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College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

washingtonpost.com

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Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#21

Post by chris11 »

mitchellh wrote: post #2

I really dislike these posts, which are all the same "Person who skips college retires at 24" or "College really needed? This man makes 400,000 a year!" Of course college doesn't guarantee that you'll come out making $100k a year or more, but also NOT going to college is the same. As happy as I am for this person, I hope no one gets the wrong idea from these posts and just drops out. Having an idea is one thing, putt…

Yeah I really agree. it seems like most of these posts are saying anyone can make 100k+ working a couple days a week just by finding the right job. Sure, it's possible. But people do it by finding a niche, and marketing themselves very well. And there isn't usually room in these niches for many people to make that kind of money. These posts usually remind me of those late night tv infomercials telling that I can make millions, I just need to spend a few hundred to learn how to do it.

I think that people can make that kind of money with little work, but they don't do it by following a defined career path.

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#22

Post by decode »

brandnewlow wrote: post #3

This is a somewhat old article. It's also very, very long. It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years ago. Here's the gist (from memory): 1. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids. 2. Guy has good sense of humor. 3. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living. 4. Guy ta…

The author of the article also won the Pulitzer for writing this brilliant piece about skill, art, and modern life:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#24

Post by NyxWulf »

mitchellh wrote: post #2

I really dislike these posts, which are all the same "Person who skips college retires at 24" or "College really needed? This man makes 400,000 a year!" Of course college doesn't guarantee that you'll come out making $100k a year or more, but also NOT going to college is the same. As happy as I am for this person, I hope no one gets the wrong idea from these posts and just drops out. Having an idea is one thing, putt…

It's interesting because there seems to be this ethos among the hacker/tech startup community that if you want to be successful you either need to be young, a college drop out, or an ivy league grad.

The Kauffman foundation did a study on entrepreneurship though and found that this idea is totally off base. (http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&sho...)

This article is fascinating - and well worth a read. If you are looking for a quick summary: More education directly correlates with better performance in your startup, and most founders are much older and have greater work experience than people would think.

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#25

Post by comster »

brandnewlow wrote: post #3

This is a somewhat old article. It's also very, very long. It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years ago. Here's the gist (from memory): 1. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids. 2. Guy has good sense of humor. 3. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living. 4. Guy ta…

my first impression too was WTF? the entire first page tells you almost nothing. Seeing that there were 5+ pages, no thanks....

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#26

Post by geebee »

brandnewlow wrote: post #14
randallsquared wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not reading past page one is a judgment. It's one I make all the time about various articles and stories.

Certainly. But then you don't pass judgment on the work as a whole based on the little bit you read.

Perhaps not. But suppose I wrote 5,000 pages of pure stream of consciousness drivel. Would you feel obligated to read every page before deciding the whole thing was crap?

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#27

Post by palish »

geebee wrote: post #26
brandnewlow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. But then you don't pass judgment on the work as a whole based on the little bit you read.

Perhaps not. But suppose I wrote 5,000 pages of pure stream of consciousness drivel. Would you feel obligated to read every page before deciding the whole thing was crap?

I'll let you know once I finish the other 4,783 pages that DaVinci wrote. It's kept me hooked so far, though. http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/dv/index.htm

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#28

Post by palish »

jibiki wrote: post #19
dasil003 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant article, brilliant HN positioning, brilliant page partitioning . Best thing I've read on HN this year.

The way the article totally changes course on the last page is brilliant. This might be the only news article I've seen that used the hypertext format that well.

I always click 'print this article', then click my Readability bookmarklet ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ ). Works 9/10 times and gives a nice speed boost to reading articles. The page partitioning sounds well-done though. I guess writers put a lot of thought into that. (Edit: ... and then I read brandnewlow's comment above mine which refutes that theory. 'Print this article' links rock.)

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#29

Post by dasil003 »

palish wrote: post #28
jibiki wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way the article totally changes course on the last page is brilliant. This might be the only news article I've seen that used the hypertext format that well.

I always click 'print this article', then click my Readability bookmarklet ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ ). Works 9/10 times and gives a nice speed boost to reading articles. The page partitioning sounds well-done though. I guess writers put a lot of thought into that. (Edit: ... and then I read brandnewlow's comment above mine which refutes that theory. 'Print this article' links rock.)

who says editors have no outlet for creative genius...

Re: College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

#30

Post by dsil »

comster wrote: post #25
brandnewlow wrote: post #3

This is a somewhat old article. It's also very, very long. It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years ago. Here's the gist (from memory): 1. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids. 2. Guy has good sense of humor. 3. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living. 4. Guy ta…

my first impression too was WTF? the entire first page tells you almost nothing. Seeing that there were 5+ pages, no thanks....

In this case, the first of 5 pages is nowhere near 20% of the story.
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