Hacker Fellows
Don't Get Compromised by Boring Companies
Hacker Fellows is a 1-year Fellowship program for hackers, coders and startup junkies to boost their salary and land jobs with early stage tech companies in Michigan while gaining lifelong connections.
The Hacker Fellows experience kicks off in Downtown Detroit with a 5-week software and entrepreneurship bootcamp. While in Detroit, the program pays for Fellow's housing, training, and gives them a bit of spending cash to enjoy the city amongst their techy peers. After training, Fellows are off to work full-time as a software developer where the program boosts their first year salary $15,000 & immerses them in Michigan's technology and entrepreneurship scene!
In 2015 Hacker Fellows had its first Fellowship cohort of 15 Fellows. I then came on-board to run the program in December of 2015.
We grew the applicant base from 160+ in 2014 to 500+ for our 2018 programming year. Along with our funding base and presence in Michigan's venture community.
In 2017 we started a 10-person Internship program, very similar to our Fellowship program. Through the Internship program, students go through 1-week of training and then get paired with a startup to intern with over the summer. We then boost the Intern's hourly compensation by $10/hr.
Other program modifications were a drastic re-brand in 2016-17 of which I led and designed fully.
From 2015 to 2017, Hacker Fellows has led to 55 jobs being created and is still growing. Both the Fellowship and Internship programs are a mainstay in Michigan amongst college campuses and startups.
To learn more, review the Hacker Fellows 2015 - 2017 Progress Report.
In the 2018 programming year, Hacker Fellows received over 600 student applications & 77 startups attempted to hire our 15 fellows and 10 interns. All fellows and inters received full-time employment before entering the program in May '18.
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