42SV - Closed forever with proof

This will be the last update to this website barring new information or some such. I was recently in contact with another student in the 42 network, who I had been in contact with about a year prior. Upon asking how they're doing recently, I asked them if they had any information about 42 silicon valley. Apparently...it's much worse than I thought. Much, much worse.

From what I gathered from the message, which I'll post a screen cap further down, it seems that the school was up for lease starting in July at the latest. There was paperwork filed in January and currently Kwame (yes that same one of 42), is currently holding it from what I can tell, under the company "Njj Real Estate California Inc". There was also paperwork filed in January...here's a theory that I've had for awhile, feel free to skip this and go directly to the linked pictures of proof though at the bottom of the page.

From what I can tell, the purchasing price & property taxes, along with staff expenses AND upkeep for the buildings... is akin to a money sinkhole. It was losing money extremely fast and from what I can tell, it was not self-sustaining. Combine that, with the rumors which, seem to now be true, of previous bocal sometime in the past 1-2 years at 42 Silicon Valley, had embezzled some funds that were supposed to be for 42 SV. Now, add the fact that Kwame and Gaetan have jumped ship from 42 paris, to 42 silicon valley and now to make their own program called Qwasar, which is basically the same thing as Epi/42... but instead now you pay. Gaetan had left in december and paperwork was filed in January.

Then, they cancelled all 42 silicon valley piscines after the last one in January, under the guise of "updating infrastructure" and such. Which, might have some merit, if not for the fact that 42 silicon valley was the last campus to update the new curriculum... despite being the second campus and the main one that people linked and talked about first or second after 42 paris. (As well as personally funded by Xaiver Niel!) Now if you're still with me, the timeline is what makes this theory a bit more credible. If you exclude the embezzlement from bocal/students, it's still true from multiple sources of students and past bocal, that funding from paris was stymied from the lack of upgrades and failing building infrastructure in the dorms and labs, as well as other reasons such as lack of proper staff and direction. It seems that the last ditch attempt in January to hire that executive director was just possibly only for show at worst and a chance for stalling the inevitable at best. Then covid happened.

So, after paperwork was filed in January, and all Piscines were cancelled, Covid started happening about almost 2 months later, in the end of February/early march for the bay area for local emergencies to be called. From there, if you go by the wayback machine and the employees listed and their linkedin pages, some were being let go from April to May. This was during the first streamed town hall meeting in April. (Linked here) Then, from may to july, they slowly stopped responding to emails and last known email correspondence that I personally had was in June with others saying July. During this time, more people are being let go. Sometime in July at the latest, around early to mid July, the properties are put up for lease/to be sold. (This being the labs, dorms and the main campus.) The core employees are allegedy still working there but the executive director that was recently hired in January is delisted from the website and my contact said that he had left. (His linkedin says he's still working there though)

Now...after this has happened, it's August, the last known social media post for 42 sv. A week or two after this tweet saying that 42 sv is closed for the rest of 2020, the 42sv twitter account is suspended for about 4-5 days and lots of tweets are deleted. Referencing the way back machine, it seems like it was mostly parternship & sponsorship tweets. Big ones were the filemaker & google partnership internships and such. In september and october, the rest of the staff is fired and most find jobs quickly. Its most likely that they were fired months before this but going by their linkedin employment histories, they ended their employement at 42 sv in september/october.

So now it's mid october. There is one last message in the 42sv slack channel about how the school isn't going to be open anytime soon. ( Linked here) Not much information still. So to recap, most of the staff/head people have left or are fired already, there hasn't been any social media presence in months. Then out of nowhere, all remaining employee emails are disabled and a single email is sent out to past and current students in 42sv. ( Linked here ) So out of nowhere, they get an email saying that everything is shutting down and students have to leave ASAP and the labs are being closed PERMANENTLY in early November. During this time, I randomly checked the cantina website for 42sv, as they would list the food being served that day...and there was nothing. It was just blank...I didn't think much about it then but in hindsight it makes a lot of sense. If you try to visit the dorms or cantina pages, they're shut down. So this was recent, sometime in december.

I reached out to a "then current" 42 sv student sometime in november, they said they don't know what's gonna happen in the next couple months. So for now...they are part of 42 paris and do the curriculum remote. After that, no one knows. So...if you've read this far then you probably see that even being as optimistic as possible, 42sv was going to be shut down regardless of covid due to the timeline of events and that covid just accelerated the pace at best. Here are some screen caps of some proof of the campus & properties being up for lease, earliest pointing to July from multiple websites. If you want to double check, just look up the 42sv addresses for the campus & dorms, and you'll see for yourself.

This was mostly just putting my thoughts in order and a cathartic exercise. If I had known about the paperwork being filed in January, or even in June/July, I would have made the prudent decision to go back to school sooner for computer science. But...maybe this is for the best. For me, personally, I learned how to code in C, basics of git, bash & zsh and now I mostly use GNU/linux. (I use arch btw haha) Then I moved on to learning web development. Grinded some leetcode but no where near me is hiring anyways... With how covid is currently...I'm glad I already signed up for classes for winter/spring semester, as they say, during a recession/depression, it's best to go back to school/learn a new trade.

Anyways, this will be my last post. The domain expires in october of 2021 and I'm not gonna renew it. I might transfer this site to github pages sometime later down the line. This was mostly just a good excuse to learn new technologies. (As you can see I'm not that good at CSS haha!) There have been other 42sv websites but I've tried contacting a few people in the past, and none of them respond. So far a couple people have messaged me and I try to reply within a day if you have any questions. I'll try to keep this website up as long as I can to help chronicle this whole debacle of 42 silicon valley because I think, like most things in human civilization, everything should be recorded, even if it's not a big event or even relatively important. To any prospective students, I would advise to go back to college/university if you can afford it. Any degree is better than no degree when trying to get a developer job but a math or STEM degree in general (Computer engineering or computer science preferred) is the best. I'd also advise to stay away from other 42 schools but, it seems like most are run much better.

May you all find your path in the world. Stay safe and keep on codin'.

PocketPiggy, out.