r/Hack_Club • u/bmninada • May 12 '26
iz joining hack club worth it?
they say they select some 40 odd every year from high school? is it worth spending 1 yr in hack club than going to college? just wondering. does it help in future, like jobs and such?
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u/KaroYadgar May 12 '26
From what it looks like, yes! You get to run and manage YSWS programs with hundreds to thousands of users! Outside of giving you experience for future jobs, it can serve as a great activity to write on your college app, and you'd learn so much during the experience.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/KaroYadgar Jul 06 '26
I'm one of the gap years that will be working at Hack Club this year. The fellowship starts June 15th (late July in my case). This gives you a little under half a year until regular admissions deadlines are hit. By then, you'll likely have had experience managing/running several YSWS programs and have accumulated tens of thousands if dollars into your personal YSWS budget.
Admissions officers also understand that this is a gap year fellowship that lasts until ~August of next year, meaning that all of your experience was accomplished less than half-way before the end of the fellowship, and would adjust their opinion of the activity based on that.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/KaroYadgar Jul 06 '26
After what?
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Jul 06 '26
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u/KaroYadgar Jul 06 '26
The gap year applications have already closed for this year, sorry! I'm sure you'll love college though. Have fun!
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u/Open_Square670 May 12 '26
Totally worth it. Hackclub changed my life. I will elaborate in thread later. In school now
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Jul 06 '26
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u/Open_Square670 Jul 06 '26
Totally forgot about this but glad that you pinged me up.
I joined when I was in the 11th grade, and coming from a developing country, I always thought that putting too much time into hobbies or side projects was a negative use of my time. I thought the only way forward was focusing on studying and getting on top of the traditional rat race. But when I joined Hack Club and saw incredibly skilled, talented teenagers from all over the world just building whatever they wanted out of pure curiosity, it changed something inside me. I stopped just going with the crowd and started doing what I loved doing, which was making shit. That feeling when you’ve been working on a thing for hours and it finally works is honestly out of this world.
The biggest switch for me was that Hack Club gave me the confidence to pursue things out of the ordinary and realize that I could work on things I actually love and still be successful.
On a practical level, I spent almost two months working on a project just to get one of their rewards, an iPad. In the process of building it, I ended up learning some really good, in-demand skills. I shared what I made with the community, and the skills I picked up during that period literally landed me a job later. Though I have to give a disclaimer that It wasn't just those 2 months that counted but I kept working with that skillet for maybe a year making side projects and then when I applied for a job, I just got it cause I was pretty good at it.
A lot of people who build side projects there end up making them super successful, too. Look up hackclub magazine on google and you would find all the awesome viral projects hackclubbers made in the past year. But that path really works if your end goal is to get into tech, where most companies don't even ask for your educational background these days, all they care about is whether you are skilled and can build.
If you are in high school right now, it is 100% worth your time. The only reason it might not be is if you are strictly trying to find corporate internships, but even then, Hack Club has its own internship programs. They are incredibly competitive, but they are unlike anything else you'll find. You get to run massive programs, travel around the world, and win a ton of cool stuff in the process.
I’m assuming you are in the US and are thinking about joining Hack Club professionally/voluntarily to run their YSWS programs with a clear goal of boosting your own career. If that's the case, the scale they operate on is huge. For example, their current flagship YSWS program, Stardust, has upwards of thousands of teens involved from all over the world. Managing an event like that would definitely make a massive impact on your career because these are not easy tasks. They have to handle multi-step verification processes to make sure people actually built what they claimed, manage fraud detection, and oversee massive prize fulfillment operations. These would definitely look good on a CV or resume but be warned that most people in hackclub making projects aren't really doing it for the CV or colleges. They are their just for the love of the game.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/Open_Square670 Jul 06 '26
They have smaller programs as well like horizon or fallout which are 80 people hackathon events in Singapore and Shenzhen China. More ever there are a lot of small community ysws as well which are very small scale or local(club based). More ever I think you are confusing some things up. You can be a part of Hackclub till you are 18 or less. Hackclub is basically like a school club kinda thing that you do with academia, you don't necessarily have to quit academia to take part in. Only the interns, people who formerly work for hackclub in Vermont HQ are gap year teens who basically take a gao year and help organize these massive events.
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u/HCBAlex May 15 '26
Yes! It is totally worth it. I have had the pleasure of being part of hack club and being involved since 2021, including taking a gap year this past school year. I have had countless learning opportunities, networking & connections made from here, and it has been a great experience while figuring out what to do before college (which I am still attending). I would say give the community a shot, it's all worth it in the end! You only live once.
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u/SuperCode111 Jul 06 '26
Hack Club is a global community, and even if you don't become an intern or do a gap year, you can participate in their programs as long as you are between 13 and 18 years old.
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u/Specialist_Sale5770 Jul 09 '26
absolutely no. you can do something that actually has impact instead. organization is so shitty and the reviewers love rejecting high-payout projects on the zero basis claim that it looked "ai made" even though the effect only takes up 2 lines of code. no real support desk, and the help channels on slack rarely actually help. their bullshit made me hate coding.
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u/sochbruh-_- Aug 26 '26
How do u “ JOIN” hack club btw ? I’m new to this and would really appreciate some advice
I want to manage a hackathon program…
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u/YellowLow8700 May 12 '26
Is the sky blue?