Hack the Hood: Paving the Way for Young Black and Brown Coders in Silicon Valley
Terrence Butler, Hack the Hood alumni, speaks at a recent program graduation.
When you think of Silicon Valley, you probably think of tech giants like Alphabet, Apple, LinkedIn, Meta, and others — companies with reputations for being at the forefront of innovation and for providing lucrative roles for employees. But, big tech is plagued by racial disparities. While Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, they make up only 1% of Silicon Valley’s coders.
In Oakland, 40 miles north of Silicon Valley, the nonprofit Hack the Hood is working to close racial gaps in the tech sector. They provide younger learners in Black and brown communities with a passion for coding with tech skills-building programs and career navigation tools needed to support economic growth and freedom. Though Hack the Hood works with learners from age 16 to 25 overall, in 2022, 59% of their learners were 15 to 18 years old.
“We are firm believers that young learners must be equipped with the tools they need to learn and actively shown how to use those tools within a larger social justice framework in order to enact change,” said Terrence Riley, executive director at Hack the Hood. “Hack the Hood exists to disrupt and diversify the tech workforce as a whole so that Black and brown communities have the experience and opportunity for fulfilling careers and benefit from the economic mobility that a career in tech can unlock.”
Since its start in 2013, Hack the Hood’s free-of-cost tech education programs have explored foundational technical skills through a social justice lens, all the while examining the impact of technology on students’ communities. This comes in the form of a rigorous, justice-centered curriculum, professional development workshops, career exploration and exposure panels, and mentorship.
Terrence Butler, Hack the Hood alumni
One Hack the Hood alumni, Terrence Butler, participated in the coding bootcamp in 2018 and went on to accept an internship at Airbnb. Today, Butler is a full-time software engineer at Airbnb, which hired him in the spring of 2021.
“After being a part of the Hack the Hood program, I was able to take my newly cultivated passion for software engineering and transform it into tangible networking and career navigation skills that brought me to where I am today,” said Butler. “That one step of signing up for the coding class had a domino effect on the trajectory of my career that has given me the financial independence I always dreamed of.”
Hack the Hood’s technical programs — all but one of which are completed over the course of about 12 weeks — focus on teaching participants junior-level software engineering skills within the most popular and utilized technologies. In 2023, for example, the program focuses on programs using Python.
The nonprofit also offers dozens of workshops for students to attend around topics including professional development, money management, career exposure, women in tech, and a resume workshop and review. Last year, 98.1% of program learners reported that they developed their careers and achieved their goals during the program.
This year also marks Hack the Hood’s 10th anniversary — a moment celebrating the organization’s first decade of serving approximately 1,500 youth of color and helping them achieve fulfilling, economically freeing careers in tech. They continue to launch new and innovative programs. With funding from the Catalyze Challenge, Hack the Hood launched a partnership with Laney Community College, based in Oakland, to serve a cohort of Laney students pursuing STEM-related education and career pathways through its newest program, drive:Laney.
As Hack the Hood enters its second decade, it plans to continue to provide life-changing opportunities to students like Butler.
