SaaStr Annual in San Francisco on Feb 5? I'm stupidly excited about it! I live in Minnesota and we don't get cool stuff like that here.)
I know a bunch of people from the UK heading to SF fundraising over the next few months, would be great if something like this existed for people like them.
Also, if anyone else in the SF/Silicon Valley area feels like hosting an out-of-town founder in the enterprise space for a few days in early February... hey, hotels are expensive, I'm poor, and I ain't too proud to beg.
If you have a guitar lying around, I can even play a tune or three.
If your budget is above $0 but below hotel rates, have you looked at airbnb? Try searching keyword 'hacker'. There's a lot of extra rooms and hostel-type setups around.
Wish I had a better setup for hosting tech folks, but my friends end up having perpetual dibs on my futon and sharing a single bathroom can suck...
I think its launch is similar to airbnb's. Instead of making money, they aim to find talented people, far more valuable for startups that seek to find such talent (and who doesn't?). I hope this will be very successful :)
This should be done in a bigger way, with founders and startuppers offering their couch like people do in www.couchsurfing.com... It would be more than awesome
It would be nice to have a community of Hacker Surfing so you can go somewhere, code something then go somewhere else and code some more... It would be like nerd consulting vacation, Then when you get back from the coding they come with the job offers :) Then you get to be like the guy who has already commited his code to github and is safe to be with his Mac on the Tub!
So can I use this as an alternative to crashing on the couch at noisebridge?
/s
I'm planning on making a trip to SF in the next couple of months to hang out there for a while, and while I'm not really looking to move there (Phoenix actually has a pretty cool tech scene right now if you know where to look), if the right offer came my way, I wouldn't be against it.
I just applied and this is really a perfect fit for me. However, I have a hard time seeing who else would be interested in this opportunity. I'm currently traveling and bouncing around so spending some time in San Francisco sounds great.
Anyone else who signed up, what position are you in where living in San Francisco for a couple days works for you?
> I have a hard time seeing who else would be interested in this opportunity
Really? SF is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and we're pretty much at the apex of interest in "comp sci" in 2015. My guess is that their inbox will have hundreds of thousands of applications in short order.
I signed up. I'm currently doing a contract job that will be up in a few months which also aligned with my lease being up and I am interested in moving to SF so this would be perfect for me if I was chosen because I could go out there after my contract, get a job and move hassle free.
Only slightly related, but something I've always wondered.. can a residential house the founders live in, and employees work in, be claimed as a legitimate business expense? I see this quite a lot in the US. I looked into it here in the UK and it doesn't work out particularly well tax-wise.
The rough answer (I'm not an expert) is that you can deduct costs for a room used 100% for business.
Put a TV in it and you're at risk of it being considered personal space.
I think it's possible to deduct a space as some fraction of the time used for work, but there may be a minimum threshold? I know it can work at 100%, but it's hard to prove 100% business usage -- and I've also heard that it's a tax audit trigger (as in, it raises your chance of being audited).
IANAL but my boss lives upstairs in the same house we work in. What he does is that he rents out the office from himself as an individual to his business. But that's just for the main floor, it doesn't include his personal living area. I certainly can't speak to how things work in the UK but as long as you kept the business and personal accounts separate and charged a reasonable rate I don't think they'd be any particular problems.
Very cool, though personally I'm not interested in moving back to the Bay Area.
The site implies that you're not interested in remote employees, which is a shame; not everyone wants to live in California, and some people have an extended track record of successfully working remotely (ahem ;).
It is kind of silly ... in tech, we've got all these amazing tools that enable people to work remotely. I've seen people checkout even though they come in to the office, and people work like superstars while they are remote and working in the middle of nowhere. If you get on a plane once every month or so to hang out with the team, I can't see how it affects anything.
Same is true of investors. Not every great idea in tech comes from the valley.
For those serious about creating an environment for women hackers, please contact me. My organization can be the 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor and we can start a fundraiser campaign ASAP, just like Chapter 92 of Eat. Pray. Love, the movie.
The culture of SV is so much better now than when it was dominated by old-school stodgy hardware companies. Its so much more open-minded and pay-it-forward oriented with initiatives like this. Long live this spirit of innovation.
Is this going to be an ongoing thing? I actually just "semi-moved" (couch surfing with friends) to SF last week and I'd be interested in trying this out but I still need to update my Github quite a bit...
...Or you could hire remote workers! I'm currently living in SF, but will be moving because of my girlfriend's new job. I'm finding it very hard to find remote roles despite the job shortage.
You've made a bunch of posts about Firefighters in S.F. Everything I'm seeing is that S.F. Firefighters are some of the highest paid in the world, and have amazing pensions on top of their salaries. I'm curious what your reasoning here is? Just that they live elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't paid enough, it could just mean they prefer to live in another area...
These were due to excessive overtime. The Lieutenant who made $300k ($50k more than the Chief) tripled his base salary.
> Just that they live elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't paid enough, it could just mean they prefer to live in another area
It means that in a major disaster like an Earthquake, SF might find many of its emergency responders (not just firefighters) stranded on the far side of the bay.
Can't afford? Or choose the live outside of SF? Hell, I know plenty of people who could afford to live in SF and choose not to. SF is not exactly family friendly.
Looks sweet, but in the FAQ they say they can only host 2 people at a time.. given the amount of interest this seems to be getting, seems like it'll be tough to land a spot.
The guy on the landing page, sitting in a jacuzzi with Mac and empty bottle of scotch, with the pose of an Ancient Greek Philosopher: advertising at its best!!
Does the near-highway location of the house concern anyone else?
The correlation between near-highway air exposure and adverse health outcomes is well documented and I have not found a single study, article, etc that disputes the correlation. Below are three articles and snippets (emphasis mine) regarding the aforementioned correlation and how quickly the pollution levels drop over short distances from the freeway.
source: http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-highw...
"Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, dozens of studies found links between fine particulate pollution and cardiovascular health. One of the largest and most influential of these, the Harvard Six Cities Study, followed more than 8,000 participants in six towns across the Midwest and New England. Over 15 years, the initial phase of the study tracked each person’s health and measured particulate levels in the air over their communities. Its findings, first released in 1993, showed that even a minuscule increase in fine particulates (just 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air), could cause up to an 18 percent bump in cardiovascular disease." ... there’s reason to think that ultrafine particles, which the EPA does not regulate, are even more insidious than their larger counterparts ... ultrafines can fluctuate dramatically over the course of a morning or afternoon, depending on the weather and how many cars and trucks are on the road. Ultrafines are also confined to a relatively small area ... close to major highways, often spiking dramatically within a few hundred meters of the source."
source: http://www.scpcs.ucla.edu/news/Freeway.pdf
"Studies conducted by SCPCS investigators here in LA show that carbon monoxide and ultrafine particles – the smallest portion of particulate matter emissions and potentially the most toxic – are extremely high on or near the freeway, dropping to about half that concentration 50-90 meters (~165-295 feet) from the freeway ..."
source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971259/
"People living or otherwise spending substantial time within about 200 m of highways are exposed to these pollutants more so than persons living at a greater distance, even compared to living on busy urban streets. Evidence of the health hazards of these pollutants arises from studies that assess proximity to highways, actual exposure to the pollutants, or both. Taken as a whole, the health studies show elevated risk for development of asthma and reduced lung function in children who live near major highways. Studies of particulate matter (PM) that show associations with cardiac and pulmonary mortality also appear to indicate increasing risk as smaller geographic areas are studied, suggesting localized sources that likely include major highways. Although less work has tested the association between lung cancer and highways, the existing studies suggest an association as well. While the evidence is substantial for a link between near-highway exposures and adverse health outcomes, considerable work remains to understand the exact nature and magnitude of the risks."
I dunno about you but I've never tried working naked in a jacuzzi after having finished an entire bottle of McCallan 12 Year so I can't say I wouldn't enjoy it... maybe he just knows something the rest of us don't.
Read about Sit/Lie and how SF voted to criminalize homelessness in 2010, and you'll see why these "hostels" for tech workers are needed now more than ever.
Any plans on making this international? Otherwise, may I suggest the following as a domain instead: hackersurfing.co.us or something along those lines.
