Ask HN: A 19 year old, what should I do?

At ~20 my boss at the startup where I worked summers suggested that if I joined full-time he'd hire me on at a very good salary. I stayed in school for no reason particularly better than "my parents would kill me."

In retrospect, I am tremendously glad I didn't drop out. I went on to grad school in a different field (where I met my wife!) and love the work I'm doing now. And while not having a college degree wouldn't have held me back in software, necessarily, I could never have entered the field I am in now without the degree.

To use a somewhat different example, my FIL worked his way up to a director-level IT job without any college degree, but now in his 50's he wants to move over to doing non-profit work and is absolutely feeling the lack of the credential.

The bottom line is that life is long and you're young. You can't know what you'll want to be doing 20 years from now, and there's a lot of value to keeping your options open at this age.

Try another European university? Or maybe doing a year or two of Erasmus could help.

I was in your position a few years ago (living in Slovenia) - I've too learned programming at an early age, and although I didn't have industry experience, I didn't want to go study CS, because I had a feeling I wouldn't learn anything. Instead, I studied math, which was interesting, hard and very useful (can work in finance, understand statistics, get into AI/ML/big data, ...).

Also, just a few days ago I was thinking what I would change if I was 16 again - I would (1) start meditating - meditation has given me very good emotional control, which is one of the most useful things in life, (2) learn languages - Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, ... I had the most time in high school/college, and looking back, wasted most of it, when I could be learning at least one language a year (to a decent conversationalist level), and (3) get into computer security - it's a perfect job for a consultant, allows remote work, and seems to be becoming more and more relevant with each passing year (bonus: you know how to secure your own devices).

TL;DR: don't start working yet, after college you will be starved of free time, use it to better yourself.

The answer to your question is really, "what do you want to do in life?"

(And the answer is still, probably, stay in college)

What's your end-goal -- where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? Do you want to be working at some high-ranking position at a company -- in other words, a well-paid employee? Then yes, you should most definitely go to college and get your degree. You'll find that, without your degree, being an employee is incredibly difficult -- people won't want to hire you and they'll pick others ahead of you. And if another 2008 recession hits, then you may very well be screwed.

Additionally, as others have said, if you want to be an employee, you're going to have to take your career into your own hands. Very few companies care to help their employees get ahead -- they view them as an asset, and they're trading money for the value of your work. You'll want to go out of your way to appeal to your boss, check for openings at higher positions, and apply quickly to move up. Bigger corporations tend to be worse about this; some startups and smaller businesses may be far more helpful to their employees, since the higher-ups know you on a personal level.

Pretty much the only lucrative option, if you don't want to go to college, is to become an entrepreneur and work for yourself (unless you're extremely good at selling yourself to potential employers, or you have amazing connections). If you want to go down this road, however, I'd honestly suggest that you stay in school for now and work on your business on the side, only quitting when the business can support you and you don't need the degree anymore. That's what many of the entrepreneurs of our day did -- Gates, etc.

I kind of felt the same about school -- it was way too easy. I didn't feel that I learned much, and I was honestly just there for the degree (and the beer, parties, and girls, haha), knowing that to get a decent job I'd need one. I also feel the same about jobs -- I'm currently working at a big company, and I just feel like a cog in the machine. It honestly feels like I'm back in high school -- easy work, learning nothing, showing up just for the paycheck. That's why I'm working to start my own business -- if I could do it all over again, I'd have tried to launch businesses while I was still in undergrad and had way too much time on my hands.... but hey, hindsight is 20/20.

Disclaimer: This is all based on my own opinion, experience, and observations, but I hope it's helpful. I wish when I was younger, someone had basically said this to me. When I graduated high school, I was told that I absolutely have to go to college, get a job with great benefits, and climb the corporate ladder -- it's only once i got there that I realized, hey, this sucks! There are other options, but you must realize that the degree is still actually very useful as a fallback (or, pretty much necessary if you want to work for someone else).

I'm actually considering that! Where exactly do you study? I feel like around here they teach us too much math, but no practical stuff and I would like to give it a shot and study abroad