Twas' another scroll through LinkedIn
until the sirens sounded...
Kenzie is hiring?
Today's the day!
🚨 Lights.
🎥 Camera.
🎬 Action.
Any of these sound familiar?
For our students, Kenzie Academy is one of the biggest investments of their lives. That investment comes with high "E" as in Expectations™.
They're expecting a lot from us, and deep down they're expecting even more of themselves. We take great pride in surfacing talent: people ready to make a difference, people ready to level up, & people ready to go find the others.
For all their potential, what got them from A-to-B ain't getting them from B-to-C.
You want to know the big, bad secret?
I'm only going to whisper this once...
Their career journey is 80% psychological. That means sometimes they have to face inner goblins & ghouls. These battles have many names:
The web is already overflowing with enough resources to learn for free (e.g. freeCodeCamp, Codecademy, etc). Access to information isn't the bottleneck anymore. Of course education is much more than transmitting information, but we already knew that right?
Education is more about forging knowledge by fire. We introduce some new (here's that word again) information, and even build a nice little sand-castle on top! We're proud of our pristine new mental model in the sand. All is well in the worl—
Wait a minute...
until the ocean waves of reality crumble those models back to lumps. Darn, I thought we actually had it that time too. What's left standing seems crude, but it's denser building material.
That's how knowledge is compressed.
Rinse & repeat.
That's how knowledge is compounded into wisdom.
Today, our world is increasingly noisy & socially distant.
The bottleneck is attention.
Kenzie Academy's secret sauce is how we curate their attention.
If "you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with," then we surround you with people trying to get where you're going.
If you're losing confidence, then we can curate who you're comparing yourself with.
Some might say that makes us a media company, but I prefer the term "world-builders." When someone's stuck gazing at the ground, we help them look at the sky and envision their own floating castles. We make them believe enough to take small actions that bring small, concrete, & measurable wins. Soon enough, they look back at how far they've come and there's no denying "that's who I am."
Did you catch that? We don't start by optimizing knowledge or skills. We start by optimizing their self-concept.
When we build a blossoming identity the first time around, that makes all the difference. This data plot suggests that groups with a long-term, identity-level commitment perform disproportionately well. This is no surprise. We also expect that those who average much more weekly practice will outperform those who don't, except that didn't happen.
This researcher discovered that the varying timelines of self-commitment made the most significant difference. Can you imagine how on average: someone who practiced relatively little (but maintained a long-term commitment) performed almost as well as someone who practiced a lot while only maintaining a short- to medium-term commitment?
Our students' newfound identities can get bruised easily, which is why curating their attention is so essential. Once they go to sleep thinking "I'm a Software Engineer from now on," it's only a matter of time before they outperform.
I'm glad you asked.
Haven't you heard?
Today's the day!
🚨 Lights.
🎥 Camera.
🎬 Action.
In college, my “crazy weekend parties” were hackathons
...and not for prizes or to chug free Red Bull,
but to hang out with people who actually enjoyed creating things.
As an extroverted developer, I stood out as the lovable weirdo who actually loved public speaking & organizing community meetups. If you’re the shy first-timer at an event, then I’m the one who immediately approaches you with a smile, becomes your first friend, and introduces you to the others.
Sorry, the complete cassette collection doesn't come free.
Easy. I'll pick three favorites:
Sure! Hey since we've made it this far,
let's make this a two-way conversation.
I want to hear your 10-minute version too!
In the spirit of "Just Ship It,"
this is a document in progress.
Typically, I'd ask for an email address
but just click the Big Button already!
Enjoy my writing?
Thanks! I could use your help:
privately send this to any friends at Kenzie Academy.
If you work there, I'd love to chat!
I don't care what department you're in.
stevenkneiser@gmail.com
stevenkneiser@kenzie.academy (coming soon)
(313) 670-3532
LinkedIn://stevenkneiser
Twitter://theshteves
GitHub://theshteves