Hacker News Reader

Comment by kindle-dev | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a bad idea. The author is clearly self motivated, so why does he want to start a full-time dev career so early? College is basically the best time in most people's lives to explore ideas that they have. College students are smart enough to build something significant, and have enough time to do so. I know so many people who have atrophied motivationally at Facebook and other big tech companies. The ones that haven't devolved into general apathy are more focused on climbing the corporate ladder or making more money, not anything truly fun and inspirational. Personally, I would love the opportunity to go back to college and have the time I need to explore my ideas.

View on HN

NOTE: Not the author.

I can't speak for Facebook, but I definitely feel like Apple made me stagnate intellectually. It didn't help that every time I wanted to work on something open source, I would get a nastygram from their legal team telling me that doing so would be grounds for termination.

That said, at least for me, college required a type of stick-with-it-ness that I don't really feel I obtained until having to sludge through horrible office jobs for years. Having to work for megacorps that I hated forced me to finish work that I didn't want to do, and trudge through meetings I didn't have any desire to go to. After the hundredth "glorified data entry" assignment and thousandth "sprint planning that I'm only relevant for two minutes of", pushing my way through college felt somewhat easy in comparison.

My path would be virtually impossible to recommend to people, but I honestly wouldn't change the order of how I did things given the option.

For the last couple of years the "best time in most people's lives" has been paying $40K for the professor to shuffle through years-old powerpoint decks over Zoom. It's hard to find anyone graduating today who isn't fully disillusioned with the college system.

Is it really any better to sit in a grand lecture hall while the same tired professor slogs through a years old PowerPoint in person?

No, but at least people are now realizing the absurdity of the whole situation. Plus there were at least other benefits of college outside of lecture halls that are no longer available.

> I think this is a bad idea. The author is clearly self motivated, so why does he want to start a full-time dev career so early? College is basically the best time in most people's lives to explore ideas that they have. College students are smart enough to build something significant, and have enough time to do so.

What does this have to do with actually going to college? If the degree and courses don't matter, it sounds like OP would be better off just not working for a couple years in a sort of "pre career sabbatical". If you're going to dedicate your time to exploring ideas without an income, you might as well not waste your time on useless classes and accrue unnecessary debt.

Perhaps a taste of the working world will give them a greater understanding/appreciation of what college will offer if they decide to go back. A lot of people waste their college years cause they simply went cause it was what you do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com