College Dropouts Thrive in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#71

Post by walshemj » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

rjsw wrote: post #29

lordnacho wrote: post #18

If you're able to write code, that's relatively easily provable. You'll be found out quite fast by other coders if you can't do it, maybe a few weeks if you can pretend onboarding is going badly. So at a time when there's loads of demand for techies, there will always be some people who are happy to give you a go. Contrast this with something a bit more fluffy, like political consulting. Are you going to hire a guy w…

Political parties do hire people who just talk a good game [1] so that isn't a great example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps

Party Chairman are different they are meant to be backroom establishment fixers with tons of contact's who will pony up 100k -1 million. Grant wasn't that at all.

At one industry conference in Brighton the other year when his name got mentioned 1500 people collectively groaned.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#72

Post by meatysnapper » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:36 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…

College Admissions are exactly an IQ test of sorts. Getting in is all that matters.

I'll make the argument that a college CS degree does very little to prepare you for practical software engineering or being a good programmer. I do not have a CS education, but I know many people that do, from top schools. They are productive, but I would never consider them to be "A" players.

Someone who passes the IQ test and then gets battle-tested at some startup, even if it's a few years of cobbling shit together, is more valuable than some PhD student who cannot engineer their way out of a cracker-jack box.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#73

Post by walshemj » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #58

dylanjermiah wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There success is more related with their superior IQ than their college attendance.

They're probably not all that smart. They're persistent, dedicated, hardworking. But I've seen Bill Gate's code, and its bad. Typically its B students that run the world.

You know that GWbasic was developed without the hardware on a PDP and cross complied.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#74

Post by riveter » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

humbleMouse wrote: post #30

I dropped out of college at age 19 and I now do consulting pulling in over 5k/month, and work a 9-5 as a java developer (100k+). I knew college was a waste of time when my information technologies class professor assigned us as homework to look at the best buy ads every sunday morning to keep up to date with technology prices.... I am 22 years old now...

How did you start out without having a background from school? I've always been really curious how people were able to gain a reputation in consulting or gain expertise starting off

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#75

Post by avelis » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:47 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…

The social return of any college educated resident in a community is astounding. I enjoyed it and never looked back on it.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#76

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:53 PM UTC

ub wrote: post #63

dylanjermiah wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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 tim…

I think the big difference is that finishing college is a signal that someone is willing to conform. Important in an employee but not so much in a founder.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#77

Post by termain » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

avelis wrote: post #75

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…

The social return of any college educated resident in a community is astounding. I enjoyed it and never looked back on it.

John Green states it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsFa_MJ0gBs

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#78

Post by rquantz » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

dylanjermiah wrote: post #53

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #10

Three spring to mind: Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates

There success is more related with their superior IQ than their college attendance.

You forgot to add their extreme luck. Also, don't forget Gates was born a millionaire. That makes it a lot easier to drop out of college.

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#79

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:01 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…

Getting into a top college is a signal of conscientiousness[1] as well as intelligence and that's just as important.

I'd hope I could interview people well enough to do better than just looking at people's schools but if I were an HR drone without the ability to assess people's technical abilities I'd probably go with the MIT dropout over the Alabama graduate.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Con...

Re: College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

#80

Post by chubot » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:18 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…

I liked college. I entered at 18, graduated at 22, and have been working for over a decade in the tech industry since.

College is good just for the experience at that age. Certainly I had points where I thought it was "fake" and isolated -- but guess what, working in tech can make you isolated too!

It's just a different experience, and I totally get that many people cannot afford it. I probably have spoiled peers, but most of them were in some kind of school well into their late 20's, often into their 30's (Ph.D.'s, medical school, general listlessness) Compared to that, 4 years in college seems pretty moderate.

If I had been working for 15 years in tech without even going to college, I would have probably had a crisis by now... not that I haven't had mini-crises, but I think going to college actually does give you some perspective.

FWIW I also still read academic papers, which I don't think I would do if I hadn't gone to college (I never got a Ph.D.). So it did help me learn how to learn.