Austen Allred Profile picture
Feb 19 4 tweets 1 min read
The average University CS curriculum is also broken for most people.

They generally start at a level of abstraction so far away from application it’s only interesting if you love math for math’s sake or (far more often) you’ve already been programming on your own.
Starting with weeks of “Let’s add and subtract binary numbers for reasons you’ll understand later,” or even, “Your terminal can do math, also here’s a for loop” is only interesting if you have already been building things, have a neurodivergent personality, or take stimulants.
A couple schools have figured this out.

Starting with, “Let’s build something that will be crappy for reasons you don’t understand yet” or even “this code will let you solve these puzzles” is substantially better than “How do you make logic gates for transistors?”
The average response when I show a professor our curriculum is, “Oh pish posh, you can’t build an application without understanding fundamentals of computing!”

You totally can. And *then* you learn what’s under the hood! And it makes learning that 1000x easier.

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More from @Austen

Feb 20
I’m pretty sure an American with average intelligence could become a Salesforce admin in 2-3 intense weeks.

A little competitive to break in, but average entry level salary (according to Salesforce) is $79k.

Probably among the best [time required:likely income] ratios ever.
Senior admins make well into six figures, or layer on Salesforce development and definitely make six figures.

Wild that these opportunities are out there.
You can do this for free with Trailhead courses from Salesforce, or there are a number of bootcamps if you want someone to help you learn and help you find a job
Read 5 tweets
Feb 17
Hey @docusign we have a "holy @#$% this bug is making it so our entire company is grinding to a halt" bug; support is reasonable but is very urgent for us.

Is there any way to escalate? Can I pay you more?

If anyone on tech support team can help ASAP I will buy them dinner.
I hate when people use Twitter this way but I will apologize profusely after this is resolved.

Case: 09003461
Read 4 tweets
Feb 15
Yes, companies can give every employee a “loan” that allows the employee to early exercise stock options.

They don’t.

Not because they’re evil. Because if a company fails they don’t want employees to personally owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for worthless stock.
I’m a big risk taker, but doing this for a late-stage company with a 9-10 figure 409a trading at >100x revenue?

I get nervous even reading this thread.
Didn’t even think about this - the company has raised $1B (in preferred stock) and is raising more.

A $1B+ pref stack.

All employees have common stock.

If the company sells for less than $1 Billion employee shares are literally worthless.

😳
Read 4 tweets
Jan 22
I hadn't thought about this, but could be very interesting.

The instruction/curriculum/product centralized and perfected, local in-home community. Maybe organizer helps recruit students and takes % revenue?

If anyone interested in trying email me - austen@bloomtech.com
I don't know how the numbers pencil out right now, but back of napkin it's just this side of crazy.

Less so if they can help bring in students who wouldn't otherwise attend.
I'm a big fan of the centralized/decentralized micro school model. I see it work great in K12 (@prendalearn); where people get together in person, using otherwise unused space, but keeping expensive pieces (instruction, product) centralized and scalable.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 6
My muse is speaking to me today: Some of the (many) things I got wrong building @bloomtech, in no order whatsoever.
1. I initially underestimated the importance of instructional design and the incredible skillset that being a phenomenal teacher is.

There are millions of talented engineers. The number of talented instructional designers who are also engineers is a tiny fraction of that.
2. I optimized too much for people being debt-free as quickly as possible.

Because this is a value I hold dearly, we started with a high repayment amount for a short period of time.

I think students are generally grateful when it's over, but it was more extreme than many wanted
Read 24 tweets
Jan 4
Alright, thanks for playing.

Winner is @ta_mffl!

DM me a way to pay you (venmo, cashapp, crypto) and I’ll send payment and post proof.

That was wild. No idea what it was good for or if I’ll ever do it again, but will share stats for “science.”
Preliminary data:

Followers from 192,779 to 193,341, so +562 followers.

1,895 total retweets, 3,136 profile visits, 110k impressions.

Honestly about equivalent with my normal tweets in # impressions.
For comparison: my 28 day summary from all tweeting.

The bump mid December is when Elon replied to one of my tweets.
Read 6 tweets

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