Josh Pickett

This is what I thought of when I imagined Silicon Valley as a...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:17:54 -0800

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This is what I thought of when I imagined Silicon Valley as a kid

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Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:57:39 -0800

Interning in San Francisco (for the discerning British Hacker)

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:42:00 -0800

Interning in San Francisco can be fantastic. Whether you’re interested in advancing your career, gaining experience or just generally becoming a more interesting individual, its something everyone should try at least once. Yesterday, a friend of mine told me he was planning on interning here and asked my advice on visas, I replied with my experience with visas, along with some other tips on general things like travel and accommodation. I thought It’d be a good idea to share those tips in a short guide of things-that-I-wish-I-had-known, so you can avoid making the same mistakes I did. So, here is ‘the guide to avoiding the various pitfalls related to interning in San Francisco (for the discerning British Hacker)’.

This is by no means the definitive guide, but instead is a list of the little things that nobody tells you that you really ought to know.

Please research visas further by yourself, I did not go back to check my facts when writing this article, so certain details may be a little off.

Re: Visas

There, I said it, v-i-s-a-s. Its a dreaded word for foreigners looking to make a dent in the tech scene in the US but it doesn’t have to be as long as you follow a few rules.

First off, and let me make this absolutely clear, avoid the J1 like the plague. J1 is a single-use visa, you can only ever get one. Its valid for up to 1 year, which considering you’re (probably) only going for the summer seems a little wasteful. Also, there is a 2 year mandatory home-stay after your return from the states. This means you can’t re-enter the US for the next 2 years, regardless of the purpose of your travel.

If you’re coming to SF for the summer, Id advise you go for the WB (Visa Waiver Business). The US and the UK have a partnership (along with a few other countries) that allows visa-free travel between borders for periods of up to 3 months. You need to be a British citizen, have a valid passport (which is a given for travel between borders), and register your details in ESTA (google it). The beauty of the WB is you can travel to SF for three months, head back to the UK for a week (or less), and then head back out to SF for another three months. Most British startup founders (without a green card) do this, its pretty common. The founder of Dailybooth did it for a while before he got his green card.

Word of warning: The border agent’s word is final. You can have your details registered and be approved for entry to the US, but if the border agent says no, you have to book a return flight and go home. The agent will ask the purpose of your travel, don’t mention work. The border agent will check through your luggage by hand, even as far as looking through notebooks, checking through DVDs and commenting on how Tron Legacy is a great film. Make sure you have a SF address before you get to the border, and have some cash on you (at least $1000).

Re: Wages

A formal wage is prohibited on a WB (and most other visas other than the H1B group), so instead ask the startup/company to pay you a stipend, which is perfectly legal to do (its classed as business expenses for your stay). Something in the rage of $2000/mo - $2500/mo is enough to live on in SF, dependent on where you stay. Try not to mention money to border agents, if they ask, tell them the company you’re with will be covering your expenses (which they will be), and you also have cash on you and money in your bank account to cover you, should anything go wrong.

Re: Travel

SF is well covered by rail and other public transport, a Clipper card loaded with a muni pass (muni is the SF public transport system) will set you back $60/mo, which is incredibly cheap considering. It covers trains, busses & the BART. Clipper is SF’s version of an oyster card. BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit, a high-speed train that goes right the way thorough the bay area.

The Muni K-line outbound is also the Muni T-line inbound, something worth mentioning, since no-one mentioned it to me.

Re: The Caltrain

The Caltrain is the train you’ll want to be getting if you’re heading down to Mountain View/Palo Alto etc. It accepts Clipper cards (which you can top up) and goes from AT&T Park down past San Jose to Gilroy. Its only about $10, too, which is insanely cheap.

Re: Accommodation

Rent in San Francisco, the city area, is *steep*, often upwards of $2,500/mo. If you can, try to find somewhere a little outside of the city, but near a muni stop. Im near City College, which is only about 20 mins from the city center by muni, its pretty quiet, and the rent is far less expensive. Avoid the Tenderloin and avoid the Mission, rent is cheap there, but once you see it, you’ll realize why rent is so cheap.

Re: Phones & Data

You’ll need to request an unlock from your carrier (which can take up to 10 days). O2 were fine doing it, as long as you have £15 credit. This unlocks the handset so you can use it on US carriers, which you’ll want to do considering how expensive roaming is. Unlock your iPhone in the UK, you can go back to your UK carrier as soon as you return, it just frees you to use a US carrier over here. Once your handset is unlocked, and once you’re in SF, head down to a T-Mobile store and ask for a monthly prepaid sim. T-Mobile are the only carrier that a) supports UK handsets and b) sells monthly pre-paid data. They have a $50/mo plan with unlimited talk, texts and data, you can add unlimited international minutes & texts for an extra $10/mo, which should fend of the home-sickness for a while. Total cost $60/mo. Data is important in SF, the city kind of assumes you have a smartphone and data, so a lot of information isn’t available in analogue form, but is available online. If you don’t have data yet, either cache a map on wifi before you leave home, or get completely lost in a city you don’t know.

Re: Homesickness

When I first came out here, I didn’t think it would be as bad. Regardless of how much you loved/hated the UK, homesickness will hit you hard at some point after the first 2 weeks. The fact that everyone you know and love is 5000 miles away and 8 hours ahead of you really hammers home the intense feeling of loneliness. When you’re turning in for the night, they’re finishing their cereal and heading out the door. Dont underestimate just how lonely Silicon Valley can be, and be prepared to deal with it. Also, you’ll start to miss British food. An example; American chocolate is awfullcompared to its British counterparts. Even American versions of Cadburys, which you’d expect to be the same as British versions, just aren’t as nice, its ridiculous. So, you’ll want to find an ex-pat shop near to where you’re staying. I suggest you head by a shop called ‘YouSayTomato’, its a great little ex-pat shop that sells a wide range of stuff, and the owner is an ex-computer-science lecturer, we had a great little chat about Fortran.

I just read (Sitename)post/12863887617/were-working-our-young-people-too-hard. As a high school student, would you advise me to take fewer classes and spend more time exploring psychology/ statistics/ programming/politics? I am currently taking a balanced position, with a few more classes than are required and setting aside time to play around with Python, read and implement statistics techniques, and pick up random books. Should I be exclusively picking one or the other?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:36:00 -0800

As someone in relatively the same position (I dropped out of high school about three months ago with two years remaining) I feel Im not exactly in a position to give you the best advice. I will, however, give you a couple of things to think about.

While some professions depend highly on your level of qualification, most dont. You need to have been through college and med school to become a doctor, college and law school to become a lawyer, but there is no defined route to becoming a developer. Professions that dont depend on qualification level are largely either creative or so new society has not yet established a clear route to obtain a position in them. Medical work has existed as long as we have, programming has only existed, at most, for the last 100 years.

I often find solace in that fact that Im not the only one who is conflicted, nobody in this industry has a clue what we’re doing, we’re all playing the same game. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or a fool.

When I was still in school, I took subjects that I interested me, but that I didn’t know much about and that required the use of a bunch of expensive equipment that would otherwise be out of my reach. I took Film-Making, Electrical Engineering and Music Technology. The sad truth is, you’re probably not going to learn anything in school that you cant find in 30 seconds on Google, or by dropping by the local library and picking up a book on the topic. You cant, however, assemble a full symphony orchestra in your basement, unless you’re Michael Giacchino. I treated school as my hobby, and everything I learned outside of school, as school. Eventually I became too busy at ‘school’ to continue with my ‘hobby’, so I had to drop it.

Only seek advice from those whom you admire. Only do things that you enjoy or that are necessary to do the things you enjoy. And trust yourself, on some level you already know what you want to do, you just dont have the courage to do it yet.

You will fuck up, you will make decisions you regret, but nothing is irreversible, and you dont have anything to loose yet. Dont settle until you find what you enjoy, and then dont stop until you’ve worked out a way to do it.

We're working our young people too hard

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:26:00 -0800

Yesterday, I shared an anecdote involving a school I once attended with a list. This anecdote eventually became the basis for a blog post. Traffic was fairly normal for the first few hours until it found its way onto hackernews.

Then it exploded.

The comments on both the original blog post and the post on hackernews filled almost immediately with opinionated hackers, teachers and students sharing similar experiences, discussing the problem and figuring out what should be done about it.

Repeatedly, the argument was made that the education system is smothering creativity, actively discouraging innovation and turning out mindless ‘drones’ with a high number of often worthless qualifications. The case was made that we should act to change the curriculum;

“We should include <name of subject> in the curriculum”

“We should retrain teachers to improve the quality of their teaching and recruit talented <insert name of profession>ers as teachers to impart their knowledge the next generation!”

This makes sense from a data-driven perspective; Better teachers = Better students = Better future workforce. This approach, in my opinion, is fundamentally flawed

Back in the glory days of the UK, schools were largely under-regulated when compared to modern schools. League tables were a figment of a young tory party representative’s imagination and Ofstead was a meaningless word

Schools ran courses because they wanted to, not because they would ensure the highest possible rank on the league table. Computer Science was taught alongside ‘CIT’ and English teachers were allowed to teach “Lord of the Flies” without fearing losing their job. Most notably, however; Science teachers could blow stuff up without worrying for health and safety. It was that notion of ‘blowing stuff up’ that drove students in hordes into science lessons. How many of the most influential British scientists were once inspired by their secondary school teacher’s borderline pyromania?

This is something we have largely lost. With the exception of the most dedicated educators who fight for the combustion of jelly-babies in testtubes to make their lessons more engaging, science is bland and uninteresting and the teaching is completely clinical. The same is true for Maths and for Computer Science, frontiers in which upward mobility is still completely possible and innovation is commonplace, reduced to basic operation of of Microsoft packages, use of dead languages and outdated theories. Where are the pyromaniacs in Computer Science? How many programmers have we lost for lack of ‘blowing stuff up’?

To complement this shift in teaching-style, exams changed too.

Where O levels were terminal (one exam, one shot at winning, or 2 if you resat), modern examinations are modular. Each subject consists of anywhere between 6 and 20 modular exams with supporting coursework and assessments. Subjects can and often do entail hours of work each night, severely limiting the amount of time young people can spend exploring their own interests. For high achievers, this problem is only made worse as instead of being allowed time to explore their interests and passions, they are forced to take on more subjects ‘because they are capable’. These high achievers are often the ones with outside interests and as a result end up with less than desirable scores in exams and ‘Effort Grades’ below average.

Though the blame cannot be placed entirely on the way we’re teaching our young people. A large part of the problem stems directly from the number of subjects we’re forcing upon our students. 5 GCSEs is the minimum, but students are commonly expected to achieve upwards of 16. I myself ended up with 22. We’re working our young people too hard.

Reading back through the comments on hackernews, I noticed a recurring theme. Hackers would bring up anecdotes of playing around with BBC Micros in their spare time, learning C in their spare time or building basic command-line games in their spare time. Most of the best developers I know are products of tinkering with technology when they had a minute, but in an educational ecosystem which squeezes every last drop of energy and free time from students, where do they find the time to explore their own interests? We force so much structured work onto our young people that they loose all opportunity to take part in the arguably more important “unstructured work”, the tinkering and hacking that once made us the leaders of the industrial world.

We’re heading for disaster but we can do something about it. Organisations like Rewired State are already reshaping the way programming is taught from a grassroots level and communities where young developers can share their experiences and knowledge are beginning to emerge in their wake. Similar communities, im sure, exist for other subjects. The kids of Rewired State are the archetypes of a new era of education, one in which we have the tools and the ability to teach ourselves what we want to learn.

We need to refocus out energies not on producing the most highly-qualified generation in history, but the most highly skilled and highly satisfied. Only then can we really start to change the world.

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Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:03:50 -0800

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Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:06:01 -0800

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Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:51:00 -0800

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Soon

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:08:38 -0800

Something here soon…