Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 161 posts

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#41

Post by stephencanon »

nostrademons wrote: post #20
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people. This article is making the implication that big corporations and job security are bad; go risk your life for an endeavor with a less-than-5% of succe…

The thing is that big companies rarely provide as much job security as they seem to at the time you take your offer. Ask the folks who joined AT&T in the 1950s, or Digital in the 1970s, or Sun or SGI in the 1990s, how it worked out for them. When you're at a big company, you're often at the mercy of market forces and executive decisions that you can't see . In a small company, all of these are at least visible to you…

I can’t speak to AT&T, but my friends who joined Digital, Sun and SGI in their twilight years got to work on fascinating engineering challenges and built up great professional networks. When those companies wound down, some took buyouts with several job offers already lined up for them. In many cases, entire teams were hired intact by other large firms with generous retention packages.

There’s nothing wrong with startups, but there’s nothing wrong with going to the giants that are doing Real Engineering, either. Both can lead to great careers.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#42

Post by l1ghtm4n »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #18
susi22 wrote: post #16

This is awful advice. I'm sorry but when you're 19 you should go out into the _world_ (not the US) and discover it. Go book a cheap flight to South America and go backpacking for a few months. Live on $300 a month, meet interesting people. Techies, nerds and entrepreneurs aren't _that_ interesting. But sure, if all that you care about is success and you happen to define success like most other Americans (i.e. by maki…

> If you waste a year or two, nothing will run away and your opportunities will still be there when you're 25. Something tells me this is an aspirational claim rather than a statement with empirical support. On the other hand, there is a lot of data to support the view that being out of work for years is very bad for finding a job when you finally do want one.

Just one data point. I'm 35. I did startups in my early 20's, took 2 years off to travel and finish school. Opportunities were still there once I was done. You could say that no work history is the same whether it was due to traveling or because you're only 19.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#43

Post by Jabbles »

Selfcommit wrote: post #36
avolcano wrote: post #9

I'm 19, and just started as a software engineer at a startup in NYC. It's been absolutely incredible - I never thought I'd be here a year ago. I'll admit that my situation isn't universal - luckily, I could get my foot in the door with many startups by being in the last batch of Hacker School - but if you, like me, hate academia and want to get to work, don't let your age stop you. Sure, there's companies that care a…

Please understand that my intent here is not to begrudge you in any way - I think it's wonderful that you're working as an SE at such a young age - but.. I'm 10 years older than you. I code in the evenings, I spend my morning commute listing to any computer science online course I can find... I have over 5 years experience as a Systems Admin... I've interviewed with a number of big companies and startups but I don't…

Tell us what you think is missing. You don't "feel nearly prepared". Have you prepared? These interviews (for better or worse) tend to be algorithm based. How are you on those?

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#44

Post by mr-ron »

Selfcommit wrote: post #36
avolcano wrote: post #9

I'm 19, and just started as a software engineer at a startup in NYC. It's been absolutely incredible - I never thought I'd be here a year ago. I'll admit that my situation isn't universal - luckily, I could get my foot in the door with many startups by being in the last batch of Hacker School - but if you, like me, hate academia and want to get to work, don't let your age stop you. Sure, there's companies that care a…

Please understand that my intent here is not to begrudge you in any way - I think it's wonderful that you're working as an SE at such a young age - but.. I'm 10 years older than you. I code in the evenings, I spend my morning commute listing to any computer science online course I can find... I have over 5 years experience as a Systems Admin... I've interviewed with a number of big companies and startups but I don't…

html / css / jquery skills

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#45

Post by michaelochurch »

Becoming employee number 50 at a company that still has a good chance of failure is the wrong kind of risk.

I agree. Actually, those VC darlings aren't likely to fail in the classic, pink-slips-for-all, sense because the VCs have already worked out an emergency acq-hire and a backup emergency acq-hire. They are, however, likely to fail you, which is worse. Now you have to explain a bad separation from a company that still exists and has pump-and-dump VCs and tech press (still in the "pump" phase, obviously) propping up its reputation.

If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are usually identifiable to a smart young person.

Citation needed. I'm no longer very young (I'm 30) but I'm quite smart and still 0 for 2 when it comes to picking startups. Incidentally, I don't doubt that I'm better at judging companies than most engineers and VCs; I'm probably above 95th percentile in judgment of talent (judgment of character I could work on) but it's just really hard to forecast startups. Most people who think they can do it, can't. Most people who think they can't do it are right.

Also, most of us don't pick from the full space of companies, either. We pick opportunities that make sense in the context of our career stories (career coherency). For example, I'm reaching an age where non-senior/lead roles (except at top AI labs or hedge funds) don't really make sense anymore. If I'm not a strong match (enough to qualify for a senior role) it doesn't make sense for me to apply even if the company looks like a "rocket ship", because a junior role is not acceptable at my stage unless the people are known, world-class entities.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#46

Post by rcavezza »

Selfcommit wrote: post #36
avolcano wrote: post #9

I'm 19, and just started as a software engineer at a startup in NYC. It's been absolutely incredible - I never thought I'd be here a year ago. I'll admit that my situation isn't universal - luckily, I could get my foot in the door with many startups by being in the last batch of Hacker School - but if you, like me, hate academia and want to get to work, don't let your age stop you. Sure, there's companies that care a…

Please understand that my intent here is not to begrudge you in any way - I think it's wonderful that you're working as an SE at such a young age - but.. I'm 10 years older than you. I code in the evenings, I spend my morning commute listing to any computer science online course I can find... I have over 5 years experience as a Systems Admin... I've interviewed with a number of big companies and startups but I don't…

I think you're comparing yourself to the best of the best software developers on HN. I felt very bad about the code I produced until I started working at a big company. Now I feel more confident about my own code.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#47

Post by jtbigwoo »

Selfcommit wrote: post #36
avolcano wrote: post #9

I'm 19, and just started as a software engineer at a startup in NYC. It's been absolutely incredible - I never thought I'd be here a year ago. I'll admit that my situation isn't universal - luckily, I could get my foot in the door with many startups by being in the last batch of Hacker School - but if you, like me, hate academia and want to get to work, don't let your age stop you. Sure, there's companies that care a…

Please understand that my intent here is not to begrudge you in any way - I think it's wonderful that you're working as an SE at such a young age - but.. I'm 10 years older than you. I code in the evenings, I spend my morning commute listing to any computer science online course I can find... I have over 5 years experience as a Systems Admin... I've interviewed with a number of big companies and startups but I don't…

He's probably very clever, but his definition of "great hacker" is vastly different than your definition.

His definition is probably "someone who makes stuff work." Yours is probably "an expert in his field."

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#48

Post by bdcravens »

sama wrote: post #25
notaddicted wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only people with money say "Don't worry about money".

I still said that when I had a negative checking account balance while starting my company. I think you should worry about money, but that you should take a long-term view of it.

Having money is more than your checking account balance. If you ran out of money, did that mean foreclosure? repossession? homelessness? starvation? If not, then you weren't broke. Obviously I can't speak to your situation, and if you're a true bootstrapper, then kudos. However, I think you can agree there's a ton of 19 years old running around driving the cars mommy and/or daddy bought, with the iPhone and MBP also purchased by their parents. They can totally go for gold and fail, and still have somewhere to live and try again.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#49

Post by michaelochurch »

sama wrote: post #21
kayoone wrote: post #14

"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people." That quote drips so much of elitism its disgusting. MS still has many brilliant engineers and is building alot of really complex stuff, probably mo…

I agree with that--for example, I think Microsoft Research has some of the smartest hackers I've met. However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met.

However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met.

Plenty of startups have worse people than the worst of Microsoft. Some of them have people who couldn't get a job at one of those stodgy, blue-chip companies if their lives depended on it.

The range is very wide at most of the startups. I worked at one where there were some seriously good engineers, but a really bad one ended up becoming the lead architect and things went to hell quickly.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#50

Post by nobodysfool »

sama wrote: post #21
kayoone wrote: post #14

"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people." That quote drips so much of elitism its disgusting. MS still has many brilliant engineers and is building alot of really complex stuff, probably mo…

I agree with that--for example, I think Microsoft Research has some of the smartest hackers I've met. However, other divisions of MSFT (and where this person was going) have some of the worst people I've met.

>people I've met

That's a pretty small sampling to make such big claims about a company.

Post reply on HN