Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
blog.samaltman.com
blog.samaltman.com
That quote drips so much of elitism its disgusting. MS still has many brilliant engineers and is building alot of really complex stuff, probably more than your average startup ever will. This is the kind of talk i find really off putting about the whole startup-scene...
Let's face it: if you are having trouble feeding yourself, your view on money will be extremely short-term. As it should be.
So the difference the extra money makes is likely to just mean lifestyle changes like taking the bus instead of driving a new car and less ambitious holidays. If you can put up with that for a few years then it makes sense to take a lower paying job if you believe it will have better long term prospects.
I've met all too many designers and engineers who started out exactly like this, and years later come to realize that they've been underpaid by more than 50% below market rate for half a decade, and have little more to show for it than one entry on their resume and a case of Stockholm syndrome.
That's a home they could have bought if they knew their real value and weren't being exploited by a greedy employer. It's years of bitterness and job dissatisfaction they could have avoided by better knowing their value and having the right kind of ambition-inspiring peer pressure.
Let's assume you're not such a person, but at the same time I hope you would help educate your young designer about what exactly she's sacrificing by working with you at a salary of "making more than her mother." Please help her understand what she could be earning if she's willing to possibly relocate and hustle a bit, and allow her to make an informed decision.
Ultimately, one can only expect companies to do what is in their best interest, which is often antithetical to the employee's interests. One has to take responsibility and ensure that they get paid fairly. The employers certainly won't.
Keep in mind she has no education beyond high school, no professional experience, and some pretty serious holes in her skill set. She's simply not equipped to land a $50k job on her own right now, even if that is "entry level". Her choice is between taking this, or bagging groceries, or taking tens of thousands in loans to go to college (which may or may not get her a job after). And when her skills are rounded out and the money is there, I'll pay her going rate, and gladly.
Moreover, she's not just my employee - she's my friend, and my daughter's friend. I'm not hiring her because she's cheap. I'm hiring her because I have faith in her talent, her drive, and her taste. I'd rather take her on and spend a few months polishing her skills than take my chances with a "better" employee whose taste I don't yet trust.
So yeah, far from exploiting her, I'm trying to groom and mentor her to build the kind of career I believe she should have.
Yes, I'm sure this is what you're telling yourself.
So you're exploiting her and psychologically pressuring her.
> she instinctively understands the value of giving 100% as a measure of self-worth.
Instead of money, of course. She's not worth that.
> she has no education beyond high school
Completely irrelevant.
> when her skills are rounded out and the money is there, I'll pay her going rate, and glady.
No, you won't. There will always be one more skill she lacks and there will always be one more thing you need to buy "for the company" (but use yourself, of course, because it's your company).
By "take advantage", you mean offering her a direct path into her intended career.
As for how much I'm planning to pay her when we can get funded: I was planning on $30k salary. Per indeed.com, "entry level graphic designer minneapolis" is $31k. At the national level, that number can go as high as $50k, but frankly, she doesn't have the skills (yet) to get a $50k job. After a couple of years, she will.
So just based on what you've said in this comment, you're giving her the choice of either working for a small percentage of 0 ("equity") or she can wait until you have the money. Should you ever get the money, you're going to pay her just under market for an entry-level job. If you don't get money for 2 years, she's clearly no longer entry-level, you've gotten years of work from an impressionable young girl for free, and you're going to do her the favor of paying below-market wages.
Maybe your intentions are good and it's just the execution that is piss poor, but judging on the comments on this post you are seriously taking this girl for a ride and you should be ashamed of yourself.
You forgot to mention the part where she could earn enough in equity to pay for private art school without working.
Plenty of startups have worse people than the worst of Microsoft. Some of them have people who couldn't get a job at one of those stodgy, blue-chip companies if their lives depended on it.
The range is very wide at most of the startups. I worked at one where there were some seriously good engineers, but a really bad one ended up becoming the lead architect and things went to hell quickly.
That's a pretty small sampling to make such big claims about a company.
he apparently wasn't making the claim about the entire company
The U.S. has held a very privileged position in the world economy over the past century, which has fueled tremendous growth. You're basically betting that the U.S. continue to be a "growth" stock over the next 25 or 50 years, and continue to see huge gains in productivity and global competitiveness.
It's not a completely crazy idea, but it's not the sure bet you make it out to be, either.
It's a much safer bet than many other things.
And let's not even forget the fantastic benefits that Microsoft offers its employees that most startups cannot afford to.
I often quote Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, asking "What do you want?" Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
Out of people I know working for startup type companies, one cut his teeth building enterprise Java stuff at a bank and the other spent time in the military.
More importantly, a lot of them would be happy to hire someone with Microsoft connections.
"waste" is subjective. Twenty years of your life working 100 hours a week in startups? Twenty years of your life traveling the world with a low paying job?
A particular path being appealing to you doesn't necessarily make other paths bad.
> Most people don't have the nerve to even look what they want in the eye.
Sure. Imagine the man who doesn't accept that all he wants is a stable job which will let him spend more time with his family. Instead, he works at a tiny company day in and day out, dreaming of the big payoff (with paid dinners).
Sam isn't giving general career advice here -- read this advice as if you're giving it to a risk-seeking, ambitious, 19-year old (the title of the article...).
In that context -- his advice makes perfect sense.
The article isn't explicitly directed at "risk-seekers," but merely at ambitious people. It's incorrect to conflate the two. Ambition can just easily manifest itself as a desire to seek a large salary, climb the corporate hierarchy, and seek a nice lifestyle. As a member of the cohort at which this piece was directed, I don't know why everyone assumes that we want to expose ourselves to risk, or why everyone asserts that we ought to.
Why does everyone exhort the necessity of risking everything in an attempt to change the world? What is so bad about simply pursuing a nice life?
three kids, a safe job, two Ferraris, and the ear of Larry Ellison?
or how about
Climb the ladder, eventually transition to politics, and become a Senator on a technical platform?
ruswick's point is that ambition is not the sole province of the startup crowd.
It's also important to remember some of the really cool research projects companies like MS are working on and then think about the pretty basic low tech consumer facing products a lot of startups are working on.
MS research is pretty awesome.
"I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies ... that was a terrible decision"
What is this company? How does he know that it's a breakout company? Is he able to tell the future? Because there's an EXCELLENT chance it's not a breakout company. There's an excellent chance it WILL go bankrupt.
Microsoft + 30k more.. or a startup that has a fantastic chance of failing.
Anyone who chooses Microsoft over a startup, I completely understand.
He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart people.
Oh, because working at a startup guarantees he will work with smart people? Sheesh.
Basically, if you're at the point where you think you can do some architectural work and real decision making, you're likelier to be allowed to do that at a startup than at a large company.
It's pretty clear he isnt knocking the old guard, but answering the question in the the way the person asking it was likely anticipating.
In the case of the former, the author is clearly myopic. One needs money to live, and the majority of technology companies reside in cities in which the cost of living is substantially higher than the mean. I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. If anything, one should take a job at an established company, pay off their debt, then take on risk.
In the case of the latter, the author is simply being needlessly dismissive and arrogant. Large companies host hundreds of great engineers and do incredibly meaningful work. Frankly, Microsoft is one of the strongest innovators in the market at the moment. Even if one isn't constructing the most alluring product, one can at least take pride in the fact that they are working on a product with a scope many orders of magnitude larger than most startups. Working on Windows might not be the captivating notion, but it is still meaningful to tens of millions of users.
What kind of plebeian can't afford to exit school with $500/mo student loans and $2,000/mo rental payments? ;)
More importantly, according to Hacker News, the average salary for a software developer who is at least capable of coding himself out of a wet paper bag, is $150k, so below-average means an "acceptable" $120k, at least. Right?
"Oh, you should never read Hacker News comments about anything you write," I told him.
Whereupon it immediately struck me how strange and sad it was to be saying this, as the person who started HN.
Seriously, some of the comments on this thread are HN at its very worst: bitter, willful misinterpretations of what Sam is saying.
The way you put it makes it sound like the rest of HN is just bashing him out of jealously in all honesty, which is, well, just for the wrong reason & plain sad at the end of the day.
I don't give a fuck if it's not apparent to anyone else what makes it so great. I like how it tastes.
Why is it unreasonable for PG to have someone as his favorite founder? What if they're just good friends and he really resonates with this Sam guy? Why does it matter if you can't see what's so great about someone you've never met in your life? Maybe Sam is funny in person and has a great attitude. You wouldn't know. Just accept it for what it is. Maybe PG's reasons ARE irrational. Who cares? I have a ton of irrational favorite things.
You people are crazy sometimes.
Sam, I actually think your advise is really good, I wish I'd followed this when I was 19. But I'm still ambitious, I'm not too late. Thanks for the good read!
In the early days of a site like this if a new user comes along and makes negative/snarky comments which don't fit the community it is pointed out, politely. Usually someone posts a reply friendly reminding that this sort of behavior is not welcome. This helps both the offender in question and lurkers to understand how to behave.
Then, at some point, people just snap. They've got enough, they don't want to help new people any more. Even though it has always been like that. Obviously, as the site grows faster users stepping out of line happens more often. So they start making 'everything's getting worse' posts. They are perpetuating the idea that all hope is lost.
So let me propose to try and tell people why they're wrong instead of just making a global assertion, even if true. Next time anyone wants to make a post how 'this community is getting worse and worse' instead try to salvage the discussion instead.
Maybe you have to have wait 30 days after registration before you can comment? Or comments within 30 days of registration have special "new user" formatting?
This will be more similar to how peer-review works in universities. A peer-review from a professor with a long-standing reputation is worth more than the peer-review of a new professor.
Here's my favorite quote from the post: No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people. “Stuff” can be a lot of different things—open source projects outside of class, a startup, a new sales process at a company you work at—but, obviously, sitting around talking with your friends about how you guys really should build a website together does not count.
Doing real work with smart people (preferably smarter than you, preferably much smarter than you) is what matters. It's what makes you a better person. Doesn't matter if it pays well, or if it's secure.
Ambition isn't a purely financial thing. It's "I want to be a better person, and I'm willing to work for it", and a clear concept of what "better" is. Better can be rich, or powerful, or creative, or famous, or happy. It could just be creating a family. But wandering aimlessly and letting fear drive you to the nearest safe-looking hole... that's not ambition.
"working at an already-massively-successful company means you will learn much less, and probably work with less impressive people."
Seriously? Yes big companies have lots of bureaucratic crap and things take longer blah blah. However, you do not want to be giving this advice to an "ambitious" 19 year old. Big companies have a lot of smart and impressive people. Lots. They also can teach you a thing or 2 about the "real world".
"Incidentally, don’t let salary be a factor. I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible decision."
Let me provide the other side of this. You are giving up $30K in salary today as a 19 year old. Now, lets imagine that you need to get a job soon again since that "awesome breakout" company actually failed, what do you think is going to happen ? Yes, you will not be able to negotiate as high a salary as you could have if you had that extra $30K. It is not just about $30K. It is about having the power to negotiate next time if you move which you probably will as a 19 year old.
I'll admit that my situation isn't universal - luckily, I could get my foot in the door with many startups by being in the last batch of Hacker School - but if you, like me, hate academia and want to get to work, don't let your age stop you. Sure, there's companies that care about your schooling - the Googles, Twitters, Facebooks, and Palantirs of the world - but there are so many more that just want great hackers with awesome GitHub profiles and real-world chops.
(and, of course, make sure to never stop learning on your own time! You will, inevitably, have gaps in your knowledge you missed from school, but between Coursera, the availability of free textbooks and lectures, and other resources, it's not hard to remedy that on your own)
How is it possible a 19 year old can?
I can accept that perhaps that 19 year old is just more clever than I am, but I'm a pretty clever guy. What am I missing?
To meet your points: A) I haven't really put myself out there in a while(over a year), I've been 'prepping' B) My algorithm's are poor. While I understand the concept of Big O notation, I can't readily look at something and say "oh that's a _______ sort"
You should "prep" your algorithms knowledge - it plays a big role in a lot of interviews.
* (not that algorithm knowledge isn't practical, but for a lot of smaller, "web-interface-around-a-database" startups, they're not nearly as important as being comfortable around a full web stack)
The things I build now are essentially web interfaces sitting on databases. The problem is they aren't exactly.. or at all.. legal.
Great learning projects (putting my home video library into a web interface, with episode data from a TV series API) but not something I feel I can show.
His definition is probably "someone who makes stuff work." Yours is probably "an expert in his field."
Teach yourself a couple of algorithms courses and some basic multi-threading problems like producer-consumer and so on so you can get through the interview gauntlet. All of my interview questions can be derived from 5 courses: Algorithms & Data Structures, Discrete Math, Operating Systems, Compilers and AI/Machine Learning (optional).
Go interview, be willing to move.
If you feel like you've already done the equivalent, then your prepared.
Willing to move is no problem.
Thanks for the advice. I'm working my way through a Data structures course now, I'll look for the others soon.
You are a clever guy- what does that say to you about the company they work at, and by extension them?
It doesn't take much to look like a master circuit designer when you are the only person at the company with any training in circuit design. For example, during college at an "internship" of sorts, the two years of education I had at the time pretty much made me the resident expert on circuit design.
My advice for ambitious 19 year olds: ask your parents for advice, because they likely know you better than anyone on the internet. (I say this as someone two years your senior)
This is an interesting question, in my experience: The sets of "most ambitious people I know" and "people who describe themselves as ambitious" seem to be entirely disjoint. The most ambitious people I know just go out and do things, rather than sitting around thinking (and talking) about how ambitious they are.
This may be a cultural thing -- self-describing as "ambitious" is the sort of thing which I find tends to happen thanks to high school career preparation programs (along with "organized", "reliable", and "good with people"), and it's entirely possible that those school programs are subtly different in the US than in Canada. However, I can't shake the feeling that there's a kernel of truth here.
The best way to succeed is to have a very clear answer to that cheesy question. Such a clear answer that you're almost burned by its intensity. Such a clear answer that it guides your every move. This clarity of vision will allow you to weather temporary failures and setbacks, and it'll provide you a roadmap for the climb up the mountain.
This is what separates the brilliant-and-hard-working from the brilliant-and-hard-working-and-uber-successful. The world is full of brilliant, hard working people who never get a "lucky break." The secret is that the "lucky break" is often the result of many years of directed effort. So keep that in mind as you go along. If you want to achieve tremendous success in any field, there's a buildup period of at least 5 years, and often more than a decade. It really pays to pick your path early, and to stick to it.
Obviously, some folks have taken more circuitous paths to success, and that's totally cool. But ask most of the majorly successful people in any profession what got them there, and they will tell you they focused relentlessly on it. Ambition isn't enough; ambition needs direction.
Find the ladder you want to climb, and start climbing it -- because most ladders are pretty damned tall, and hopping between them gets tougher the older you get.
I say this having learned it the hard way. I traded what I want to do for what I "should" do for many years, and now I'm trying to catch back up to my vision. I still have time, but I wish I'd been honest with myself at 19.
But sure, if all that you care about is success and you happen to define success like most other Americans (i.e. by making the most money) then go ahead and work as hard as you can and make that million. But please don't complain about your burnout when you're 30-40.
There is way more than money and work in this live. Don't work too hard especially when you're young. If you waste a year or two, nothing will run away and your opportunities will still be there when you're 25.
Something tells me this is an aspirational claim rather than a statement with empirical support. On the other hand, there is a lot of data to support the view that being out of work for years is very bad for finding a job when you finally do want one.
Anyway, I'm not saying that one shouldn't travel, even if you don't work while traveling. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking there are no risks involved. You should be aware of the pros and cons of both approaches and balance them with your personal preferences.
So I got a franchise at 20, then ran it as best I could, made a some money and won some awards. If I was 20 today I would probably make some sort of SaaS product. I certainly wouldn't be asking “I’m an ambitious 19 year old, what should I do?”
Of course, some people don't have an overpowering urge to do anything. So maybe these are the people who ask that question. I once employed a mechanical engineer like that - at 30 he had no ambitions, no dreams. He didn't last long at my company because he also lacked skill and was slow.
I am 43 now, and the urge is subdued but still there. I think if you have a drive in you to make something, then you should go make it. Don't ask for permission and certainly don't wait for permission. Just go do it. When you fail, if you fail, pick yourself up and try again. You only really fail when you stop trying.
My advice for ambitious 19 year olds? Just go do what drives you. If nothing drives you, find someone who is driven and help them.
this was meant to be more about how to have the biggest impact with your life than how to make a little more money. and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone--hence the title. many people will me much happier not following it.
on the money side, there is nothing wrong with taking a job that pays you $30k more. most people ramp up their spending and don't save that ~$20k (post-tax) extra, but if you do, more power to you. that $30k will never in your lifetime compound to $100MM, but if that's not what you're shooting for, that's obviously fine. it's certainly a much less risky path.
1.) Paying you more indicates that they have more to pay; their top-line is higher, which means they're probably in a more lucrative and dynamic industry.
2.) Paying you more means they value you more, which indicates they may have more work for you to do and be willing to give you more responsibility.
In my first job out of college, I had a choice between 3 jobs. One was a public radio non-profit that needed a techie. One was a VC-funded financial software startup. One was a bootstrapped financial software startup. The last offered me about $15K/year more than the others. When I left it two years later, I'd seen two products through from idea to launch. The VC-funded startup actually had a better outcome for the company (they got bought), but I wouldn't have seen much if any of that cash, and since their product was already pretty set in stone by the time I was interviewing, I wouldn't have had nearly as much of a chance to learn and make decisions.
> No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
This article is making the implication that big corporations and job security are bad; go risk your life for an endeavor with a less-than-5% of success!
Having a solid foundation for a life-long career with real-world experience is definitely ambitious.
So a Big-Co job ist still not too bad when starting out imo, you probably wont learn as much but startups are high-risk if you take it seriously.
I wish I could have told this to my wife when we were 22!
"I'm sorry, babe! You need to pay the bills and support me while I work to get my startup off-the-ground! You'll see! We'll be raking in the money in no-time. Our 130K of student loan debt will be paid off before you can say `boo'."
</sarcasm>
If you absolutely have to go to school, student loans are the responsibility of the person who takes them out, and have nothing to do with the blog's point. Get financial aid, get a merit scholarship, go to community college - there are alternatives within your control.
I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree that you learn less at a big company than a startup, though. I learned a lot more in my first year and a half at Google than I did in my 1-2 years at each of the two startups I'd worked at previously. It does level out after your first 2 years, but that's the time to practice soft skills like leadership, mentorship, influence, estimation, decision-making, and so on as you gain trust and get put into positions that don't exist in a startup.
There’s nothing wrong with startups, but there’s nothing wrong with going to the giants that are doing Real Engineering, either. Both can lead to great careers.
Not having even a crappy and unnecessary degree from a crappy university made my ability to work in the US very very difficult, and all future immigration reform for high-skilled workers still orientates around STEM qualifications.
That's why I plan to get my CS degree, and get a stable job, such as one at MS (which the author seems to look down upon). I could see joining/starting a startup, if the opportunity popped up, but seeking a risky situation irks me.Maybe I am just risk adverse?
Even if it was only that statement I took issue with, that would be enough to make me say that this is not actually good advice for a 19-year-old. Be realistic when giving advice...
Not true. I learned more in my first month at a "big company" than in the two years I spent in the startup world. I started out working for startups, and while it was fun at first, it was a big mistake. My development skills ended up stunted and patchy from churning out MVP after MVP. I never learned how to maintain or scale an application, since most of the time I was just pounding code as fast as I could, hoping to score more funding. Since most of my coworkers were also young and inexperienced, I learned little of value and picked up a lot of bad habits. Maybe I just wasn't enough of a "smart young person" to pick ideal companies, but really, who is?
That's just my personal experience, but my point is that startups don't necessarily equal prime education. If you really want to learn and grow, find a team of disciplined people who understand and enjoy their work. Maybe it's a startup, maybe it's MSFT -- the size of a company doesn't necessarily dictate its viability as a learning experience.
Even if the startup fails, she can probably eke a couple of years of professional experience and a reference out of the deal - enough to get her on the path to a nice career. And if the startup succeeds, she has the career and could make enough in options to pay for art school.
Because she's smart and ambitious, she sees the logic of the situation. I have no doubt I'll get great work from her.
I was most definitely considering academia at 19 (I was near dead-set on it).
Then I got to university and got a good look at academics, doctoral students and the environment for myself - I'm no longer so sure that it's something I want to do, at least for now. :)
This is how I feel about my post secondary education. I regret being herded into it and wasting all of those years parroting and memorizing so that I could learn "critical thinking"
I am 21 and just sold my first startup while finishing my last year in college. I started programming at 13ish, and have never stopped reading and learning.
Don't get caught up in what your parents or friends say (it's hard explaining SaaS to people who don't quite "get it"), but make sure you keep whatever you build simple enough for them to intuitively use your project. There's no reason why you can't launch something and start building something now. Go and do it, and a lot of people will lend a helping hand as you go.
Be a good person.
Keep options open.
Explore.
Questionable. I know someone who started a company around half a decade ago, is now out of business with nothing really to fall back on and can't collect contribution related unemployment benefits because they weren't paying N1 national insurance contributions.
Yay companies! May be a big thing, but some people really should not be starting companies.
> If you fail at an idea that you really loved and could have been great, you’re unlikely to regret it, and people will not hold it against you.
Depends on local culture a lot. Notably in Europe, IME, it's much more likely to be held against you.
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I do agree with the general tone of the piece though: That if you want to do something great you'll have to take on some measure of risk. IMO the time to take these risks is when you have a strong fall back position. What you don't want to do is get to 30, have got things wrong repeatedly, and not have a steady income or a home or anything really to your name. You've got to know what you're going to do if things go south.
I'd suggest making the choice that moves you toward your goal while still leaving as many doors open as possible.
My advice to people in my situation is to really, really think about your decision. It's sexy to drop out these days, but it's not always the right thing to do
1. MSR does cool research projects, any one joins has a chance of working on those. A large percentage of the people who work there are research PhDs. Similarly working at Google doesn't necessarily mean you get closer to flying balloons or whatever.
2. Money is bad, learning/glory is good. Simplistic. Spouted by people who can't pay you well. My response: I am curious, I will learn anywhere. Fuck You, Pay Me.
Now I am more indecisive than before.
I agree. Actually, those VC darlings aren't likely to fail in the classic, pink-slips-for-all, sense because the VCs have already worked out an emergency acq-hire and a backup emergency acq-hire. They are, however, likely to fail you, which is worse. Now you have to explain a bad separation from a company that still exists and has pump-and-dump VCs and tech press (still in the "pump" phase, obviously) propping up its reputation.
If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are usually identifiable to a smart young person.
Citation needed. I'm no longer very young (I'm 30) but I'm quite smart and still 0 for 2 when it comes to picking startups. Incidentally, I don't doubt that I'm better at judging companies than most engineers and VCs; I'm probably above 95th percentile in judgment of talent (judgment of character I could work on) but it's just really hard to forecast startups. Most people who think they can do it, can't. Most people who think they can't do it are right.
Also, most of us don't pick from the full space of companies, either. We pick opportunities that make sense in the context of our career stories (career coherency). For example, I'm reaching an age where non-senior/lead roles (except at top AI labs or hedge funds) don't really make sense anymore. If I'm not a strong match (enough to qualify for a senior role) it doesn't make sense for me to apply even if the company looks like a "rocket ship", because a junior role is not acceptable at my stage unless the people are known, world-class entities.
I think he's talking about companies like Square now, Groupon a few years ago, Facebook a few years before that, Google a few years before that. $1B+ valuations, positive glowing aura, disproportionate talent attraction. The kind of company where you can tell almost anyone you work there and they say "Wow, what's that like?"
Interesting things....like making people click on ads? Microsoft products are used by billions of people worldwide and by virtually every Fortune () company. And then we have Microsoft Research, love or hate Microsoft as company all you want but Microsoft Research is top notch. Quite a few smart people there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research. Maybe not as smart as Sam Altman (the OP) but smart nonetheless.
My ass.