Brad Feld: A message to graduating MBAs | Hacker News Reader

Brad Feld: A message to graduating MBAs

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41 pointscwan18 comments

"you can always get a job that pays tons of money", "pick where you want to live", "just follow your passion, don't worry about your CV", err.. sorry but this is unrealistic for people that are not already upper-middle class and American. I'd love to set that as my priorities but I don't live in that bubble. #firstworldproblems

What's so unreasonable about any of those statements?

The city you call home dictates a lot about your life -- friends, proximity to family, potential employers, culture -- and you're in the best position to find a second home after graduating. It only gets tougher as you get older.

As for the CV, well, he's right. Don't go somewhere or do something for the sake of improving your resume, unless you want to spend the rest of your life focusing on your job application.

Finally, as for jobs that pay you plenty of money...look at his audience. They're all MBAs. High-paying jobs aren't exactly scarce for MBAs. :)

sorry but most MBAs I know are either unemployed or sub-employed, so I don't find them a high-salaried prone population as you do. You are living in a bubble where you can get a 100k job out of school, and being broke means not being able to change cars every year. I'm not saying that the values he talks about are wrong, but that they are unrealistic given the constraints of economics for 99% of the population of the world.

Sure, good point. I know a few MBAs from great state schools who are also struggling to find work.

Regardless, his point is not that "money rains from the sky" but that people should develop the life they want, irrespective of making money. Money will generally work itself out (whether its by making money off your passion, or working to support your passion as a hobby).

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't -- you are right." — Henry Ford

I don't think graduating students, MBA or otherwise, have a hard time grasping the concept of following their passions. Rather, I think they have a hard time figuring out what their passions actually are.

The educational and employment system in this country has beaten relentlessly on the drum of incrementality. Everything is a box on an endless checklist. Everything is a step towards another step. No time to stop and figure out where all the steps are actually leading. Need to focus on working hard right now. So you go through life like this for 10 or 15 years, and eventually you wake up wondering how the hell you ended up nowhere near where you wanted to be. You allowed yourself to become a slave to expectations, short-term ass busting, and conventional wisdom. You may have squirreled away some decent coin in the process, but how much of that squirreling have you really enjoyed? And was it worth the price?

I rarely comment on HN, but this is incredibly wise advice. To anyone who is graduating soon and being told by everyone to "find a job, any job" listen to this man's words VERY CAREFULLY. Parse each statement individually and then contemplate the entire message.

For those of us who do not believe in an afterlife, we must realize that the opportunity costs of doing things that we don't enjoy for extended periods of time are INCREDIBLY high.

Personally, I would rather be poor with a lot of leisure time, or extremely wealthy with a lot of leisure time. I am willing to endure the transition period from one to the other (startup binge for 2-3 yrs), but with strict adherence to the PG startup methods (fail/iterate quickly) so that I am not wasting my precious time.

Life is far too short to spend completing a checklist that your parents put in front of you. Make your own goals, and follow your own passions.

The best embodiment of this philosophy is probably Elon Musk. Got rich and immediately followed his passions. He continues to inspire me to this day.

Beware, also, of arguments to the effect: "This is the way it worked for us."

Millions of young and middle-aged (and a good fraction of older) people particularly in the U.S. are getting a lesson in this right now.

"Pay your dues." In one way, there's still wisdom in this. You don't know as much as you think you know. Don't just charge off the cliff. On the other hand, if this means consistently, persistently doing less than you could, kowtowing to bores/boors who even you can see are not part of the solution. Well, I'll just warn you: The atrophy becomes self-perpetuating.

The trouble is, when you're young, you do have a lack of perspective. And sometimes such people are very influential, controlling figures in one's life. And emotions are deep-seated, tricky buggers once established.

For all people laugh about the French and their vacation, they understand this. Life is not about work, it is about us.

I've been living in Taiwan and now Beijing for almost all my adult life, but Boulder is the place I launched from. At one time I was a minor math prodigy and seriously considered a career in programming. Now that my interests are finally turning back in that direction, it's weird to realize there's such an successful guy from back in Boulder helping people do exactly what I wanted to.

I find the advice poignant, too. On one hand it feels like maybe I made the wrong choice to take the road less traveled and leave for so long.

So are you a programmer looking for a job in Boulder? We need someone in the next 2-3 mos...

Good advice for those that know what their passions are. But in my experience, the hard part is in finding out exactly where their passions lie.

I'm graduating in less than 2 weeks. Interesting thoughts, but not really awe-inspiring or life-changing. Maybe that is THE message.

I graduated a year early and started working for Microsoft almost immediately. Now, staring 30 in the face—having worked for a startup, started an angel-backed one of my own, and having recently joined another—I can happily reiterate what Brad is saying: follow your passion.

Life is simply too short to do anything but.

I am a little further away from graduation but it won't be long.

I am curious if you have experienced the same thing I have. I went to grad school to gain knowledge and answer a bunch of questions. While many of them have been answered, they have been replaced with exponentially more questions, many of which are even harder than the original ones in the first place.

Not all questions need to be answered. What really are the questions that drive you?

In short, whatever you want to do - just do it.

So very true.

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