College Dropouts Thrive in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#61

Post by robgibbons » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

dylanjermiah wrote: post #42

jasode wrote: post #14

Some observations... I just finished Fareed Zakaria's " In Defense of a Liberal Education "[1] and while he makes a passionate argument, the capital markets overwhelmingly disagrees with him. VC's (even those VC's not specializing in Silicon Valley tech) value makers, builders, engineers over experts in English/Art/History/Philosophy. If liberal arts education was on equal footing as STEM, there wouldn't be the jokes…

" it means that MIT/Stanford's primary value (to investors) is to act as an unspoken IQ test. " IQ is one of the greatest corollaries to success, and from the research I've seen it's unlikely to change dramatically from age 8 till death. This is a topic I rarely see discussed. A lot of people like to mention Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg as examples of college dropout success, but fail to notice that those who succeed t…

Have you ever heard of Emotional Intelligence? EQ is increasingly being seen has a higher determinant for success than IQ.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#62

Post by theVirginian » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

One of the worst antipatterns in web design is a website that asks you "sign in or subscribe" to read this article. Well. I signed in, and it directed me back to the home page, tried searching for the article, now it wants me to sign in again, which I do, then it directs me back to the home page. Now I guess they have one more account but I don't have access to the article. Thanks WSJ

Can we get a mirror up?

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#63

Post by ub » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

dylanjermiah wrote: post #42

jasode wrote: post #14

Some observations... I just finished Fareed Zakaria's " In Defense of a Liberal Education "[1] and while he makes a passionate argument, the capital markets overwhelmingly disagrees with him. VC's (even those VC's not specializing in Silicon Valley tech) value makers, builders, engineers over experts in English/Art/History/Philosophy. If liberal arts education was on equal footing as STEM, there wouldn't be the jokes…

" it means that MIT/Stanford's primary value (to investors) is to act as an unspoken IQ test. " IQ is one of the greatest corollaries to success, and from the research I've seen it's unlikely to change dramatically from age 8 till death. This is a topic I rarely see discussed. A lot of people like to mention Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg as examples of college dropout success, but fail to notice that those who succeed t…

Agreed. But OP's point of neurosurgeons and lawyers needing to finish college whereas programmers don't need to is interesting. Using the IQ argument, one could say that even neurosurgeons don't need to finish med school.

The fundamental difference I believe is that because the Internet is so new(relatively) and ever changing that you don't need experience to build software.In fact,experience may hold you back at times. Also,most of the software is not critical. Someone's life doesn't depend on it. However, human bodies and laws remain fairly stable and can affect life/death and thus,experience matters. You can't trust a college dropout to become a great neuro-surgeon without having performed several surgeries even if their IQ is in the top 0.01 percentile.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#64

Post by theVirginian » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

mullethunter wrote: post #50

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

During the dot.com bubble I interviewed a number of people who had dropped out of college to jump into work. In general they did not have any trouble finding work. However when the bubble burst and the job market crashed dramatically, those same people were unreasonably discriminated against as there were plenty of 'degreed' people to fill positions so the folks without at least a bachelors degree were having a hard…

This was me. I left my 4 year degree my senior year in 1999 for to write code for a living. After the crash I started to be declined even an interview because I didn't have a degree, even though I had been working for great, well known companies doing some great work. HR people literally shooed me away on phone interviews, and even startups were only looking at people with degrees. Four years ago it happened again, a…

I think its a fair thing to check for. People leave school for a variety of reasons, not all of them are because they were exceptionally talented.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#65

Post by oscargrouch » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

“I thought he would miss out on the social aspects of college,” says Judy Weinstein. “It’s the bridge between childhood and adulthood, a built-in transitional time.”

Bright Mom. College is a important rite of passage.. maybe thats why im kind of a grown up child

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#66

Post by wheaties » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

During the dot.com bubble I interviewed a number of people who had dropped out of college to jump into work. In general they did not have any trouble finding work. However when the bubble burst and the job market crashed dramatically, those same people were unreasonably discriminated against as there were plenty of 'degreed' people to fill positions so the folks without at least a bachelors degree were having a hard…

The biggest issue wasn't that they didn't have a degree. The issue was that during the boom anyone could slap "web developer" on their resume and get a job. _Those_ people had wonderful resumes, could not do FizzBuzz to save their lives and generally lacked a college degree. So, in order to lazily screen bad applicants, companies decided in large part not to hire non-degreed candidates.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#67

Post by ForHackernews » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #14

Some observations... I just finished Fareed Zakaria's " In Defense of a Liberal Education "[1] and while he makes a passionate argument, the capital markets overwhelmingly disagrees with him. VC's (even those VC's not specializing in Silicon Valley tech) value makers, builders, engineers over experts in English/Art/History/Philosophy. If liberal arts education was on equal footing as STEM, there wouldn't be the jokes…

I agree with your points about employers using schools' admissions departments as as a filtering mechanism, but you need to be more careful about your terminology: Liberal Arts education includes science and mathematics, the S and M of "STEM" fields. Liberal arts doesn't mean you aren't doing rigorous, quantitative work, it just means that you aren't doing narrowly-focused vocational training. A good liberal arts education is supposed to prepare you to be a thinking human being across a variety of disciplines.

"English/Art/History/Philosophy" are humanities subjects that also happen to part of a liberal arts curriculum.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#68

Post by Zelphyr » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #59

“It’s almost a bigger risk to stay in school and let people like me drop out and start things before you have a chance,” he says. That says it all, for me. It's an incredibly shortsighted view that there are real opportunity costs to time spend in college, as if you'll only have one good idea in your lifetime. It's kind of a lottery ticket mindset. College is absolutely a luxury good, and you can get by without it. B…

education is worthwhile for it's own non-vocational merits

I completely agree (despite being a college dropout) and it speaks to my thought that we've been selling secondary education the wrong way. "Go to college and get a good job!" seems to be progressively becoming "Go to college and have a lot of debt!" Perhaps we should be selling it as "Go to college and get a great education that will benefit you in countless ways no matter what vocation you find yourself in."

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#69

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

oscargrouch wrote: post #65

“I thought he would miss out on the social aspects of college,” says Judy Weinstein. “It’s the bridge between childhood and adulthood, a built-in transitional time.” Bright Mom. College is a important rite of passage.. maybe thats why im kind of a grown up child

> It’s the bridge between childhood and adulthood, a built-in transitional time.

I wish parents would start transitioning their children sooner. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to make some big mistakes in high school with respect to driving, money, relationships, and responsibility in general. It's a lot cheaper to make a mistake when your parents are around to help you learn and recover.

...in other words, all of childhood is a built in transition time. The teenage years are supposed to be the runway for takeoff into adulthood. Delaying that process into adulthood is much riskier, IMO. This is part of the reason I'm concerned about teenage employment rates being so low these days.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#70

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #14

Some observations... I just finished Fareed Zakaria's " In Defense of a Liberal Education "[1] and while he makes a passionate argument, the capital markets overwhelmingly disagrees with him. VC's (even those VC's not specializing in Silicon Valley tech) value makers, builders, engineers over experts in English/Art/History/Philosophy. If liberal arts education was on equal footing as STEM, there wouldn't be the jokes…

[deleted]