My opinion on the matter is that RC was unfairly heavy handed. The cost (to everyone) of booting the individual out was greater than the cost of the RC buddy saying “hey, pay attention, these meetings are required; this is what you missed...” I don’t know the author’s disposition but I can imagine many personalities and circumstances where getting kicked out of this program would be devastating, emotionally or otherwise, especially if one planned for such a long “retreat” away from ordinary life.
When I asked my friends about the article, I was surprised to find opinions ranging from matching my own, to the opposite (“minimal tolerance for rule-breaking is justified in university environments to deal with unruly”). I never really investigated RC’s values and mission too deeply, but I always imagined they wanted to attract participants from truly diverse walks of life—intellectual, emotional, and economic. While it’s clear the author missed the 7am meeting because he goofed, I could imagine other individuals who would have missed because (for example) they have children and didn’t sleep, or they have depression and slept too much. It seems to me that zero-tolerance negatively affects such individuals, and pushes them out of programs like these.
They're also asking "hey, go without a job/just find some income for another 6 weeks" (and if they instead were taking a "sabbatical" or time off, shifting that for 6 weeks might also not be easy with their employer). Requiring to delay is a pretty tall order for a full-time program that's running 6-12 weeks (so not something easily fit in holidays etc), and pretty likely instead throwing them out completely.
This single anecdote would make me reconsider taking part in something like that. If you have to quit your job to reasonably participate in it and they run it this way, then why would you take the risk of joining?
I'm quite surprised the author still had a positive view of them after that.
Some perspective is required to understand RC's decision here.
If you only view this from the perspective of the author, it feels unfair that the RC would impose harsh consequences for not reading an e-mail. In theory, his situation could have been fixed by having the staff carve extra time out of their schedules to individually handle his onboarding at a later time and go through the work of bringing him up to speed with everyone else, right?
Consider this from your own perspective: Have you ever had your manager stop by your desk with a last-minute requirement that they forgot to mention? Or a new feature they forgot to put in the requirements document? How does it feel when they ask "Can't you just take 5 minutes and do this for me?" even though you have other important priorities and you know it will end up taking 1-2 hours out of your already busy schedule? It's not fair that you pay the price for someone else not following procedure. It's not fair that your other work must be de-prioritized just because your boss wants this done ASAP for their own benefit.
That's the problem. Catering to the author is not a zero-cost activity for the organization. The staff is likely already busy sticking to their schedules and working with all of the people who followed the rules and showed up on time. They'd be taking time away from the people who read their e-mail to give 1:1 instruction to the person who did not.
There are second-order consequences to consider, as well. If you start granting exceptions to a new group of people on day 1 for missing meetings and not reading your e-mail, word gets around. You send a signal that meetings are optional, reading e-mail is optional, and skipping required events is okay as long as you follow up with the staff later. From experience, the reality of situations like this is that some people can't be bothered to follow the rules unless there are negative consequences in place. As soon as you send a signal to everyone that there are no consequences, some fraction of your team will start pushing boundaries in more places.
Speaking from experience organizing similar situations: Granting exceptions and doing 1:1 catchup in a program like this is never as easy at it sounds from the other side. It's better to focus on delivering the best experience to the people who follow the rules rather than allocating disproportionate 1:1 time to the people who can't, unless you really have excess idle time or excess staffing. In reality, it's far more likely that everyone is already overloaded and overworked.
Don't both sides have to be understanding of the other's?
> Speaking from experience organizing similar situations: Granting exceptions and doing 1:1 catchup in a program like this is never as easy at it sounds from the other side.
This is absolutely true! But forcing the author to drop out of the program because he missed a meeting is acting like his _life_ is of no importance to someone at RC's convenience.
RC made a mistake in their onboarding. The author demonstrated good intent and a desire to fulfill his side of the obligation. For a variety of reasons, a message was not communicated.
To say it a different way:
RC failed to communicate effectively
RC probably should apply an expensive band-aid fix to the problem (1:1 instruction to someone who missed a critical meeting) and then re-evaluate how they communicate going forward so it doesn't happen again.
Acting like this is an individual failing instead of a system failing is a sign of ENORMOUS organizational ill-health.
RC made a mistake, and instead of bearing some of the burden of the mistake, they're harming _the person who was harmed by their error_.
When I make a mistake, I try to fix it. If I blamed the person who was hurt by my mistake, you'd consider me to be sociopathic.
RC's behavior is sociopathic at an organizational level.
The author wrote the RC communicated it via e-mail and also placed it on his calendar. From the article:
> It was on the calendar, but at 7:15am in my local time zone, so by merit of that alone I had simply ignored the event
RC also reached out to the author via e-mail, but didn't hear back until the second e-mail:
> Hi Erik! I sent you an email this morning, but never heard back – we didn’t see you during the welcome flow or talks this morning, and we wanted to check in to see what happened.
Furthermore, apparently the author is the only person who has ever missed the orientation communications:
> The schedule was at the top of the email sent on August 5th and was on the RC calendar, and missing the first day for this reason hasn’t happened to anyone else since we’ve been running RC online.
I don't think it's fair to suggest that RC wasn't communicating properly. The author admits he simply didn't read the e-mails and ignored the calendar event because it was too early.
This is an unnecessary jab that violates the guidelines on HN
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
> RC also reached out to the author via e-mail, but didn't hear back until the second e-mail:
You mean, the day that they kicked him out they first reached out via email and then zulip, and you somehow think that the author not having an extremely short turn around time on checking their email makes them more at fault?
> Furthermore, apparently the author is the only person who has ever missed the orientation communications:
To be clear, when you say the first person, you mean the first person since March 30th (when they started being remote) who both missed the communication and happened to be in a timezone where they weren't just naturally up at that time. I don't imagine that there have been a lot of people placed in this situation that you are comparing the author too.
> The author wrote the RC communicated it via e-mail and also placed it on his calendar. From the article:
The calendar was full of events, majority of those being optional organized by other attendees. You had to click on this event to see any details about it.
So, no. Calendar does not count for proper communication.
> It turns out there was a “Welcome Event” held on the morning of the first day that I was supposed to attend. It was mentioned in one of the emails I had received (my fault for not reading this carefully enough), but not mentioned in the “Remote RC Orientation guide”, nor in 1-1 with the “onboarding buddy”.
It seems like poor design that a meeting with such severe consequences for missing it isn't repeatedly mentioned and cautioned about, or at least participants warned about the consequences.
iirc when I attended there were at least 2 separate communications after acceptance that stated missing the orientation meant you'd have to defer and do a different batch instead.
They make extremely rare exceptions for delayed flights, family emergencies, etc but it means they basically have to hand-hold you through a 1:1 orientation to get you caught up, which would be unsustainable if more people missed the first day. A big part of day #1 (and the first orientation in particular) is learning the social rules and seeing example of them in use, and they have a hardline policy against allowing people into the chat system, physical space, and forums until they've learned the social rules thoroughly.
If I had to guess I'd say this policy is mostly for the protection of other attendees and discourse in the internal communication streams. They don't want people going all loose-cannon on the internal Zulip until they're made aware of the rules and their responsibilities to abide by them.
> They make extremely rare exceptions for delayed flights, family emergencies, etc but it means they basically have to hand-hold you through a 1:1 orientation to get you caught up, which would be unsustainable if more people missed the first day.
It's hard to understand the impact of granting exceptions and cutting people slack until you've been on the organizers' side of this situation.
It sounds harsh, but drawing a strict line in the sand results in a better situation for everyone. Once you go down the path of catering to everyone's exceptions or oversights, you start allocating disproportionately large amounts of time to the people who can't follow schedules or manage their time. A 1:1 catchup meeting is far less efficient than a 1:20 orientation meeting. Do just one of these 1:1 meetings and you've doubled your time commitment.
Ironically, the person who didn't read their e-mail gets individual 1:1 attention and has more flexibility on the scheduling. It's almost like rewarding those who fail to follow the rules.
When I handled onboarding/orientations, I thought cutting people slack for missed meetings and deadlines would build rapport and encourage them to be more considerate next time around. Instead, it has the opposite effect. Once you start signaling that meeting obligations are semi-optional and that deadlines are more suggestions than cutoffs, a lot of people start taking advantage of the situation. Sort of a broken windows theory for time management.
On the other hand, if the rules are strict and the consequences are clear, people start paying attention, prioritizing organizational order, and reading their e-mails. You do a lot less hand-holding, and you can spend your time focusing on catering to those who follow the rules instead of doing 1:1 meetings with the people who can't or won't read their e-mail.
Don't let the tail wag the dog. Set clear expectations and stick to them. Grant exceptions when people communicate in advance (e.g. can't get a flight, flight delayed) or have truly unpredictable exceptions (car accident), but don't set the precedent that reading e-mail is optional because you can count on someone else to fix it for you later.
If you value your time so highly that you can't take 30 minutes to save a participant weeks of their life, I probably don't want to be a participant in your organization. My time as a participant is worth more than that.
Your claim that a single 1:1 meeting doubles their time commitment is incorrect considering the number of other time commitments involved. Indeed, it seems that they already organized 1:1 meetings that occurred before this. And they had multiple 1:1 (or worse, n:1) interviews. And so on.
I think as the parent comment says, it's hard to understand the impact of such exceptions until you've been on the other side of the fence.
I've witnessed other organizations go through this process in the past, where a new policy was initially lax with many exceptions granted, then as the consequences of the exceptions become more apparent over time (claims of unfairness, uneven enforcement, lower attendance, etc.), they eventually make the policy stricter and draw explicit lines in the sand, even if it makes a small minority of cases more painful when exceptions aren't granted.
I’ve also seen organizations realize in that situation that they can change or automate things as to reduce the consequences of the exceptions, or to make rules simpler to follow, in justifying drawing that firm line. Trust is won when people see you as being fair, and part of being fair is knowing your perspective has been heard and considered.
Have you ever been frustrated when your boss stops by your desk and asks "Can you just take 5 minutes and do this simple thing for me?" without any regard to all of the other work you have to do, or the fact that the task is really going to take 1-2 hours once you consider all of the nuance and downstream consequences?
This is the same situation. It's a "can't you just..." expectation of the organization without any regard to the other people or the consequences for the rest of the organization.
And like nikisweeting said, it sets a precedent. Once you start granting exceptions for not reading an e-mail to one person, you'd better be prepared to grant that same exception to everyone, otherwise you're going to end up with accusations of unfairness or prejudice very quickly.
Now that you're granting exceptions to everyone, multiply that 30 minute disruption across all of the people in the organization, and then multiply that across all of the different items on your schedule. Before you know it, you're spending half your time working with the people who can follow the rules as a group, and the other half of your time doing 1:1s with the people who would rather match the schedule to their personal convenience because they know doing so doesn't have any negative consequences.
It doesn't just sound harsh, it is harsh. Maybe you have to be harsh because of time/resource constraints or because you want to build a strict, rules-oriented culture—but you should still be honest to yourself about that.
> broken windows theory
"Broken windows theory" is an empirically dubious argument that's consistently used to advocate for abusive policing policies—seems like a poor inspiration for any kind of welcoming social culture.
Hard to say from the outside, but it seems they kind of failed at that. I'd suspect that's also something lost in the switch to online: I can easily see how this would be a lot more obviously important for the in-person program than online, where if I interpret the article correctly even some self-organized things happened even earlier in the day and it quickly becomes just another meeting they missed the crucial reference to due to being busy with clearing their schedule for the program.
EDIT: From what other comments have written about it (it primarily being about teaching rules and customs), it also feels like something that doesn't need 1:1 time with staff to replace, but a "go watch this recording now, and understand we are being nice about this now". An intense get-to-know-each-other thing would be a lot harder to replace (because it'd probably require extra 1:1 time between the attendees individually, which remotely is tricky)
Keep in mind that you're only getting one person's perspective, and that person has an incentive to pitch the situation in their favor.
Generally, if everyone else manages to show up on time but one person does not, I wouldn't assume that the organization is at fault. Even the author admits that it was his own fault for not reading the e-mail.
> if everyone else manages to show up on time but one person does not, I wouldn't assume that the organization is at fault
I was once denied entry to a $350 class (with no refund or chance to defer), because the address for the company on Google Maps (it was out-of-date) differed from the address on their website linked in the scheduling email.
They had a similar no-exception policy that missing any of the class meant you had to pay again and start over. When I pointed out the mistaken address they also said "everyone else managed to show up here".
This kind of thing does happen sometimes by mistake, or due to reasonable lapses in communication, but the punitive feel of the organization's response made me never want to do business with them again.
It seems like this puts organizations between a rock and a hard place, because on the one hand they cant make exceptions all the time, but on the other hand it alienates people much more in the few cases where honest accidents did happen.
I have no conclusion or argument to make here, other than to say maybe it's an opportunity to make the docs even more explicit so that such a mixup is less likely to happen in the future?
I'm not claiming it's not the authors fault, just why there might be a disconnect on how the mistake is seen, and if it appears reasonable to not allow that mistake to happen, all the while the frame of reference you are operating in has changed dramatically.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's good to have clear boundaries for your rules and to enforce them unfailingly, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. My original comment was more about how if you have those kind of boundaries and rules, it's probably better to err on the side of overcommunicating them and to optimize for not having to enforce them in the first place. You know, something as simple as, "hey, don't forget this meeting coming up, if you miss it you'll be removed from the program" as a reminder. It's good to have boundaries, but it's even better to help prevent people from crossing them in the first place.
But of course I'm just an outside observer reading a one-sided account of things, so maybe there's more to it, or that's just how they prefer to run things which is fine too I suppose.
It's the same reason we have "Are you sure?" dialogs for destructive or irreversible actions in software.
I attended RC when it was Hacker School, years ago. I quit my job, dropped out of University, and moved nearly a thousand miles to attend. If they had done this to me on my first day, I would have been destitute and devastated. That is all I have to say about that.
I did the same, I dropped out of high school and skipped my graduation to fly 3000 miles to attend. I actually went straight from school in Portland to NYC, then straight from the airport to the first day of orientation.
I ended up missing the first ~45min of orientation due to my flight being delayed.
They made it clear this was generally unacceptable, and might have resulted in me having to defer my 3-month batch, but in the end let me continue my batch because it was an extreme case (also this was much earlier back when it was called HackerSchool, I believe this policy has gotten stricter since then).
I felt similarly to this author initially "wow they really would've made me miss a 3 month experience that I changed my whole life to do because of a missed 45min meeting?!"
But with a few years of hindsight and understanding more about how RC works and how important the social rules are, I believe RC has a right to make this initial orientation mandatory. Theres a 1:1 correlation between people not fully grokking the social rules and communication styles and causing disruptions that have ripple effects on everyone's experience at RC during their batch (and for years afterwards). The potential downside of letting people enter the community without this onboarding experience outweighs the pain of drawing a line in the sand that defers a handful of people who miss the first meeting by accident.
What does constitute a historically underrepresented background to get a grant? Does that mean that grandparent might have been poor but not had access to a grant because they're not considered underrepresented according to RC criteria?
Don’t be obtuse. You know it’s either race or sex based. If they were open to poor Indian or Appalachian men they’d mention that kind of thing explicitly.
"... and missing the first day for this reason hasn’t happened to anyone else since we’ve been running RC online"
In my opinion this is an incredibly unfriendly and immature thing to say. The count of people it happens to is irrelevant. It happened to one person. "No one else had that problem" is not inclusive. I cannot imagine a good intent. If the story is accurate, this is shameful behavior on RC's part. I would like to hear a response from someone over there
I'm an RC alum, and that sentence also struck me. Recurse goes to great lengths to create an inclusive, accepting environment, and explicitly calls out impostor syndrome. Saying "you're alone in messing up" seems completely counter to that, and I'd also love to hear from the staff.
Your quote was taken out of context. The author was trying to blame RC's lack of communication for his absence. The quote is a response from RC explaining that this is the first incidence of someone missing the orientation.
The author even admits that RC put the event on his calendar, but he simply ignored it because it was at 7:15AM:
> It was on the calendar, but at 7:15am in my local time zone, so by merit of that alone I had simply ignored the event
The author also admits that RC tried to contact him as soon as they noticed he wasn't in the meeting, but he also missed that communication.
> Hi Erik! I sent you an email this morning, but never heard back – we didn’t see you during the welcome flow or talks this morning, and we wanted to check in to see what happened.
It wasn't until the afternoon and a second e-mail that the OP started communicating with them about the issue.
RC’s online experience just sounds poorly designed. Everything you’re saying about staff being overbooked, exceptions being intolerable, etc. isn’t indicative of an efficient and inclusive organization. It sounds like everybody is overworked, and policies like these are simply because RC can’t cope with its resources, not because RC has some great management theory in efficiency.
The message that they sent him to explain kicking him out is... really odd.
> The Remote RC Orientation Guide was written as a software guide for anyone in the RC community who was new to Virtual RC rather than as a full guide to the first week for new folks. We will add a note to the top of it to remind folks to check Community for the schedule of their first day, and we’ll add a link to the thread with the schedule to the ‘Tools for participating in Remote RC’ email.
So they are acknowledging that their communication was inadequate
> We only make exceptions to missing the first day when someone has an emergency
And they acknowledge that they have the ability to fix this at this point in time.
Responses like this are why organizations often choose to do nothing rather than improve. Just because they are improving future communications does not mean their communication was inadequate or that this qualifies as an emergency.
If it does not qualify as an emergency then why are they kicking them out? No second chances, no "this is your last and final warning" nothing. Would you willingly cause 6 week long holes in peoples lives over a simple misunderstanding?
"Emergency" is obviously in reference to an emergency causing the person to miss the meeting (examples: a car accident on the way to the meeting; a canceled flight that would otherwise have been on time; a fire at their domicile that morning).
"I didn't read the documentation thoroughly" is regrettable, but not an emergency. Whether it is grounds for kicking the person out depends on the importance of the missed meeting (seemingly extremely), the due diligence of the organization (it seems this was the first person to miss the meeting under rules that have been in effect for months), and the cost of missing it for both parties (under no circumstances is it a "hole in people's live"; they are not sending people who miss the meeting to prison).
This really does not reflect well upon RC administration. At all. A cautionary tale for anyone considering getting involved. Even without getting booted out it sounds like RC play the aggressive pseudo-friendliness card pretty hard. Not everyone wants or needs that in their life. I've noped-out of a couple of orgs because of it.
Wow, this is remarkably shitty of RC. It’s one meeting - If the organization was set up correctly, the new recruit should be able to read notes, or watch a recording.
Definitely will recommend people stay far away from this organization.
There is a lot more that goes on during orientation, and treating it as another optional video to sit through harms the sort of community that are trying to form.
Do you know if RC communicates to future participants: “Join this meeting, or you will be removed from the program.” ? Maybe all this theory about weeding non-serious people out is true, but I’d hope each prospective student understands the stakes.
> A: It’s okay to miss one or two days of your batch because of prior engagements, however, it’s not okay to miss more than that (e.g., a full week). If you would need to miss more than a couple of days of a batch, you should attend another batch. A large part of the educational value of RC comes from your interactions with your batchmates and alumni, and being around consistently during your batch is an important part of that.
> Q: I only need to miss one day, but it’s the first day of the batch. Is that okay?
> A: No, unfortunately. The first day of a batch is different from the rest, and it’s essential that everyone is there for it. If you can’t make it, you should choose another batch that fits your schedule better.
Notably that doesn't call out this meeting. The poster was generally present on the first day... they just didn't attend a 7:15am meeting that they weren't even aware was a thing.
> Notably that doesn't call out this meeting. The poster was generally present on the first day
If the first day is marked mandatory, then any scheduled events on that day should be assumed to be mandatory unless stated otherwise.
It's not reasonable to read that a day is mandatory and assume that you can show up for only part of the day and get credit for attending the full day.
> they just didn't attend a 7:15am meeting that they weren't even aware was a thing.
Toward the end of the article, the author admits that he simply ignored the calendar invite without reading the details because it was at 7:15AM his time:
> It was on the calendar, but at 7:15am in my local time zone, so by merit of that alone I had simply ignored the event (e.g. did not click it and read the description).
> If the first day is marked mandatory, then any scheduled events on that day should be assumed to be mandatory unless stated otherwise.
This is OPs description of the calendar
> The last thing I remember from onboarding was a link to a shared calendar, to which anyone could create a new event. There were already quite a few on there, such as a weely meeting for people trying to learn more mathematics, another weekly meeting for a ML reading group, a daily leetcode practice time, “office hours” held by various RC staffers, some fun stuff, like a streamed cello practice on saturdays, music / book clubs, and many more.
Certainly not every event on the first day was actually mandatory. Not clicking on the event at 7:15am in the morning just in case doesn't seem to be an offense that deserves this level of punishment.
If you join a new organization, they send you a calendar, and the first event on the calendar is marked as an all-hands orientation meeting, would you really assume that it's somehow optional?
> Not clicking on the event at 7:15am in the morning just in case doesn't seem to be an offense that deserves this level of punishment.
I understand that you disagree with the consequences for the authors' actions, but I'm struggling to comprehend all of the people trying to place the blame on Recurse Center when the author clearly admits that he didn't read the communications and chose to ignore the calendar invite.
If someone failed to attend the orientation, failed to respond to an e-mail asking why they missed the orientation (the first e-mail), and admitted that they weren't actually reading the e-mail communications or even reading their own calendar, I would have to assume that they weren't all that interested in taking their participation seriously in the first place.
Reading the details, participating, and showing up on time are basic prerequisites for any organization. It's not realistic to expect the staff to go out of their way to divert effort and attention to those who can't follow through with the basics. It's not fair to the staff, and it's not fair to the rest of the members who are putting in proper effort to follow the rules.
The Recurse Center gave him a second chance to participate in the next session. Given that he missed most of the first day and the orientation and he couldn't engage in a timely manner with follow-up e-mails asking about his absence, I think that's reasonable.
> and the first event on the calendar is marked as an all-hands orientation meeting, would you really assume that it's somehow optional?
If I saw it, of course not. But, if the calendar is filled with community fluff events I would absolutely expect to be told about any mandatory events in another fashion and I might well (like the author) not notice it.
> The Recurse Center gave him a second chance to participate in the next session
Given that this means 6 more weeks of no pay, that's not really a second chance. This sort of time commitment means that it can't just be rescheduled at low cost.
There is quite difference between missing first day and missing first morning meeting. I can see how article author would read this and think he is complying.
What goes on at the orientation? I'm guessing from your screen name you have some first hand experience. This blog post is my first time hearing about the Recurse Center so I don't know how it differs from other similar programs.
The main part is teaching people the social rules, showing real-life examples of them in practice, and emphasizing their importance. It's a big part of what keeps their internal discussion forum non-toxic and sustainable with 1000+ alumns active. They also explain social expectations, scheduling, batch logistics, and many other things.
I wonder if this comes down to a personality conflict of someone with an organized mind vs someone with a disorganized mind. I've been very successful in life but I've had friends in my life repeatedly intervene and sort out organization aspects because I am that bad at it. I once missed a job interview because I didn't realize what day it was (they rescheduled me and I got the job and the consistent feedback there was they are glad they got me). My School and University timetables were memorized by my close friends who'd write it all down and give me a heads up on changes to the schedule that were happening.
Repeatedly I encounter people who witness my level of disorganization with shock that I could possibly be of value to society. I can see here that someone missed a meeting invite. I suspect someone organized saw this and couldn't fathom how someone so disorganized could possibly succeed.
Given what some other commenters have said here, I'd also assume a conflict in weight put on it. For the organizers, this is obviously a very important touchpoint that nobody would miss, and if they did they clearly don't care about important things. It's obviously really important to the in-person program, and now it's online. Where for the author it suddenly was just another online meeting that he missed the pointers to. (EDIT: if I understand the author correctly, not even the first thing in the calendar?)
Even the idea of an absolutely non missable meeting must have come from someone with a very different perspective than myself. I don't get offended at this and it's ok to have a program for a certain group of people only (I'm too old anyway) but I wonder if they've thought about this themselves. There's a set of people, quite a large set in the tech community, who'd do poorly in RC based on this discussion.
Overall it's still one of the more lax orgs in this regard though, and it caters well to those who aren't great at following rigid schedules. Out of a 1-3 month batch, literally everything else is missable. There is no attendance, no grades, etc. nothing to otherwise force students to comply with some strict schedule.
That sounds like there is a serious design issue with their system if this one thing only is unmissable yet everything else is totally different. If this is critical it's the piece that should be recorded and distributed so no one can miss it.
I started reading this article excited that Recurse had gone online and, after following RC and Hackruiter for almost a decade, I might now be able to do it. I ended it in a similar state as the author - bewildered as what to think. I know the folks running that program don’t do anything lightly, and they thought long and hard about whether that decision best served their mission and goals. Still, I’m torn.
I understand people have to draw the line somewhere, but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous. In a remote first world, I think more and more things will be forced to become asynchronous, whether we like it or not.
I’m reminded of make-up tests. Professors dread making them, they take real time, and they indirectly “reward” those who can’t make the first sitting (with more study time, etc). Some do refuse to do it. Still, universities compel teachers to do it because the value of having each student tested is considered a crucial part of the mission.
I get that this is a different situation; there’s a social unity component, some experiences can’t be exactly recreated. But is completely booting someone for missing one initial meeting in spirit with the mission? Is so much lost from a recorded version that it is truly better for that seat to stay empty for 6 weeks and one less person to be able to join the next batch as a result of a time zone gaffe? And is it really fair to say that because no one else had this problem, the six months of evolution post-COVID should match the same intentionality and strictness of running an in-person program for a decade?
I hope that at the very least, folks over there are looking at what happened with an empathetic lens - especially if they are truly willing to take this person for the next batch, and want to see them succeed.
> but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous.
It's not a question of whether or not something could possibly be made asynchronous. Most things could be made asynchronous with enough investment of time, money, energy, and staff.
The real question is what are the tradeoffs and what are the consequences. If the RC is trying to build a community, making the group orientation asynchronous wouldn't have the same effect.
Having a true emergency is an entirely different situation than just sleeping in (OP admits he ignored the calendar invite because it was at 7:15AM). In a true emergency, people are usually willing to go out of their way to make exceptions. When someone simply ignores e-mails and sleeps in, it's not fair to ask other people to go above and beyond to cater to that person.
The way you’re communicating is wildly unempathetic, and I truly hope your zero-tolerance faux-friendly “better for everyone” attitude isn’t ruining other students’ experiences. You’re painting the author as some sort of lazy individual who does things on his own accord. “Sleeping in” and “ignoring emails” doesn’t seem to be accurately portraying. Being online at 8AM is not “sleeping in” by most people’s standards. Perusing and participating in discussions is “not ignoring emails”. He made a mistake, RC has zero tolerance for it.
Why not just say “We have a zero tolerance policy for missing mandatory events” without all of the non-sequitur pseudo-rationalization? That’s OK. People may not agree with it, and it may hurt other people financially, but at least it’s direct and honest.
I’ll grant that when I read the article, I missed the part where he admitted to intentionally ignoring the invite. If they tossed him for what they considered a values mismatch, that’s obviously a little different. Still, I feel like a “Listen bub!” voice conversation could have helped here, versus relying on email - if only in delivering the bad news better, if not actually hearing out the apology and talking over potential next steps. And I give him points for admitting to that mistake - that strikes me as far more in line with their values than lying and saying his mother was sick (which he could have trivially done).
As for asynchronicity, I totally get that something will be lost. The question is whether enough will be lost as to render the participant totally unable to learn those values over, say, the next few days and catch up. But something might be gained as well - it’s possible that these synchronous moments are an actual bottleneck. Experimenting with async could result in them handling more students with less staff.
Broadcasting and passive communication will always be lossy in any format. You’re absolutely right that a “hey bub” moment would have really clearly indicated whether the author was willing to buckle down or not.
And, even better, they could have had that discussion in the interview. “We aren’t here for fun, we are where to X. We demand your full attention even if things sit outside your personal comfort zone in sleeping, etc.” But I guess it’s easier to just kick people out of the program than to be delicate and upfront with wording and seriousness.
RC alum here: I read most of the thread, and don't have much to add to the great points raised, other than to second that "missing the first day for this reason hasn’t happened to anyone else since we’ve been running RC online" seems pretty counter to the inclusive spirit of RC. I think better wording should have been used here.
The thing that struck me is that RC is 99.9% unstructured. Orientation day is the one mandatory day. I kept thinking - what a shame for the author to miss the one day in a 6-12 week program that they need to be there for.
To be clear, RC is run by friendly people that encourage learning (i did it last year). This situation isn’t great, but it can’t really be mapped to a universal RC experience.
With the new remote setup, I’m sure there’s a balance between the staff letting anyone limp through virtual engagement with the “programming” (of which there is very little — edit: I think this is a great thing about RC, very few mandatory events) and kicking people out based on a strict set of rules. On the one hand, you have less of an engaged community. On the other, you might make harsh seeming decisions sometimes to try to ensure all attending are “all in”.
They might be very friendly, but they sure seem to pull the trigger very quickly. That's the problem here. I understand that they don't want less engaged members in their program.
It sounds like there is a misunderstanding on expectations.
The school expected people to be all present for that meeting. I don't know how well they communicated that expectation, but if it's a fireable offence to miss it without recourse or chance of pardon then they should have made that abundantly clear.
The other missed expectation is that probably the school officials don't see this as a firing. After all they just moved his batch back by one. What's the big deal? Lot's of new people come in, some joins now, some joins 6 weeks later. That's perfectly sensible from the schools perspective. But from an individual's perspective, who just put their life on hold to do stuff with them for that specific 6 month, the next batch might very well not be a viable option.
So these very friendly people sure seems to be also either lacking in empathy, or not really big on second chances. I will make sure to do my best to avoid them, less them be friendly with me too by accident.
Another RC alum, and I'm surprised by this. When I was in batch, there was a different sensitive situation regarding another alum, and it was handled slowly, methodically, transparently, and with all the values RC espouses.
RC is new to me. They force you to quit your job, connect you with other programmers, and take a recruiter's cut by getting you a new job?
Kicking someone out for accidentally missing a meeting when you know they quit their job to join seems rather... unfeeling, and would make me question their culture.
1. They don't force you to do anything; people choose to attend RC for 6-12 weeks, generally in transitionary points in their life/career, or when they want you to start such transitions. You come to RC to take charge of your education and focus on exploring problems that are genuinely interesting to you, in a community of curious, kind-hearted people.
2. You have no obligation to conduct your job search through RC, but they are happy to connect you with their partner companies, and yes, that is how they fund this whole experience.
3. OP wasn't "kicked out", they were asked to defer to a later batch, where they would hopefully complete the mandatory orientation
I might sound biased here, because I had a fantastic experience as a Recurse alum, and I do think that this misunderstanding could have been communicated better. But, I wanted to make sure I answered your questions/clarify the facts around RC!
Deferral and being kicked out mostly feel like the same thing for all practical purposes, in that they both end up with the same bad consequences. (In fact, I’d even say deferral could have potentially far worse consequences for a person of average means!)
They don't force you to quit your job, and offer 1 week mini-batches for people that can't do larger time committment. They also don't take a cut from your salary for hiring work; that is handled between them and the companies looking for hires.
So this seems like a failure of communication on RC's part in the beginning. If you need someone to show up in an online meeting at 7:15 AM on the first day, you should discuss that. It's just not normal for many people to be working by then.
The aftermath, you know, there are arguments — but if you solve the first problem, you don't have to have them.
Communication failure was just the first issue. The lack of flexibility means I would never take a risk in this org and assume they have no interest in supporting people who made it through their screening process. You don't matter to them because the first meeting is more important than you.
> If you need someone to show up in an online meeting at 7:15 AM on the first day
Recurse Center did make it mandatory. They communicated it via e-mail, but the author admittedly didn't read the e-mail.
Also, it was a 10:15AM meeting. The author was attending from a different timezone 3 hours away. The author admits to seeing the event on his calendar but choosing to ignore it.
A lot of people are jumping to conclusions based on the first half of the article. The author provides more details toward the end.
He admits that RC put the event on his calendar, but he chose to ignore it because it was too early. RC also apparently tried to get in touch with him when they realized he wasn't in the orientation, but he somehow missed that e-mail as well. It wasn't until later in the afternoon that he started responding to their communications:
> It was on the calendar, but at 7:15am in my local time zone, so by merit of that alone I had simply ignored the event (e.g. did not click it and read the description). By the time I was online on my first day it was over
And from the RC's second e-mail attempt to reach him:
> At 1pm, I was informed via Zulip that
> Hi Erik! I sent you an email this morning, but never heard back – we didn’t see you during the welcome flow or talks this morning, and we wanted to check in to see what happened.
RC also inquired if there was an emergency so they could accommodate him, but he admitted that he simply ignored the calendar invite, didn't read the original e-mail, and and didn't see/read the first follow-up e-mail.
Regardless of what you think about their response, it's important to keep in mind that the OP admittedly chose to ignore the calendar invite because it was too early and also missed the follow-up e-mail where they tried to get in touch with him for missing the meeting. This wasn't a cut-and-dry case of the RC not communicating the meeting to everyone.
I don't see a lot of people claiming that this was "a cut-and-dry case of the RC not communicating the meeting to everyone", but rather about the proportionality of the response/the proportionality to the previous communication - and which you seem to have the biggest disagreement about with them.
> but rather about the proportionality of the response/the proportionality to the previous communication
Many of the comments are assuming that the event was not properly communicated, whereas the author admits that it was communicated in the orientation e-mail as well as placed on his calendar. The author admits to not reading the e-mail, not reading the calendar invite, and not reading the follow-up e-mail where they attempt to get in touch with him to understand why he missed the meeting.
Other commenters have also shared the exact wording from the RC's communications, which makes it clear that the first day is mandatory.
If I had just read the comments or just read the first 1/2 of the article, I would have assumed RC was to blame. However, after reading the details it seems that RC did all the right things, including trying to contact the author during the missed meeting for clarification.
Once someone missed a meeting and the follow-up e-mail about the missed meeting without explanation and admits to simply ignoring the communications and the calendar invite, it's not a positive sign that they're taking the program seriously. This wasn't the case of a single missed communication.
I missed a sign up deadline for a yearly event by 24 hours. For two reasons-
1. Because I didn't organize properly
2. They sent out a reminder email that did not get to me (through no fault of my own)
I reached out. It would have been trivial for them to make an exception for me, but they didn't.
Lesson learned: you are at the mercy of the organizer. Humans make mistakes, exceptions can be made. However, they are deadlines for a reason, and if you didn't make it, do better next time.
Summary: The Recurse Center is a six week retreat by programmers. The first day of RC is mandatory. That's the day they go over how the community works, and their community guidelines which they consider to be one of the most important parts of RC. Since OP missed the first day, RC told them they would have to defer to the next batch.
IMO, it does seem like the consequences of missing the first day are a bit harsh. To be fair to RC, they do mention this is the only person to miss the first day since they've been doing RC remotely. This person is the only person out of hundreds to not know they were supposed to be there the first day.
When I went through the Recurse Center several years ago, I recall them mandating you are there for the first day. My high school graduation was the same week as the first day of Recurse Center. I wound up flying from Chicago to New York over the weekend to attend the first day of RC on Monday. Flying back to Chicago on Wednesday to attend high school graduation on Thursday. Then flying back to New York over the weekend to finish RC.
For more context, the RC team is understaffed. It's ran full time by 7 people. Notably the staff are doing this largely out of good will. RC makes enough money to sustain the community, but does not make a lot. I know they are having a hard time during COVID. I can understand why they wouldn't want to have one of their staff go through the orientation again as it would create a large burden on them.
tl;dr The penalty RC gave is harsh although they likely did communicate the fact the first day is mandatory properly and performing orientation a second time would create a burden on them.
Just as frequently early birds. I'm ready for most days by 630 or 7. Half of my team gets into the office by 8 and half comes in at like 1030 or 11.
I think we just hear more from the night owls because it's more likely that business will think early am is an ok meeting time. It's pretty rare to see a meeting scheduled for 6pm, for instance.
Well considering the organization is apparently based on the East coast, it's a 10:15am meeting. Sounds like this is their first time doing it remotely.
If you run a remote thing with people from across the the world it's pretty hard to schedule things that are not a somewhat inconvenient time for anyone.
Having attended RC, this actually makes sense if you understand the scene. First, RC intro is key to getting everybody on the same page, and has been done in-person until recently. If an early-morning meeting seems weird, chalk it up to timezones...the in-person intro is at a much more humane hour for the East Coast and has catered breakfast and everything.
Also, as part of the whole hard-line thing...RC is in NYC and is in large parts reflective of that. They need to filter out the large quantity of dabbles and dilettantes and people who would attend just as another social status thing or adventure in finding themselves. They want people who are committed to their craft, and if you've set aside six weeks or twelve weeks of your life but can't stay on top of reading emails and double-checking that you've done everything right, maybe you shouldn't be complaining.
If they're expecting all condidates to attend and non-attendance to be fatal, it seems ... diskish? ... to not atune candidates regarding the consequences of missing the very first meeting. They might not be made of the right stuff, or perhaps they were about to make an incredible contribution to programme and culture? Who knows! They missed that one meeting. Oh well!
Is the RC scene such that a plethora of such dilettantes make it through the interviews and get admitted, only to follow up and not contribute?
It doesn’t seem like the author fits into this category of person anyway; he did show (early in the morning) and did participate faithfully on the first day, unbeknownst to him making the mistake.
> "remote transition probably makes these logistics harder"
I'm not sure if you are stating that as a reason for or against summarily kicking one out on the first misunderstanding?
Yes, it's harder to communicate in a remote setting and easier to cross wires and miss expectations. That's why you need to exercise more compassion and communicate more clearly. Sending a deluge of emails before the program start is not clear communication, and kicking someone out at the first miss-step is not compassionate.
For a few years, I've thought that attending the Recurse Center could be a great thing to do.
Now I'm reading this story, and the story itself destroyed about 50% of my interest in the Recurse Center.
I'd expect an institution like the Recurse Center to be able to see what happened here, make a graceful accommodation in this instance, and try to improve it in the future. This story is about a systems-level failure, not an individual-level failure.
So, RC acting as if this is an individual-level failure is extremely off-putting to me.
I don't think I have an unreasonable take on the situation. So now this /u/rcthrowaway account shows up... and it's odd to me.
If it represents Recurse Center, I'm baffled at how tone-deaf the account is, and it's _rapidly_ destroying the other 50% of my interest in RC.
If I found out, conclusively, that this anonymous account speaks for RC, I will never again consider attending RC.
Which makes me think - how might I speak, if _I_ created an anonymous account, and wanted to destroy the reputation of an institution? I'd say exactly the kinds of things that the anonymous account is saying.
So it's either 1) tonedeaf and revealing of deep institutional ill-health, or 2) a false-flag operation trying to attack the Recurse Center.
If option 2 is true, my interest and curiosity is sparked, and maybe I _would_ attend RC.
I'm in the middle of a long sabbatical from work. I could do it right now if I wanted to, but this story strikes it completely from my list.
If you're out there and reading this, Recurse Center, I would recommend adopting a perspective that your side of this story looks _really bad_.
Edit: Spelling. For years I thought it was the "Recourse" center, not "Recurse" center. TIL!
I am sorry my tone came off as tone-deaf. I'm neither a secret RC plant or a false-flag on them...I'm somebody who uprooted their life for 3 months and traveled thousands of miles and left behind all of my friends to attend an amazing program.
Please understand my perspective then that I might be less than kind in my opinions on somebody who missed an online meeting (basically the only one actually asked for by RC!) from the comfort of their home and then saw fit to complain about it in a blog post.
At face value, their attempts to defend the Recurse Center are largely backfiring. It makes the Recurse Center seem harsher and stricter than even a traditional university course. And references to it being a "scene" makes me think that the "scene" feels really pretentious and exclusive rather than inclusive.
Poor wording on my part. NYC is full of different scenes/social circles, clubs, programs, so on and so forth. There is a flakiness (in my opinion) that often accompanies people that try out lots of different things.
For a program like RC, having people join and drop out or decide to only show up for a few days a week or whatever directly cheapens the experience for others and damages the community and serendipity and mood that arises when you have a bunch of smart, dedicated, and focused people there.
My belief (and I emphatically am not staff, just an alum with opinions) is that they want to make absolutely sure people are committed. They also want to make absolutely sure everybody is getting the same start.
Doesn't seem that odd? They're not claiming to speak officially for them, and could easily be an alumni etc that wants to present "the other side" but not tie it to their main identity.
If someone sends you an email that you need to attend a mandatory orientation for your first day of work and ignored it and didnt show, you're probably just going to have wait till the next cycle, if you even have a job still.
Does the author want to continue with RC? Calling them hostile and criticising them seems to be a good way to get their invitation revoked. Isn't that what a hostile organization would do?
Edit: Can anyone please answer this: Do people not like RC, so they don't appreciate my comments on the possibility of the author self-sababoging? (I'm not a programmer, and today is the first I've heard of RC.)
I read the quote a bit more charitably than you. FTA:
> This all felt quite abrupt and hostile, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.
That’s not an unreasonable feeling to have, and I also don’t think such a statement is in and of itself offensive to RC, especially recognizing the guy quit his job in a pandemic to do this thing, and was kicked out for missing an intro meeting.
I which case I would apologize, say it won't happen again, thank them for making the changes they said they would so it doesn't happen to someone else, and say I look forward to joining again in the next batch.
> especially recognizing the guy quit his job in a pandemic to do this thing, and was kicked out for missing an intro meeting.
Exactly, that's why I would post anything that could remotely be considered a criticism.
Being removed from a 6-week program that requires participants to quit their job for missing a 90min meeting that occurred at 7am is insanely hostile and unfriendly. They showed their colors and they aren't helpful friendly people that encourage learning.
> I look forward to joining again in the next batch.
I don't know how your personal money situation is, but if I'd quit my job expecting to take a 2 month break and then suddenly being told "actually it's 4 months" now I'd be pretty angry. My budgets would be completely out of whack. Do I need to contract for 2 months? Find a very short job? What are the tax implications? How do I explain the suddenly much bigger gap on my resume?
>I which case I would apologize, say it won't happen again, thank them for making the changes they said they would so it doesn't happen to someone else, and say I look forward to joining again in the next batch.
This sounds like a message you would say directly, not a public blog post. It sounds like Erik was kicked out before he could further communicate directly.
>Exactly, that's why I would post anything that could remotely be considered a criticism.
I don't think the he views RC as much of a career aid, more of something fun to help him improve as a programmer. Thus I don't think he sees it as important to attend in order to get a future job.
There have been layoffs, like ClassPass fired 50% of staff, but there's still work too. The author is a little strange, quitting a job to go on six week retreat instead of taking a leave of absence, but if he is acting that way, he clearly wanted to switch to a new job anyway, had plenty of money in reserve, and likely won't have trouble finding one. RC doesn't seem to have any value beyond them acting as a recruiter for you at the end, but recruiters are free and happy to help you find jobs without that anyway.
That public negative feedback could be bad is quite obvious - at the same time "don't tell the public about problems and maybe get them to change policies, be quiet and take it" is not a popular position to advocate for.
RC is generally quite well-regarded, so this is especially disappointing.
When I asked my friends about the article, I was surprised to find opinions ranging from matching my own, to the opposite (“minimal tolerance for rule-breaking is justified in university environments to deal with unruly”). I never really investigated RC’s values and mission too deeply, but I always imagined they wanted to attract participants from truly diverse walks of life—intellectual, emotional, and economic. While it’s clear the author missed the 7am meeting because he goofed, I could imagine other individuals who would have missed because (for example) they have children and didn’t sleep, or they have depression and slept too much. It seems to me that zero-tolerance negatively affects such individuals, and pushes them out of programs like these.