Doing a startup taught me the value of staying in school | Hacker News Reader

Doing a startup taught me the value of staying in school

swizec.com

52 pointsSwizec34 comments

[Taking the default path of every other middle-class kid in search of a middle-class job] teaches you to better question everything, not to question for the sake of questioning, but for the sake of proving to yourself and others that what you’re doing, that what somebody else is doing, is really the way it should be done. It also gives you a much wider berth of existing theories and hypotheses that you can use to create new knowledge from.

It seems unlikely that there would be some kind of mass-market institution that teaches everyone to question authority, especially if so many authorities had gone through that institution. It seems much more likely that any institution that markets to 18- to 22-year-olds is going to market itself as totally rad and rebellious.

Here's what I think happened: I think the author of this post got older and wiser. That tends to happen to people, even if they participate in the extended adolescence of school. Granted, it happens a lot faster to people who drop and and have to pay bills and don't even have a meal plan. But it happens to nearly everyone.

I realize that this unfashionable to say, but the ability to finish your degree is a sign of discipline. I come from a creative background so this is critical when I'm looking to work with someone, so perhaps it doesn't apply to CS or business majors where people pick the major as a default rather than out of passion. I think we've prized dropping out of school thanks to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but I don't think we should view dropping out as a requirement.

No, but we should definitely not condescend to those who do drop out. As someone who did the university bit and have helped fund friends' educations, there is a ton of value available for the taking from a university education. But that doesn't mean that everyone should have one: sometimes dropping out is better and smarter.

"doesn't apply to CS or business majors where people pick the major as a default rather than out of passion"

While there exist a _very_ small amount of people who do CS as "default" rather than "passion", they are very rare, and most CS students are extremely passionate about some aspect of computer science.

You have a fair point — maybe I'd say more "IT Dude" than CS. In the corporate world I see many folks to doing IT who are doing it out of a default mode. Also sometimes said people will start with out with a passion, but pretty quickly it just becomes a job to them.

Like many things, the quality and value of your education is not only a function of the institution you attend, but also of your goals, drive, and temperament.

If your goal is to simply obtain a degree so that you can get a job with your credential, then school might do little to further your useful education.

If your goal is to learn how to solve problems, to learn to think critically, to gain fundamental understanding of difficult concepts, to grapple with how much is not known, and to meet like-minded people, then a university can be a great setting to achieve these goals, with the resulting credential simply acting as a by-product of your education.

School is a tool, just like everything else. It's all what you make of it.

University isn't worthless, merely wasted on the young. The most obvious example (to old people) is teaching history to 18 year olds who haven't experienced anything. I didn't really understand how the Vietnam War was possible until I saw the Iraq War happen.

Wouldn't all of these be better career tracks:

- Soldier in the army, then military academy, then military command.

- Work at an alderman's office, then get a degree in political science, then run for office.

- PHP developer for a marketing firm, then CS degree, then technical cofounder at a startup.

The only programs I know that capitalize on this is are some MBA programs that are geared toward middle-management types trying to get into upper management.

The U.S. could really use more apprenticeship programs for the young.

Some MS Software Engineering programs take a similar path and require that the applicant have development experience before being allowed to enter the program. I think it's a great idea.

I think a certain amount of "horses for courses" caution is called for here. Some skills seem much more suited to learning by doing than others. Even within a particular field of endeavor, some skills seem more suited to learning by doing than others. Didn't various militaries converge on the practice of sending people to school to become artillerists and celestial navigators even as they continued to honor learning by doing in other specialties? If you want to rise in politics or design user interfaces, it may work pretty well to learn by doing, while studying only as the need arises: as far as I know, there isn't that much formal knowledge that's foundational for that kind of work. There's still lots of valuable stuff to read and learn from, but it doesn't seem foundational: trying to read a UI book without studying the prerequisites doesn't seem to be nearly as confusing as e.g. trying to read a physics or engineering book without studying the prerequisites. And math-y stuff beyond the usual public education level seems foundational in a fair number of specialties, not just physics and engineering. If you want to price portfolios of derivative securities or write software that recognizes faces, a couple of years spent on math and/or on related fundamentals of software (algorithms and data structures, various other programming skills) may be a good way to start.

I'm not suggesting those man-years are necessarily best spent at school. I notice that most of the valuable formal foundational knowledge tends to be open to self-study if you're motivated enough, and I have run into people who'd learned a lot of them for themselves before they got out of high school. (E.g., my freshman roommate at college.:-) But I am suggesting that in school or not, some of those man-years are best spent before you need to rely on the knowledge: learn a lot of what you need to know about spherical trigonometry and log tables or gunpowder mixes and metal fatigue before you need it, not as you need it.

I love this word "foundational" you've introduced.

My point is that entry level employees are typically just doing what they're told to by someone considered an expert. This low level work in any field provides context for what is important to learn and why. I think it would be better to obtain this context first, and then take a step back from the day-to-day rat race to fill in the "foundational" knowledge needed to become a true expert.

College would then be like a mid-career sabbatical. When the sabbatical is over, you're ready to be in charge of the big decisions. eg, Be a carpenter for 15 years then go to architecture school.

Talk to us again in 5 years when you've got some experience under your belt and you find out how woefully unprepared school has left you, despite your recent epiphany.

Then talk to us in 10 when you figure out that you could have learned all that same knowledge for free, in less time. Or that you could have been doing a job and someone would PAY you to learn it, and you'd learn even more in even less time.

Just hold up right there. University is free in Slovenia. I'm not paying a thing for all of this :)

I'm also a doing a job on the side, so I can learn to instantly apply the experience.

Well, it's over 20 years since I graduated with a CS degree that had a strong maths/theory component and I'm pretty happy with what I did. It meant I could go on and do postgraduate work in an engineering department which pretty much directly led to me co-founding a startup with one of my colleagues - before we got VC funding we kept ourselves going for a couple of years largely by writing engineering simulations.

I'm fairly good at picking up new concepts by myself - but could I have taught myself what I learned by being taught and, more importantly, collaborating with some very smart people - I'm pretty sure, for me, the answer to that is no.

Did you have programming experience before your cs degree? I am thinking about gOing into cs now to help switch my career track and want to know if it's wOrth it. Thanks for your post.

A bit - some Apple II Basic and 6502 assembler at high school. Just enough to know that I really enjoyed developing software.

The CS course I did provided almost no "training" in the practicalities of software development - you had to do a lot of development to pass the courses but you were pretty much expected to pick up sensible development habits by yourself, we never had any classes in it.

As someone who graduated from university while doing summer jobs, I am extremely happy with my education, and I find it useful on a regular basis. Even the physics that I won't be using as a software developer is a great framework that helps me pick up stuff that would have normally been beyond me, and the approach to problems that I picked up there makes many software tasks easier -- either to grasp, or to implement.

As for school itself - it both pointed me in the right direction, making me take classes that were related, useful, and built on each other in a meaningful way. It lead me down the right paths, and the access to professors that were willing to spend time to answer questions and point me in the right direction for further study were invaluable.

Of course school isn't a complete education, but it's a vital component of it.

I agree that university is useful in that it makes you take classes. I was becoming a reasonably competent programmer before I started university, and for every topic that I was interested in, I believe I could have learned it on my own.

I had no interest in database systems; it looked boring to me. My schedule and class requirements had a hole in it, and I took a database class. I'm glad I did.

I did want to learn Lisp, but I wasn't getting my head wrapped around it on my own, and was content to not push myself and just stayed with C. Then I took a language interpretation class and was forced to use Lisp. After a week or so the basic concepts clicked, and now I greatly enjoy Lisp. But I wasn't forcing myself to learn it.

I also ended up studying a bunch of other totally unrelated things that I wouldn't have on my own, at least not any time on the visible horizon: Russian history, economics, Spanish language, development of jazz music, public speaking... and I feel I'm overall better for it, partly because of what I learned in these classes, and partly because it made me realize there are interesting things to learn all over the place, not just in my favorite areas of study.

That said, if I've ever used any of this stuff that I didn't learn on my own in my actual work, I'm not aware of it. But that doesn't mean I'm not happy that I went through university.

Talk to us again in 5 years when you've got some experience under your belt and you find out how woefully unprepared school has left you...

Then talk to us in 10 when you figure out that you could have learned all that same knowledge for free, in less time...

I graduated from college 34 years ago and I will talk to you now...

College is not about getting prepared, learning facts, acquiring things, or being thrifty or efficient in doing so. College is about becoming a bigger and better you. It's not the only way, but it's a pretty good one.

I have never taken a CS or programming class. I have taught myself almost everything I've ever learned about about building software and businesses. None of the "stuff" I needed came from college, but I'd like to think that college played a fundamental role in helping become the person I needed to be.

On one hand, I have always been concerned about the giant chasm between academia and the real world. On the other hand, I would never discourage anyone from starting and finishing college. Take advantage of this great time to shape your future. You may never have such an opportunity again.

I'm of the school of thought that says there should be a giant (but not too giant, mind) chasm between academia and the real world. The whole bloody thing falls apart when universities make feeble attempts to offer vocational education.

Having been 10 years out of college I guess I can provide some insight. Just some background: I went to a top tier CS school in the Bay Area and graduated in 2000.

At 5 years out of school (2005),it was nearing the end of the dark times (bubble burst). I didn't feel unprepared for school. I felt overwhelmed by the economy (or lack of it) and the extent to which outsourcing had really threatened software development jobs in the US.

Finding good jobs wasn't about being or not being prepared. All recent grads had a hard time finding jobs in software and many decided to change directions (law school, MBA, grad school). In fact, I noticed my friends with Master degrees had much easier times getting jobs ... particularly at places like Google. So, in fact, education helped them more.

In 2010, looking back I can say that having a CS degree from a top school has opened many doors for me. I found out about a great job at a cool startup from a friend I went to _school_ with. Even when meeting new people (in a professional sense), alums from my school (and major) tend to be the most open to meeting because they recognize the value of the education we went through.

Only speaking for myself... It's hard trying to learn stuff at a startup (in depth) and get sh*t done. A startup will consume most of your waking life. What you will learn will most likely be related to what you have to get done at the moment and it's a smattering of things. There are some very useful things you can learn in depth at school that you can't learn while at a job. Like cmpt theory/math theory. You can't efficiently learn that stuff while trying to crank out ruby code/javascript for something that must be done YESTERDAY. School is a less-stressful, structured environment for thinking deeply about stuff. Yes, you can learn stuff on your own but it's better to have access to mentors/coaches/peers available for guiding you in your studies. A school is the easiest way to get access to such a community. If you're learning Lisp at school you'll have 20 peers and a mentor to talk to.

"It gives you better frameworks for thinking."

This is vitally important.

People who think school should prepare your for a job are missing the point. What school does is increase your capacity for thought, teaching you new methods. You cannot get out of higher education without learning multiple ways to approach, de-construct, and re-construct problems and questions.

"It gives you better frameworks for thinking."

Better frameworks than what? Real life? Trial and error? Empiricism? Sounds like he learned to generalize and impose his experiences on others.

> You cannot get out of higher education without learning multiple ways to approach, de-construct, and re-construct problems and questions.

My personal experiences would prove otherwise. I may be an exception.

Great post. However, deciding whether the range of options you are considering to solve a problem is too narrow seems to be more easier in small business structures as a result of efficient interactions. University didn't teach me which method is the best, but that other methods very often exist. And how to decide which one is the most interesting for my own need.

tl;dr -> Confronting the vast vastness of everything you don’t know and can never hope to understand will leave you a better man (or woman).

It gives you better frameworks for thinking.

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Right on the Money!

I love my education not because of the specifics of what I learned but because it taught me HOW to learn difficult things quickly (computer/electrical Engineering major) ... it gave me the confidence that I could also learn anything as long as I had good plan for how to go about it.

I can never put a price on that.

A university education is kind of a hammer, isn't it?

Maybe there isn't just one thing called a "university education". Maybe this "critical thinking" thing is more than just a nail. And maybe dropping out of university is a great way to pull that hacksaw out of your backpack for once.

His entire argument boils down to the belief that universities can greatly improve your critical thinking skills. On the other hand, one of the main criticisms of universities these days is the fact that they seem to be doing very poorly in that regard (http://chronicle.com/article/New-Book-Lays-Failure-to-Learn/...)

I tend to agree with the critics, and couldn't find anything compelling me to think otherwise in this post.

Once again, it all comes down to what you choose to study. Mathematics? Yes. Womyn's Studies? No.

What's wrong with women studies? One of the fascinating benefits of college is that you will bump into people with completely different world view from yours. Some of them will tell you at the university cafe why women studies is more likely to impact the world than your tech startup.

If you focus only on programming between the age of 18 and 30, you may believe than HN represents the universe.

"What's wrong with women studies? One of the fascinating benefits of college is that you will bump into people with completely different world view from yours. Some of them will tell you at the university cafe why women studies is more likely to impact the world than your tech startup."

You explained exactly what's wrong with women's (now called gender) studies: all they can do is talk and react. They don't do. In the sciences (I use that term loosely), there is a boundary of what isn't known. Scientists probe that boundary and make it further by testing and finding out what is and isn't.

Now, what does 'gender studies' do? They sit around in a circle and blab about stuff that affects them. From IU Bloomington, the first campus to offer this type of degree:

"Women’s Studies and Gender Studies offer exciting interdisciplinary courses that concentrate on the position of women and men across many cultures. Courses explore issues related to women and gender across academic disciplines, examining such topics as race and class, business and politics, health, the body, sexuality, developing societies, the arts, academic institutions and knowledge, sports and leisure, law, and the media." Cited http://www.indiana.edu/~wostgens/

Engineers make stuff. Programmers make stuff. Chemists make stuff. Creators create, and that adds a lot of value to civilisation. What does gender studies add? A whole lot of nothing. We only have their own website to go by.

I kind of agree with you but I still downvoted because using Womyn's Studies offends at least some people who might otherwise listen to you. One does not argue on the internet in order to convince the person one is debating with but to persuade the lurkers.

Also, what you wrote wasn't worth writing unless you were going to back it up. It's pure applause lights[0]

[0]http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/

Is posting a link to lesswrong.com an applause light in itself?

Also, what you wrote wasn't worth writing unless you were going to back it up.

Do you think so? I think my point, regardless of my particular examples, was pretty sound and important -- people keep talking about "going to college" as if college were monolithic, but college offers you many possibilities for your education, ranging from fairly useless to incredibly valuable.

On lesswrong being an applause light, I don't know. I don't think it's even saturated HN's pop culture to the extent it will yet, so I expect that linking to the explanation of the term provides value.

Your last sentence makes the point that you meant to make much better than you originally did. You could have made it better butthis time there was something other than derision there.

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