A vital part of Hackership are the Hackers in Residence, our industry experts, who volunteer their time to help our learners. As the programme is pretty new, so is this role within it, which is why we often get asked, "What does a Hacker in Residence do exactly?". The short answer to this questions is that they help the learners become better hackers, faster, which admittedly is still rather vague. This article intends to answer that question more specifically.

Hackers in Residence are experienced programming experts – they are either generalists or working within specific fields. Most have worked in the tech industry for years. We've invited them based on the learning focus and needs of the applicants in the batch. Depending on their schedule, the Hackers in Residence are with us from a few days up to two weeks straight at our office space, currently at Betahaus. In general, they do what everyone does at Hackership, they hack – some even work remotely for their companies – but most importantly, they are approachable by the learners at any time when there is a problem or if they need help. We use our daily stand-ups in the morning and socializing events around Hackership to make sure that all learners who to talk to about which subject.

That was the general idea, anyway, which we had in mind when we started the programme. Three weeks into Batch-0, however, we can report that our Hackers in Residence are and do so much more than that. They are pairing up with learners, sometimes full-time, others do so whenever there's a big problem to tackle, they are giving workshops on specific tools or frameworks, running regular Q&A sessions on specific subjects and languages and are generally approachable through our online community even when they are not on-site. Aside from all that, they share their years of industry experience and insight not only on technologies but also regarding teams and work structures, they offer advice and are there to explain even the most complex systems in understandable ways.

To anyone who's attended an OpenTechSchool workshop, this might feel very familiar. That is because Hackership Hackers in Residence are essentially an extended version of the OpenTechSchool's well-established coaches model applied to learning of advanced topics and technologies. They are supporters of the programme, coaches and mentors to our learners ,doing whatever they can to boost the learning experience of Hackership in extraordinary ways. We are so lucky and grateful to have them.