#The Hack Upstate Fellowship Note to collaborators: We would love your input! Feel free to make updates to this document and initiate a pull request ##What is the Hack Upstate Fellowship? The Hack Upstate Fellowship program aims to pair quantitative and computational students with Upstate technology companies that demonstrate strong mentorship environments.

In doing so, the overarching intent is to connect, unify and empower the next generation of hackers in Upstate New York’s innovation community.

Standing up a summer Fellowship program will help expose the Upstate hacker community to favorable employment opportunities in Upstate’s growing technology sector, and increase the likelihood they will stay in Upstate New York.

What else can you tell me about it?

• Hack Upstate Fellows work as contractors
• Ideally, we are seeking employers with projects to complete / problems to solve that will take a Fellow ~120 hours during the holiday season to complete
• Employers must have a primary technical POC for the Fellow to report to and collaborate with
• Employers must have a specced out Statement of Work / Requirements Document which is reviewed and agreed upon by both the Hack Upstate placement team and the Fellow.
  • Only modest changes to the Statement Of Work / Requirements Document can be made during the Fellowship.
• We would like to first test the model on a small scale (i.e. 1 or 2 fellows).
• IMPORTANT: We will only place Hack Upstate Fellows with Upstate companies when all parties involved are well-positioned to succeed. We will not force this to happen if the conditions are not appropriate.

Mentors / Primary technical POCs

• In order for an employer to accept a Hack Upstate Fellow, the employer must designate a strong technical mentor for the Fellow to collaborate with
• A strong mentor has the following characteristics:
  • Senior developer with 3-to-5 years of experience
  • Exceptional communication skills
  • Ability to derive engineering requirements, adeptly capture them and explicitly articulate them in written and oral form
  • Loves to refactor code
  • Loves to write tests
  • Loves to write maintainable code
  • Loves to delete unnecessary code
  • Loves to leverage existing code
  • Enjoys accounting for usability
  • Detail conscious

Who is involved?

• Upstate New York technology companies
• Upstate New York STEM students
• The Hack Upstate Team

When does it take place?

We are exploring implementing the Hack Upstate Fellowship this holiday season (Dec ‘13 & Jan ‘13) while students are on break.

Where does it take place?

As it is the case that Fellows are treated as contractors, they reserve the right to work remotely if they so choose. However, we encourage them to be onsite and interact in physical proximity to their employers as often as possible.

How can I apply to become a Hack Upstate Fellow?

• Email Hack Upstate organizers [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and share links to your portfolios and work (e.g. Github, Bitbucket, Dribble, etc)
• Follow up conversations will be scheduled following portfolio reviews

How can my company apply to receive a Hack Upstate Fellow?

• Employers can apply online here: http:https://hack-upstate-fellowships.herokuapp.com/questions/new
• Upon submitting an application, please contact Doug Crescenzi [email protected] to expedite the application’s review

How many Hack Upstate Fellows will there be?

As mentioned before, given we are only testing this model, we’ll only accept a maximum of two Hack Upstate Fellows this fall. If we decide to launch the fellowship program in the summer instead, we will likely accept more fellows.

What costs are involved?

• Compensation for the Fellow - at minimum [subject to change as these numbers are likely too high and compensation is less important to potential fellows]:
• 120 hour project = $10,000
• 80 hour project = $6,700
• 40 hour project = $3,400

Concerning compensation, employers should not view Hack Upstate Fellows as traditional interns. Hack Upstate Fellows will be among the most talented STEM students in the country. As such, they’re more than capable of making significant impacts within an employer’s organization which can be measured monetarily.

Also worth noting, an employer accepting a fellow is investing in a potential full-time hire. This program is not meant to simply be an ephemeral experience. The intent is to cultivate long-term employment opportunities between fellows and Upstate employers.

We're confident this is a bargain relative to employers hiring traditional tech recruiting shops to find talent. Recruiters that facilitate employment placements are often looking for 20-30K for each individual placement.

Lastly, without adequate compensation, autonomy and mentorship, these premium quality STEM students will continue to opt out of Upstate employment opportunities and work at recognizable, tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Splunk, etc.

#Student Feedback

What do potential Hack Upstate Fellows like about the fellowship?

• They love opportunities with real growth potential. I.e., opportunities where the Fellows could be connected with really early stage companies, with small teams (i.e.,1-3 people) where there might be opportunities for them to become partners / co-founders.
• They like the idea of working alongside all star technical mentors who are willing to put in the time necessary to help them grow as professionals.
• Working on products or companies that they’re passionate about is the most important. Far more so than compensation.
• They like how it’s a good first step to keep them in Upstate.
• They really like how we handle vetting the companies to ensure their placement is advantageous.
  • There’s a lot of value in being able to save both potential fellows and potential employers time by handling the vetting / matching
• They love anything that can be done to minimize how much time is necessary to rev up when first getting up to speed on an existing project
  • Steps can be taken before the fellowship begins to expedite this
• Product-centric work is likely more appealing than client-work

What concerns do potential Hack Upstate Fellows have about the fellowship?

• It might be tough during the holiday season to complete a project on behalf of a company.
• After finals week, agreeing to a 120 hour project might not appeal to many.
• “How can we compete with the salaries, prestige, locations and amenities of Google, Facebook, etc”? Answer: early / significant growth potential at the Upstate companies where they are placed
• What should Fellow’s do about housing if they opt to work on site?
• Will they be working with people their own age as well?
• Compensations is not their top priority that goes in to identifying an employer
• Pulling something off during the holiday season would be really challenging if a Fellow is aligned with a larger company. It would take longer periods of time to get them up to speed on larger projects, and thus they would make less of an impact.
• Being a contractor might leave them in a bit of a "grey area" in that it might be challenging to get them fully engaged with their employer. I.e., it might lead to a confusing working relationship between the fellow and employer

What ideas and suggestions do potential Hack Upstate Fellows have?

• A hacker house where 8-10 premier student developers could live together during the summer and split their time between paid projects and their own projects.
  • I.e., half their time on a project for which they are paid, the other half of their time would be spent collaborating on their own projects with others in the ‘hacker house’
  • Splitting time between internship responsibilities and side projects hacks would be challenging. I.e., requirements, expectations and IP could become nebulous. Instead, if student developers are in the hacker house and have a side project that interests them, they’ll manage to find the time to work on it.
  • “Only good things will come from a hacker house”
  • Perhaps we could rent out houses on campus near Upstate universities over the summer? Hire a chef, etc?
• A Hack Upstate Fellowship for designers (e.g. 2 developers and 2 designers in a particular Hack Upstate class)
  • There are few existing designer-centric educational pipelines
  • Could be a nice opportunity for talented student designers

#Employer Feedback

What do potential Hack Upstate employers like about the fellowship?

• Identifying top talent which could lead to full-time employment opportunities
• Reduces costs associated with hiring technical recruiters

What concerns do potential Hack Upstate employers have about the fellowship?

• On its surface, employers think the program is appealing for UNY employers looking to engage early with top talent before they've been snatched up or "run-off with the herd."
• Proposed employment costs seem high
• What is the value in treating the Fellows as contractors instead of simply putting them on payroll?
• Will employers have the appropriate workload for a Fellow at the appropriate time?
• Need to ensure an employer’s standard development approach (i.e. waterfall vs agile) is aligned with the expectations of the Fellow

What ideas and suggestions do potential Hack Upstate employers have?

• Perhaps the way the fellowship is articulated could set the tone of the employer's project requirements through the creation of a "challenge," rather than specific task(s). This provides more creative license and opportunity for exposure to the fringe of an existing platform/technology/framework--territory much more appealing to the eager ambitions of the fellow, as well as future application(s) and value to the employer (an incentive to bring them back).
• Concerning the Hacker House idea, we wouldn’t need to rent it out ourselves, but simply approach making it happen as facilitators
• If we were to test out the idea of a Hacker House, we need to ensure we’re not liable for anything
• If the Hacker House in one location proves successful, it’s repeatable. I.e., we could implement it in other Upstate cities