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Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#71

Post by Selfcommit »

avolcano wrote: post #63
Selfcommit wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example scenario: If you ask me to solve a problem, I can intelligently talk to you about what a program that solves that problem is expected to do, and happily whiteboard a big picture idea. If I don't know the language required for implementation, that's ok because I'm pretty confident I can work out the basics and what I need to code. To meet your points: A) I haven't really put myself out there in a while(over a…

For what it's worth, I didn't have to whiteboard once during my several interviews. If you're interviewing with new SF or NYC startups, you'll find many of them care far more about practical* skills than pop quizzes. This certainly isn't universal, but it shouldn't frighten you away from trying interviews. * (not that algorithm knowledge isn't practical, but for a lot of smaller, "web-interface-around-a-database" sta…

I need to take time to build code I can actually show off.

The things I build now are essentially web interfaces sitting on databases. The problem is they aren't exactly.. or at all.. legal.

Great learning projects (putting my home video library into a web interface, with episode data from a TV series API) but not something I feel I can show.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#72

Post by freyr »

enraged_camel wrote: post #32
sama wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you believe will happen with the markets and inflation over the next 15 years. I believe a better approach in today's world is to put yourself in a position where you're less dependent on historical market performance.

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 in productivity and global competitiveness.

It's not a completely crazy idea, but it's not the sure bet you make it out to be, either.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#73

Post by anonymoushn »

jmgrosen wrote: post #22

Anyone have any particular advice for an ambitious 14 year old with three years left of high school?

Most states have a program similar to TAMS (tams.unt.edu). Do that. Maybe 1/3 of the value of this program is that you will graduate earlier. The other 2/3 of the value is that you will meet a bunch of people who also did the program, and you will know them for the rest of your life.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#74

Post by 6d0debc071 »

> Starting a company that you’re in love with is the right kind of risk.

Questionable. I know someone who started a company around half a decade ago, is now out of business with nothing really to fall back on and can't collect contribution related unemployment benefits because they weren't paying N1 national insurance contributions.

Yay companies! May be a big thing, but some people really should not be starting companies.

> If you fail at an idea that you really loved and could have been great, you’re unlikely to regret it, and people will not hold it against you.

Depends on local culture a lot. Notably in Europe, IME, it's much more likely to be held against you.

============

I do agree with the general tone of the piece though: That if you want to do something great you'll have to take on some measure of risk. IMO the time to take these risks is when you have a strong fall back position. What you don't want to do is get to 30, have got things wrong repeatedly, and not have a steady income or a home or anything really to your name. You've got to know what you're going to do if things go south.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#75

Post by throwaway10001 »

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.

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, love or hate Microsoft as company all you want but Microsoft Research is top notch. Quite a few smart people there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research. Maybe not as smart as Sam Altman (the OP) but smart nonetheless.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#76

Post by intrazoo »

kayoone wrote: post #8
intrazoo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The reason I suggested college graduates not start startups immediately was that I felt most would fail. And they will. But ambitious programmers are better off doing their own thing and failing than going to work at a big company. Certainly they'll learn more. They might even be better off financially. A lot of people in their early twenties get into debt, because their expenses grow even faster than the salary tha…

Sounds strange to me. I put alot of my own money and some of my parents into my startup, got seed financing and failed 2 years later. I am now 30 and still have to pay back my parents and havent saved a dime in my life while being a pretty decent software developer (not in the US). I learned a ton, but financially it has been a disaster. So a Big-Co job ist still not too bad when starting out imo, you probably wont l…

Your comment sounds reasonable to me. Maybe a good middle ground in the beginning would be to work for a startup? Or somehow reduce financial risk.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#77

Post by makmanalp »

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…

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're at the point where you think you can do some architectural work and real decision making, you're likelier to be allowed to do that at a startup than at a large company.

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#78

Post by jmduke »

Ah yes, eschew Microsoft, the company that has literally thousands of employees devoted purely to research (a number of whom have won Turing awards) to work for a startup which is more likely than not to be in the business of producing a Rails CRUD app. After all, you need to be surrounded by (people who call themselves) hackers.

My advice for ambitious 19 year olds: ask your parents for advice, because they likely know you better than anyone on the internet. (I say this as someone two years your senior)

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#79

Post by pchristensen »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

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…

company on a breakout trajectory

I think he's talking about companies like Square now, Groupon a few years ago, Facebook a few years before that, Google a few years before that. $1B+ valuations, positive glowing aura, disproportionate talent attraction. The kind of company where you can tell almost anyone you work there and they say "Wow, what's that like?"

Re: Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

#80

Post by pseut »

nobodysfool wrote: post #50
sama wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>(and where this person was going)

he apparently wasn't making the claim about the entire company

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