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Comment by arkis22 | Hacker News Reader

I think your list is mostly correct, but I don't think there's any reason it needs to stay that way. Technology is about lowering barriers to entry, and digital goods and services have high margins and very little (if any) marginal cost.

Maybe in the next 10-15 years we can convince high schoolers that if they spent their free time programming they could be capable of creating a revenue generating asset at 18.

The combined power of a nation of kids that could create rails SaaS sites or reusable 3D models would be an awesome sight to behold. It's a skill they would keep and even pass on.

Tech is largely new, and we really haven't bothered to teach it yet.

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> I don't think there's any reason it needs to stay that way

There is actually a very good reason, namely that acquiring knowledge, skills, wisdom, etc. is at odds with acquiring assessment signals. The only way to become a good entrepreneur is to basically become unemployable.

I don't think they're at odds. They are definitely not 100% overlapping though.

I would disagree that the only way to become a good entrepreneur is to become unemployable. The best way is, as you say, to have knowledge and skill to create a useful product. Then, having a market that allows you to easily get paid for your work helps.

I mentioned high school specifically because I know that I would have loved something interesting to work on. It's a perfect time to work on skills rather than assessment signals. Lots of kids don't even bother with the assessment signals...

> The best way is, as you say, to have knowledge and skill to create a useful product.

Sure. Once you've actually created a product that's useful, or at least impressive from a technical and/or design perspective, then you're easily employable at that point. But for most people there is still going to be a several year gap between when they start focusing on acquiring those skills and when they've actually built something impressive enough to function as its own signal.

I have seen this over and over with people that have eventually built incredible products or services. The company/product/service etc. can work as a signal eventually. An “entrepreneur” is a lot like a scientific researcher. It isn’t until after the experiment has been shown to work that your risk is then rewarded. The people with high agency that have a fair amount of confidence in their abilities and don’t view themselves as a statistic tend to be able to weather this period the best emotionally.

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