Hacker Dojo

Wow, this is one cool place. The Hacker Dojo is a very interesting place located in Mountain View just off the 101. It’s a warehouse-​turned-​coworking space that captures Silicon Valley very well in my opinion. I only spent a bit of time here meeting with one of my friends but it is one interesting place. There’s a kitchen, fast wifi for members, and a ping pong table. The people here are VERY good at Ping Pong. You can schedule meetings in the different rooms and everyone seems super nice. I think you can even get desk space here too for more $ per month than a regular membership. If I needed a coworking space I’d definitely go here.

HackerDojo! This is definitely one of my favorite go-​to spaces to recommend to folks who are looking for an area to study or to get work done.
This space is essentially a large warehouse that has been converted into several different sections. Once you pass the main lobby area, you’ll be entering the main part of the warehouse, where there are tables and chairs everywhere to sit down. It’s first-​come, first-​serve — sit wherever you’d like in that main area. The furniture they have is almost all (if not all) donated from different corporations and businesses. So this place might look a little mix-​and-​match, because it is.
There are also small conference rooms, as well as one large event room, to be used for members.
If you’re visiting for the first time, just let them know and they’ll let you come inside to explore for free. If you’re looking for a new home to work or study, this can be a great spot to get a membership at. Wifi is speedy.
This could also be a potentially great event venue for events of up to 100 or 150 people.
The parking though is a little bit hard here. If you’re not a member, then it’s just street parking. The traffic in the area can also get bad during rush hour, since it’s right in the heart of the Silicon Valley, with startups and corporations surrounding everywhere.

Great place. I conducted some of the meetups here and worked great. I think this is cheapest coworking place in bay area.

Freakin’ cool.
I remember my first time here was around April or May last year, and I came here to study. There’s a large communal area where the internet sucks, but you can usually find a space in a classroom where it’ll be miles and miles better.
Aside from studying, I’ve come here for a few events, and these are run by members, who can rent out rooms and event spaces. Though many of the events are centered on tech, you can learn a wide variety of things: tech is very multi-​dimensional after all. Some of the events I’ve attended: laptop music production (very very interesting, I’d recommend!!), programming workshops for women, for teens, even Toastmasters (all about honing that public speaking ability).
There’s a lot of utility and abundant resources here, a great hacker/​makerspace.
This last thing is quite random, but the lighting is harshly white/​blue, and it throws some people off. I know that for me, I’ll have days where I feel really annoyed by the lighting and my productivity plummets, but for those days I’ll just find a coffee shop.
COME HERE! YOU WON’T REGRET IT!

Great work place for any technical and non-​technical individual. This place truly lives to its name! The place has LOTS to offer… You have to experience it for yourself.

This is a great place filled with friendly people who go there for work but do enjoy and support each other. A good starting place for developers under tight budgets for sure.
I spent the day there as part of a group of ~30 people who crashed at different coworking places throughout California (and Reno) and shared their experience with each other throughout the day on Yammer. Think of it as a sociology research project, whose results will be published soon. I was assigned to HackerDojo.
HackerDojo is located in a huge warehouse with probably over 200 seats of capacity. At the peak I counted ~90 people in the place. This is a non-​profit coworking place with all advantages and drawbacks that may come from being community-​managed.
The facility does not have the same quality of amenities and comfort one could find at popular (for profit) coworking places such as Enerspace in Palo Alto or Grind in San Francisco/​New York, including the furniture (very poor quality — old — probably donated), meeting space (only plan for informal meetings here), break room, overall design (designless really, fitting for a warehouse), coffee or beer. But the essentials were there: ping pong table, billiard, foosball, and a GREAT community of very friendly software developers. I saw lots of members having lunch together, and the ping pong table was used few tines during the day. I was told they frequently have member diners as well. There is a real community here. One great piece few other places have today: a prominent Bitcoin distributor. That kind of sets the tone for the community one can expect here.
At $ 125 per month, the coworking membership is also considerably cheaper than nearby Enerspace in Palo Alto, The Pad in Menlo Park, or Nextspace in San Jose. In my opinion, they would benefit from raising their price and invest in better chairs, couches, tables, and other amenities, but you can’t beat the price. If they doubled the price, they would still be cheaper than most.
They seem to hold a large number of events, ranging from an organized hike in the weekend to the weekly «lightning talks» which feature any member who wants to address the 5PM Friday gatherings on a topic of his choice.
I was greeted by several incredibly friendly and incredibly helpful people. Jack, Jasper, and a couple others. They went out of their way to make me feel welcome and to offer their help several times, without being intrusive in any way. That speaks volume to the quality of the culture in this place. I chatted with a wonderful Chinese guy who recently graduated with an EE degree from Purdue and is looking for a job (If you need to hire a young, smart, articulate, and motivated guy, I highly recommend you pursue him). At $ 125/​month this gives him an affordable «library» to go to in the neighborhood. I should add that all age groups were represented, ranging from my young Chinese friend to a large number of baby boomers. Less than 10% were female. Yes, not a typo, single digit: a bit puzzling even in a population of developers. Perhaps women are more sensitive to the quality of amenities than men? The place looks like an introvert frat-​house with old and cheap furniture, but it is not dirty. Men’s restrooms in particular were well maintained.
In spite of the ~90 people I counted at peak hour, the space was incredibly silent. In part due to the big open space that quickly diffuses the sound, in part due to the introvert nature of most of the members. I was there during the Holland-​Argentina World Cup soccer semi-​final. There were close to 20 people watching. Surprisingly very little cheering, very little comments, or they were whispered in… shh… people are working here!

I used to pass by this place quite often until one day I decided to check it out. This is a great place to study or work on your startup. I really like the friendly and geeky atmosphere. It is open 24/​7, so I don’t have to worry about being kicked out at 9 like most coffee shops.
Pros:
1. Efficient. everything is done online right from signing up, to getting a key. Very Startup-​like
2. Lot of resources available like books, people, access to info regarding startups, meetups and theres a great break room as well with pingpong, foosball table and other board games.
2. Even at 10 in the night, there are lot of people here working that gives you the motivation to work harder.
Cons:
1. There is a strange smell that you get when you enter. You get used to it after a while but they probably need to do some fumigation/​cleansing.
2. The parking lot gets full in the evenings. I wish there was more parking space.

I remember passing the old space a lot of times never wandering in. Recently a co worker wanted to see a talk here so I tagged along. Definitely some nerdness going on here. Unabashedly so. If you want high tech geek talk, this is certainly the place to get the info down. I guess you can camp out and work here too for a certain rate. Not sure I’d get a ton done here due to the distractions. Cool concept though

My home base for almost 2 years. Incredibly talented people, all the coffee you can drink, and happy hour Friday’s at 7PM. All for $ 100. Highly recommended for startups.

Awesome place to get some work done!
AMAZING WIFI!

I love working out of this place. They have plenty of space and having access to private meeting areas is great. 24 hour access is the best part. When you are in the middle of a project you don’t have to get up and leave, I’ve pulled a few overnighters here to finish apps.

Where else can you play straight pool with a machine learning engineer while a kid walks around followed closely by a robot?

Love this place great people definitely a software lovers must. having recently moved to the bay area Hacker Dojo introduced me to so many interesting movers and shakers of the valley and the. The parties and friday happy hours are a blast. These kids work hard but they know how to have a good time. The new space is amazing! so happy to have this community space to access.

I give it 5 stars mostly because our society as a whole needs more places like this where like minded creative people can easily get together, collaborate, interact and learn from each other. I have contributed to the kickstarter when they were having problems with zoning laws by the city of Mountain View so I have pretty much put my money where my mouth is. There are so many people that contribute their time and money to this which I also find really attractive.
I have gone to the happy hour a few times and always enjoy myself and talk to someone new and interesting. It really belies the stereotype of geeks (a word I consider complimentary) being introverted or unfriendly. While I don’t personally get $ 100 of utility out of the Dojo I may become a member in the near future once again because it fulfills an important niche in our area. Despite this everyone is still very welcoming. (I do try to kick some donation to help though).
They have various equipment like a 3d printer, soldering stations and such.
I highly recommend you come to happy hour and talk to some cool people and probably learn some new things.

I am working on the startup and I use this place very well with my cofounder. I’ve applied for hardship membership but havn’t heard back yet. Kind of slow, but I hope I get it soon so I can participate in get togethers. My goal is to find the technical cofounder, get some work done and push things forward. thanks!
I am working on an internet startup, healthcare social media system.

How to Get to the «new» Hacker Dojo:
Current location is:
— 599 Fairchild Drive. Other side of Moffet Air Field & Nasa Ames research. Next door to Specialty’s Bakery and not too far from Google’s Customer Briefing Center.
Please note PARKING IS LIMITED ON EVENT NIGHTS
Car: Highway 101 to Mountain View’s Ellis Street Exit. South on Ellis. Left of Fairchild Dr. Dojo on the right. There are 2 parking lots (about 50 spaces total). Street parking is only only allowed on the sidewalk side of the street. Do not park in front of fire hydrant or too close to VTA tracks or you’ll get ticketed!
CalTrain (SF folks): Take CalTrain to downtown Mountain View Station. Transfer to VTA light rail (LRT 902 Winchester) and go 4 stops to Bayshore NASA station. You’ll see Hacker Dojo from the light rail across the tracks from Specialty’s bakery.
VTA Light Rail: Take VTA to Bayshore NASA Station (Moffet Field). 7 minute walk. Left on Ellis, walk under Hwy 101. Left on Fairchild. Walks past Specialty’s Bakery, cross VTA tracks and Hacker Dojo is next building on your right.

I think the intentions were good, and the people who probably founded this place were awesome. It’s just that smart people tend to forget that smart kids out of control can be real jerks, so the hackerdojo needs some kind of empathy pill to rein the sociopaths in.
Just because you happen to be really talented at programming does not mean you are the smartest or most worthy human being in life. There are large segments of the membership at hackerdojo that drive a lot of people away who are creative, and I’ve spoken with some people I’ve known for years who refuse to have meetups here.
I would bring my own wifi source and even better, completely avoid working on a computer here as I was attacked and hacked by trolls here who are members of hackerdojo.
There’s indeed a very gloomy vibe to this place and I’ve encountered it at other places in Silicon Valley… really creepy people who will gang up on you behind your back but appear superficially nice to your face. These people need to go to counseling, because a lack of empathy is detrimental to great product design.
One day your programming skillset or cushy engineering job will go out of fashion and be outsourced to robots in another land, and you will be forced to confront your inner jerkness. Worse, you’ll realize that scoring well on math and science tests has nothing to do with real intelligence.
I hope the founders of hackerdojo find a way to rein in the jerks, there is al lot of great equipment here. They also need to deemphasize this really stupid idea that the best start-​up ideas come from people who play dungeons and dragons. That’s just stupid.
ROCK ON!

YESSS! Found a coworking spot in South Bay!
Thanks to Dishcrawl and Elite Unilocaler Charles D, I was introduced to Hacker Dojo about a month ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of coworking facility, it’s basically a shared work space for like-​minded (or not) folks. Working from your actual home can get pretty lonely and boring, plus coffee shops are not always the most productive environments. Enter coworking! Each spot has different rates and plans, but the overall concept is still the same. AND it’s an opportunity to meet cool people and share ideas… Fabulous!
Although I’m not a regular member of Hacker Dojo, I have stopped in a few times while bopping around Silicon Valley with time to kill between meetings. There’s a suggested $ 10 drop in rate or you can just get ‘em back later. No one bothers you when you’re at your laptop, pecking away at the keyboard, either.
I’ll be back!

Does Taylor L. qualify as a geek?
[+] For the last two Valentine’s Days, my boyfriend got me a present from
.
[+] I spend 80% of my waking hours either on my laptop or on my smart phone. The rest is spent playing video games.
[+] I run an internet startup.
[+] I have watched all seasons of Daria, in order, upwards of eight times. In the last year.
[+] I love school.
[+] I created an artificial language with a friend for the sole purpose of passing secret notes in class.
[+] I was in Math Club. For three years.
[+] I am dating someone whose favorite pastime (besides Call of Duty) is Excel.
[+] I maintain that, someday, my prince charming will come along, and use this line to pick me up: «I wish I was your derivative, so I could lie tangent to your curves.»
I am a geek. And I loved Hacker Dojo. After going to a Meeup there (I guess that should have gone in the prior list), I plan to move closer so I can rent out office space and reside, daily, in the Dojo.

Dojo Hacker is something I’ve never heard of before until recently. I like the vibe here. Almost everyone is thinking of a way to get ahead-​break into something. Find a cure for cancer! Just kidding!
You will walk in to a place littered with tables and chairs and brains running at a million miles an hour. It’s contagious!
I think the start up bug that was laying dormant for years inside me is reawaken!