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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-rule-book dept.

On an August morning in Paris, when most of the city is in an advanced state of summer torpor, hundreds of young men and women are sweating it out in the third week of a gruelling month-long endurance test.

While the trial is called the "piscine" (swimming pool) and towels dot the ultra-modern building, the contest is not about physical prowess.

Welcome instead to the tryouts for Ecole 42, a free computer coding college founded by French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel in 2013 to help young people find work in IT or, better still, become their own bosses.

Named after the offbeat answer to "the ultimate question of life" in Douglas Adam's comic classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy," the ultra-modern college, with neither teachers nor conventional tuition, quickly gained cult status.

Around 40,000 people apply each year for one of roughly 1,000 spots on the programme.

Around 3,000 make it to the daunting "piscine" stage, in which the candidates spend 10 to 16 hours a day over four weeks completing projects and doing exams.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:26AM (4 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:26AM (#882554)

    10 to 16 hours a day for four weeks? Ah, very good, getting them used to the ongoing death march early on. Eeeexcellent. These will be perfect minions for the likes of EA.

    • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:15AM (2 children)

      by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:15AM (#882911) Journal

      Yeah, but it’s free. Think of how much better it will be when you actually get paid. :(

      • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:46AM

        by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:46AM (#882982)

        Aah, you mean when it's gone from being voluntary to being required lest they lose their job? Yesss, that is such a sweet change...

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:47AM

        by driverless (4770) on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:47AM (#883384)

        It's OK, after Ecole 42 you can go to Ecole 420 to get rid of the stress.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:18AM (#882985)

      The only thing this is going to produce is assholes who transition immediately to management and use the fact they did 16hr coding marathons to coerce, sorry, motivate YOU to do 16hr coding marathons. Exactly like my current boss - somehow he finds a way to let everyone knows early in his career he pulled off some bullshit work endurance. Does he do that now? Is he any good at his job? Of course not. He's a negative asset who ruins everyone around him.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:27AM (3 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:27AM (#882555)

    Around 3,000 make it to the daunting "piscine" stage, in which the candidates spend 10 to 16 hours a day over four weeks completing projects and doing exams. Some, like Aristide Rivet-Tissot, even sleep and shower on-site—hence the towels.

    In other words: welcome to Ecole42, where they'll teach you to do many extra work hours, and miss important family and life events for zero additional salary, so you can eventually become an overworked, embittered middle-aged former code hero who's earned the respect of younger programmers in their nondescript shitty software startup, like many software engineers in the US, only *in France* where the law explicitly forbids that sort of shenanigans.

    The very fact that it's setup by a billionaire tells me it's about producing code monkeys who are brainwashed into accepting exploitation, not empower them to become their own bosses. That's just the rhetoric to make them accept the brainwashing.

    So, yeah whatever... But I'm old enough to know better. Been there, done that, and fuck Ecole42 is what I say.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)

      by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:51PM (#882580) Journal

      Maybe he worked that hard on his way to becoming a billionaire. In my experience, the creation phase of software involves long hours. Getting caught up in the work is always part of it.

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:18PM (#882608)

        People work that hard in software to make 100k. Get lucky and make a deal for financing, and you can hire the monkeys from this school to do the programming, while you make deals that make you millions. Keep building on those connections, and you may find that going from a million to a billion was much faster than accumulating that first 100k.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @05:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @05:00PM (#882684)

      So, yeah whatever... But I'm old enough to know better. Been there, done that, and fuck Ecole42 is what I say.

      Same reason why armies want young men in their ranks - easy to brainwash with "for the glory of XYZ".

      Young people are easily impressed with "you work hard, you can have it all too!" and since statistics is a real thing, most just work hard for someone else until they burn out and someone new comes along, eager, onto the hamster wheel. "Faster hamster, faster! If you run fast enough, you get to the Promise Land!"

  • (Score: 1) by oumuamua on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:43PM

    by oumuamua (8401) on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:43PM (#882633)

    This is like the TV show 'the 3%' where poor people go through grueling tests to join the ranks of the elite on a paradise island. On average only 3% pass.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3%25
    https://www.quora.com/How-hard-is-it-to-pass-the-PISCINE-selection-at-%C3%89cole-42-What-attributes-and-or-skills-are-needed-to-excel-the-test [quora.com]

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:26AM (#882989)

    Ask yourself - how did Einstein become brilliant? Was is:

    1) Following strict discipline laid down by his billionaire superiors.
    2) Daydreaming and not conforming to most of the bullshit.
    3) Wellness spas and micro dosoing on brain supplements.

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