I am 19 and I think this is terrible advice.I would love to work at Microsoft not just because of the pay but because of the people I would work with. Some of the greatest minds in the world call Microsoft their place of work. Mind you I am doing my own thing and not looking to get hired but still if presented the chance I would take it.
Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
91–100 of 161 posts
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#92ok, last comment on this.
this was meant to be more about how to have the biggest impact with your life than how to make a little more money. and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone--hence the title. many people will me much happier not following it.
on the money side, there is nothing wrong with taking a job that pays you $30k more. most people ramp up their spending and don't save that ~$20k (post-tax) extra, but if you do, more power to you. that $30k will never in your lifetime compound to $100MM, but if that's not what you're shooting for, that's obviously fine. it's certainly a much less risky path.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#93"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. $30,000 more per year is nothing to balk at. It is a serious amount of money. In addition, working for Microsoft is fantastic for a resume. The person in question probably improved his future career prospects by an order of magnitude by taking the job. And let's not even forget the fantastic benefits that Microsoft offers its employees that most startups cannot afford to.
This quote from the post was pulled and is now being criticized without the most important context of the article.
Sam isn't giving general career advice here -- read this advice as if you're giving it to a risk-seeking, ambitious, 19-year old (the title of the article...).
In that context -- his advice makes perfect sense.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#94It's often dismissed as cheesy, but it's the most important career advice there is: find your passion. Ninety nine people out of 100 never have a great answer to the question, "Where do you want to be in 10 years?" Instead, they treat their careers in ad hoc fashion, hopping opportunistically from job to job.
The best way to succeed is to have a very clear answer to that cheesy question. Such a clear answer that you're almost burned by its intensity. Such a clear answer that it guides your every move. This clarity of vision will allow you to weather temporary failures and setbacks, and it'll provide you a roadmap for the climb up the mountain.
This is what separates the brilliant-and-hard-working from the brilliant-and-hard-working-and-uber-successful. The world is full of brilliant, hard working people who never get a "lucky break." The secret is that the "lucky break" is often the result of many years of directed effort. So keep that in mind as you go along. If you want to achieve tremendous success in any field, there's a buildup period of at least 5 years, and often more than a decade. It really pays to pick your path early, and to stick to it.
Obviously, some folks have taken more circuitous paths to success, and that's totally cool. But ask most of the majorly successful people in any profession what got them there, and they will tell you they focused relentlessly on it. Ambition isn't enough; ambition needs direction.
Find the ladder you want to climb, and start climbing it -- because most ladders are pretty damned tall, and hopping between them gets tougher the older you get.
I say this having learned it the hard way. I traded what I want to do for what I "should" do for many years, and now I'm trying to catch back up to my vision. I still have time, but I wish I'd been honest with myself at 19.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#95I 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. Interesting things....like making people click on ads? Microsoft products are used by billions of people worldwide and by virtually every Fortune () company. And then we have Microsoft Research…
I've met and had the opportunity to learn from top people at Microsoft Research in Santa Barbara. I guarantee you Sam Altman isn't fit to tie their shoelaces. No disrespect to him and not saying he couldn't get there, but they're just in a totally different ballpark and level of problem solving and execution. They're solving problems people don't even realize they're going to have yet.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#96"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…
To be fair, your average new-grad / entry level job at MS is probably not going to be one of those positions building complex stuff, it's going to be "cog in the system" type of work. It's dubious whether you'll even get to interact with engineers that you might learn something from. There was a story recently about this, and is also corroborated by pretty much all of my friends who ended up there. Basically, if you'…
new grads probably shouldn't be making 'architectural work' decisions, at least not on their own, and doing it 'on their own' is more likely in a 'breakout startup' situation.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, most decent development jobs will pay you enough to feed and shelter yourself especially if you are a healthy 19 year old with no dependents. So the difference the extra money makes is likely to just mean lifestyle changes like taking the bus instead of driving a new car and less ambitious holidays. If you can put up with that for a few years then it makes sense to take a lower paying job if you believe i…
When I hired my 18 year old designer, we talked salary come funding time (she's not getting a salary now, just token $$ I toss her way to keep her from getting a grocery store job). Even underpaying her relative to the entry level designer market, she'll be making more than her mother does.
This worries me.
I've met all too many designers and engineers who started out exactly like this, and years later come to realize that they've been underpaid by more than 50% below market rate for half a decade, and have little more to show for it than one entry on their resume and a case of Stockholm syndrome.
That's a home they could have bought if they knew their real value and weren't being exploited by a greedy employer. It's years of bitterness and job dissatisfaction they could have avoided by better knowing their value and having the right kind of ambition-inspiring peer pressure.
Let's assume you're not such a person, but at the same time I hope you would help educate your young designer about what exactly she's sacrificing by working with you at a salary of "making more than her mother." Please help her understand what she could be earning if she's willing to possibly relocate and hustle a bit, and allow her to make an informed decision.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are free to believe that. Historically, the stock market has returned 7% on average. That is after inflation and takes into account the several terrible crashes that have occurred.
Do you know why the stock market has returned 7% on average? Or do you just think that, since it returned 7% on average in the past, it must do so in the future? The U.S. has held a very privileged position in the world economy over the past century, which has fueled tremendous growth. You're basically betting that the U.S. continue to be a "growth" stock over the next 25 or 50 years, and continue to see huge gains i…
Invest outside the US. India & China at-least will be growing 7%+ Y/Y for a quite a while. Add the rest of asia, S america, and africa, and there are tons of great investment opportunity. Heck currently euro zone bonds are making a killing.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#99"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…
What you said... plus: "I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies ... that was a terrible decision" What is this company? How does he know that it's a breakout company? Is he able to tell the future? Because there's an EXCELLENT chance it's not a breakout company. There's an excellent chance it WILL go bankrupt. Microsoft + 30k more.. or a startup that has a fantastic chance of failing. Anyone…
"What is this company?" is a very good question. I speculate whether the writer left this information out on purpose, to mitigate the risk of looking silly if the company goes bust next week.
Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
#100"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…
This is a faux contrarian opinion. If someone is asking Sam Altman what to do, it is far more likely than not, they define ambition as starting their own thing. If thats the case, learning start-up stuff is likely not going to happen at a place like Microsoft. So he says go somewhere that can educate you in building from scratch.
It's pretty clear he isnt knocking the old guard, but answering the question in the the way the person asking it was likely anticipating.