Should I Go to Recurse Center?

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I went to the recurse center in 2019 and I talk about it often. Enough that a few times a year someone will ask me if they should go or if I have any advice for applying. I thought I would write down my thoughts here so that when people ask I have somewhere to point them.

How did you spend your time?

I ended up breaking my time into roughly three sections. The first month, I focused on reinforcement learning (this was back in 2018 when there was much less content about it; the transformer paper had just dropped). I paired for much of this and it was a great way to spend time getting to know people. The second month I explored the question: "Is quantum computing something I should spend time on?" (My answer at the time was "probably not," but it was a fun month!). The third month, I focused on cryptography (mostly working through cryptopals).

I had a couple motivations at the time:

• I could feel myself growing tired of building the same app again and again. I had set a goal for myself some months earlier to "fall in love with a problem that was drastically more complicated than product software".
• I was toying with the idea of doing a computer science PhD and I wanted to see if any of those topics struck me as something I would be willing to spend years going deep on.

Do you have any general advice about what to work on ?

Here's what I found most helpful:

• Work with other people. It's tempting to come to Recurse Center with a predetermined direction, but my best experiences were collaborative. I've noticed that people who spend more time collaborating have a more positive experience. This might mean working on unfamiliar things, but that's valuable. For me, reinforcement learning wasn't high on my list of interests when I started, but a close friend wanted to work on the project and I'm so glad I joined him, it has signicantly contributed to my career.
• Attend (and organize!) events. RC is participant-driven; it's a great place to practice organizing. Memorable events for me were feelings check-ins (the only tech environment I've been in with a weekly ritual to just talk about our feelings), a group where mathematicians in the batch walked us through fun math corners like Markov chain theory, and board game nights.
• Present a lot. There are Friday presentations every week. I recommend presenting often (like every other week). These lightning presentations were motivating and helped me realize I'd learned a lot, even without something tangible to show.

Have you actually gotten a job through recurse center?

Yes. It was Recurse Center that introduced me to Replay, where I spent several years trying to make computers do things that they really didn't want to do.

Do you have any general advice about how to get in?

As far as interviewing advice, I don't really have a ton. I think there's a real "you-know-it-when-you-see-it" vibe that Recurse Center values (see: Julia Evans, or any talk from Strange Loop). Beyond that I think my best advice is: be yourself (unless you are mean-spirited and then maybe be a nicer version of yourself). Also, don't be too discouraged if you don't get in. I have given golden tickets to people who I thought were perfect fits, only to find out they didn't get accepted. It's like any other application process - there are a lot of factors (many of which have little to do with you) to take into account and if you insist on taking it personally you won't be doing yourself any favors.

Further reading

The self directives are a great guide when it comes to how to approach RC (and also how to approach life).

Deep Listening at the Recurse Center is a perfect example of the kind of the kind of thing that happens at RC that doesn't usually happen in highly technical spaces.

I have more questions

Great! Send me an email and I'll do my best to answer them!

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