Managing Partner at Dragonfly. Effective Altruist. Airbnb, Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase) alum. Writer. Former poker pro. Donate 33% of my income to charity.
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It’s officially official.
At week 8 into my 12 week coding bootcamp, I was whisked into a room with Ned Ruggeri, the co-founder of App Academy. He sat me down and told me that I was the top student in my cohort (40~ students), and asked that I come on as an instructor and help teach the bootcamp. With the position comes a competitive package, the opportunity to teach others what I’ve learned, strengthen my skills as a coder, and the potential to develop future App Academy computer science curriculum.
I accepted the position. I’ll be starting in a week and a half, effectively skipping the last 1/4th of the program to begin teaching. I’m really looking forward to this, since I really enjoy teaching, and I’ve grown increasingly confident in my skills as a coder over the course of this program. If anybody is interested in going down this same route or interested in attending App Academy, I encourage you to contact me! I’d be happy to chat about my experiences. And having gone through (most) of it, I can only endorse App Academy as having a stellar curriculum, and being eminently worth the time and monetary investment.
I negotiated a four-and-a-half month contract, after which I’ll decide whether I want to stay and continue to work with App Academy, or seek other employment in the tech world. It’s going to be an exciting and busy time for me. In a way, it’ll also be my first real-actual-job.
Haha, it’s not really my first job; I’ve been working in one sense or another since I was probably 17 years old. I just kind of like that idea.
This also means that I’ll begin earning-to-give and getting more involved in Effective Altruism. It’s funny, hah. That was exactly my plan: through App Academy, I’d be able to earn-to-give almost immediately. I didn’t expect that to happen before the program even ended. Anyway, watch this space! Once I start TAing at App Academy, I’ll be able to update this blog again more regularly.
(And to everyone who’s been supporting me or offering advice, or just watching me as I wind along my journey, I just wanted to give a big thank-you. And I hope you continue to expect big things from me!)
EA Global, the largest ever public gathering of EAs, has left me reflecting on what it means to be an effective altruist. A few weeks ago, 400+ attendees and prominent EA activists, including Will MacAskill and Nick Bostrom (and Elon Musk!), converged on a Google Campus in Mountain View to discuss the state and direction of the EA movement. I ended up donning a volunteer shirt and helping out—time-keeping for...
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It’s been two weeks now since I began the coding bootcamp at App Academy. The material has been blasted at us at a breakneck pace, and I’ve been learning a ton. Among the things I’ve learned: what “90 hours a week” feels like. The past 5 days, I’ve been at App Academy from 10AM till midnight, every single day. It’s strange; it feels like just a few days ago that...
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