- If you like programming/CS, then studying CS in college can be fun (once you figure out if you're more into programming or theory you can take more systems or theory courses as appropriate).
- Having a degree will never harm your chances at a company, and can be seen as a legitimizing factor at many [usually larger] companies. If things ever go south, getting a job at a bigger company will be much easier.
- You learn a lot in a short time at university. A lot of this will be the type of things often asked in technical interviews, so it will generally make getting a job in the future easier (the CS interview process can be a little biased toward college type questions rather than industry type questions. Whether the system is broken is another topic). You will learn things in industry too, but if you stay in college you'll still learn them, just later. If you drop out, you might always wonder what topics you're missing out on.
- I don't feel like you're delaying your life by attending university, as that's generally what people expect you to do with the four years after high school, IMO.
As to how useful university has been, I found it very useful. But university, like many things, is what you make of it. It can be useless or very useful or somewhere in-between depending on what you do while there (what classes you take, what projects you work on in your spare time, possibly what clubs you find a fit in).
I've technically been in that situation, and my manager at the time encouraged me to finish my degree. But take this with a grain of salt; I would have finished my degree regardless of what anybody said at that point.
You have a better idea than anyone else of what's best for you, and you should make this decision, if it comes up, at the end of your internship rather than now. But I generally encourage people in CS to get their degree.
If you have any questions related to that, I'd be happy to answer them.
If so, then I'd say dropping out early is something to consider. But do so knowing the risks associated with it. Any business you start will most likely fail. And many companies will require that you have a degree to get a job^. If you have a chance to move to SV then do it. There's a lot of negative aspects (group think, etc) but the positives drastically outweigh them. You'll have the opportunity to surround yourself with people who think big and take big chances...the type of people who are great at starting businesses. You won't find it anywhere else.
If not, then stay in college. A degree gets you a good amount of choice that you'd lose if you opt not to get one. But those choices are always when working for someone else. If that's something you can do (99% of the population) then the degree will go a long way.
I'm 34, now living in SV. Dropped out in my 3rd year to take a contracting gig at GM in the late 90s. If I knew better I would have came out to SV. Instead I moved back to Cincinnati and did a startup for 3 years before I was married or had kids. Now I'm on my second startup (normally spend 3 years at a "real" company between startups) but this time I have a wife who stays home and I have 2 kids. The lack of degree has not yet had a negative impact on me. But I don't know if that will continue.
^ I've not yet finished college and I never have trouble finding work between starting up. YMMV
I was in a similar situation as you, except the opportunity came to me as a sophomore, instead of a freshmen. Let me preface by stating that I think college is an extremely invaluable resource to grow up and learn outside of the classroom. I did, and love it.
If I were you, assuming you do get an offer, I'd register it as a co-op with your college. I did that last year with Lift (http://lift.do), and think it was the best way to go about the situation. Here's why: it's still a full-time job, you're still technically a student, and you don't pay any tuition. If you like it, great — stay out there. If not, no harm-no foul, and go back to school.
Happy to chat over email with you, if you'd like. Look in my profile for contact info. Good luck!
> Choice is liberating.
I did not have the opportunity to obtain a formal post-secondary education though, so maybe that is something you learn to manage in that process.
One percent (of developers) problems.
For me, after doing this, dropping out was an easy decision and I have no regrets. I'm more engaged and challenged each day at TaskRabbit than I ever was in class.
However, ensure you'll have no regrets about your college experience. I achieved my goals, tried new things, and got what I wanted out of college - it just didn't take me 4 years.
I worried at first that my lack of a degree would make it hard for me to find a job in the Bay Area, but the market is incredible right now. If you're good enough, it doesn't matter if you have a degree. I managed to find a great job with people I have fun working with. Sometimes I forget I'm getting paid for it.
Reader, your mileage may vary. College is great, but it's not for everyone. I got a lot out of my three years (especially studying abroad -- if you can afford it, do it), but I knew I was ready for something else. The other path turned out great for me.
(Yes, some people end up rich or with atypical work schedules that make the above categorization not true, and others roll the startup dice and have a great time at that too, but the vast majority of people, including many intelligent, interesting, and otherwise nontraditional people, fall into the above pattern.)
Ten years from now nobody's gonna care whether you've been in the industry for five years or eight, but some will care about your degree, and much more importantly you will care whether you took the initiative to learn something interesting (not about computers!).
I dropped out of college a few months ago & I'm focusing on self educating myself on subjects that I'm particularly interested in, investment, accounting, web design, I'm working on a few great ideas & I have no intentions of working five days a week with minor breaks for vacations in the future because I am currently working 7 days a week with no vacations in order to not only live a life that most people only dream of, but also to make a real impact in the world within a few years (I'm 19).
I guess it's all opinion, but assuming that the process of enjoying life at school then going into work for the rest of your life to suffer is the standard among 'the vast majority of people' is just non-existent to me. I consider myself to be a normal person who is just damn willing to work hard for what he believes in, and fortunately at this time in my life, I have a concrete vision of what I believe in.
If you love what you do, then your work days are just as fun and fulfilling as your vacation days, and believe me, I intend to do what I love.
(Btw I hope I don't come across as arrogant or rude, I respect your comment and I'm just offering my opinion.)
If there's any interesting life lesson I've learned in my few years it's this: just because you're different from the people immediately around you (due to intelligence, drive, etc.) it doesn't mean your broad needs in life (e.g. human companionship, time to unwind) are going to be significantly different than the billions of humans that came before you. That's not dooming you to mediocrity, that's just stats -- that's the intelligent read of the data we have. But despite a million cliche stories of the powerful magnate whose only life regret is that they had spent more time with their children (even Steve Jobs, perhaps: http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28... ), it may just be a lesson you can only learn from experience.
Thanks everyone for the replies. My logic is: I learned everything I know about programming on my own (specifically, almost exclusively from the internet), and I am dying to get to SV, get some industry experience, and hopefully soon start my own company (me and my brother hope to eventually apply to YC together, he's got big ideas too). I spend my spare time working on those "undergraduate hacker projects" pg mentions, but I would be regardless (possibly more so if I wasn't in college)
I'm loading up on CS theory classes this semester in and the next semester, because I do appreciate the importance of them, so if I do drop out I'll have that mostly covered. I really feel like 3 more years of mostly fulfilling degree requirements will only delay me, I'm not learning anything from the applied CS courses I take.
The internship is at Facebook, if that matters.
It's also easier to work on side projects in college.
You should not leave college as early as this unless (a) you start something so successful that it pulls you out, or (b) you are one of the very rare people who are temperamentally unsuited to it.
Unless your college is awful, your longing for SV is a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. SV is full of people who wish they were back in college.
This topic hits home so this may end up a long post -- you don't have to read it by any means :) Instead go read Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech, it's much more eloquent and compelling than anything I have to say, and he tells a great story about how hard he tried to stay in college though he could not afford the tuition.
I thought I'd share my experience in hopes it would help give some perspective. First, I would never advise anyone to entirely drop out of school, but I totally get how you're feeling because I took two years away from college to explore and pursue a business idea. I grew up in Silicon Valley (or more accurately, I grew up with Silicon Valley) in an environment where your peers expected you to stay on a straight, almost preordained path to an acclaimed university and then a big tech- or science-related company. And should you stray from that path, it had better be to start a tech company with immediately obviously benefits that everyone understood and praised, or else you'd better prepare to be scorned. Even in SV, the word "startup" doesn't always connote glamor, most often people's views of success and fearless entrepreneurship are in hindsight.
I was tired of the social pressure and looking for different problems to tackle so I left school temporarily and went as far away from SV as possible -- I went all the way to a mountain village in China to oversee a teeny-tiny clothing factory -- not the type of "startup" my SV peers would have been proud of. But I always knew I'd come home to SV and I was determined to finish my degree. I took distance learning classes online so I could earn credits for transferring into a good business program. "Distance learning" from a mountainous village in China in meant hooking up a very slow, very unstable dial-up connection (it was a miracle they even had a modem and Internet service at all) at work and doing some random micro-Econ coursework while dozens of sewing machines whirled around me, and praying that the power wouldn't go out suddenly. Sometimes it meant taking final exams at 4am because of the time difference.
That experience was both vastly frustrating and great fun, but it would not have been complete if I hadn't gone back to college. I enjoyed being able to hack out my own curriculum, but those online classes would not have mattered if I didn't turn them into a real degree. I got the credits I needed and successfully transferred into the undergrad business program of my choice. After being away for two years, I had become used to being without many resources, and now there were tons of university programs and people who wanted to know all about what I've been doing and help me take those ideas further. The graduate school had entrepreneurship competition and I even got to pitch my ideas on reforming manufacturing processes in the fashion/clothing industry to some VCs. One thing's for sure-- I would've had a hard time coming by those opportunities to drive my ideas even further had I not gone back to finish my degree. I still had to take quite a few pointless classes but those didn't matter compared to everything else the university offered. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's useful and what isn't till further down the road.
In the case your college sucks, now's a good time to check out some SV schools since you're already coming out here for your FB internship. You don't have to quit school to explore your ideas.
Hope this bit of insight helps and good luck with everything!