Why Companies Founded By College Dropouts Rarely Hire College Dropouts | Hacker News Reader

Why Companies Founded By College Dropouts Rarely Hire College Dropouts

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70 pointsshard47 comments

Do we even know that this is a true statement about the facts of the world? Or is this something that the author just makes up, based on anecdotes he knows? (We have already had this same article submitted here before,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6368032

from another online source, by the way.) There are no reliable statistics here about how various companies hire, and indeed no reliable classification of companies into those founded by college dropouts (what if a company has more than one founder?) and those that are not.

If we are just slinging personal opinions around here, and that is the most the author of the article kindly submitted here is doing, then let me express the opinion that RESEARCH about what hiring procedures work best for companies might be a good thing for companies to look at. The research does not show that requiring degrees for jobs does much to guarantee hiring better workers. I have summarized the research in a well liked Hacker News comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

that I am currently updating for posting on my personal website.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.

(Links and citations to sources available at the earlier HN posting linked above.)

My startup was acquired by Dell. Without a college degree you couldn't get promoted. That was a decade ago though.

Same thing at at&t. Glass ceilings for those without degrees; at least in 2001.

Haha, because people who are good at obeying school are good at obeying you ;-)

Seriously though, is this really that surprising? Getting shit done includes bring able to finish what you start, I'd hire anyone with the portfolio proof of execution, and a degree can be evidence of this.

School teaches a valuable skill: can you sit your ass down consistently, day after day, week after week, year after year and become proficient in subject matters you don't find remotely interesting at first?

People who are too inconsistent to attend class, or too undisciplined to learn a subject they dislike will probably suffer in many jobs, as if everyone did a job they loved, most work would never get done.

"can you sit your ass down consistently, day after day, week after week, year after year and become proficient in subject matters you don't find remotely interesting at first"

No.

May I now return to programming which I love?

I'm struggling to think of a subject I didn't find remotely interesting. There were a handful of teachers whose presentation I found unengaging, but those were relatively few and my biggest problem with finishing school was narrowing my field of interests enough to choose a major and complete it.

The author of the article calls entrepreneurs who haven't graduated from college "children".

No, seriously.

plonk, as we used to say on Usenet.

And, just to fill in the backtronym gap:

PLONK = Person With Little Or No Knowledge

Coming this weekend: "college dropouts should always hire college dropouts" answerpost.

Perhaps "children" is a bit derisive, but I'd argue that someone who hasn't really accomplished anything outside of the protective cocoon of their parents' home(s) and income is less than an adult.

My mother lives in my house and survives partially off of my income. I was making more by the time I was 21 than either of my parents ever had. I'm less than an adult because I don't have a degree? What the hell is wrong with you?

Did you even read what he said? There's no overlap between your scenario and "someone who hasn't really accomplished anything outside of the protective cocoon of their parents' home(s) and income".

Did you even read the thread? He's either equating "hasn't really accomplished anything" with not having a degree, or he's utterly off-topic.

And if someone actually does have wealthy parents who would always help if needed, does that mean they'll always be "less than adults"?

Every possible way of reading the comment is so patronizing and elitist I can't believe you would seek to defend it.

Read the comment again. bdcravens never implied he agrees with the article. He's using "less than adults" to describe the set of people who haven't accomplished anything. This set and the set of people without college degrees may have substantial overlap, but you don't belong to the overlap by definition.

I've read it many times. The most generous possible interpretation I can ascribe is that he's completely off-topic in his response to the parent comment and considers anyone with wealthy parents to be less than adult. The more likely interpretation in-context is that he thinks anyone who hasn't gone through college is less than an adult. You're not going to convince me otherwise by repeating the same argument with different words.

I'm a bit biased towards those with wealthy parents perhaps. My point, which I may have failed to make, is that business success requires personal success, and if you haven't experienced that on your own (where true failure is a very real possibility), then I doubt you're ready. That growth can come in a variety of ways: college success, raising a child as a single parent, or even dropping out of high school to work and make ends meet. That growth can occur in the presence of wealth, but I think it can be tough, and proceeding through the rigors of college may be the easiest path (but not only path, and no guarantee of growth even then)

Responding directly to this comment; please read what I wrote to your initial comment.

If you've succeeded outside of the cocoon I referred to, then you have "really accomplished anything".

Gates had wealthy parents, but I'd argue that he forged his own path on his own.

A degree doesn't make you an adult, nor does the lack of one make you less of an adult. I had a bigger point I was trying to make, and I apologize if I missed the mark and struck a nerve.

I'm addressing the article's idea that you can take a kid in college out of college and somehow that's a magical formula.

Becoming a adult means leaving home, becoming your own person (not in the high school "I'm finding myself..." sense), and experiencing success and failure purely of your own accord.

The author I feel referred to the Thiel folks as children because they hadn't crossed these thresholds. Adulthood in my sense of the word seems to me to be a necessary prerequisite for business success. Collge can help a person grow in these areas of their life. It's no guarantee, and it's possible to grow outside of college.

What doesn't work is taking a kid who lived in mommy and/or daddy's house, went to college on mommy/daddy's dime, and drove the car they were given, and then have someone come along and become a new mommy/daddy holding their hand while they start a business. I don't think anyone can be successful without having experience success, and perhaps even more importantly, failure.

My outlook is filtered by my own experience. I've lived on my own since age 17, and didn't get my first car until age 23 (because the only way I could get one was to buy it myself.. my entire childhood, my parents didn't have a car). I was a college dropout (wanted to stay, couldn't afford it, and made mistakes with regard to student loans that I was to blame for). No computer in my home until I bought one myself. Taught myself programming, built up a career over time. No hand holding, everything I have I paid for, and I have no safety net. That said, I've made plenty of mistakes, and I deserve everything I have, nor don't have, right now.

Perhaps that leaves me bitter; I don't think so. I see a situation like the Thiel Fellowship and see the total lack of success as a blatantly obvious conclusion. (Though it's probably wrong to judge, as I know nothing about these "entrepreneurs" and their life experience)

> hasn't really accomplished anything outside of the protective cocoon of their parents' home(s)

In my mind, college is usually an extension of the parental protective cocoon.

It certainly can be. Some may not experience any real growth until they're well into their work life after graduation.

Because hiring is hard (and a time suck) and a degree from a good college happens to be a pretty good filter for whatever attribute makes a decent employee?

I was alway fond of googles attempt to thin the heard

{ the first 10-digit prime in consecutive digits of e }.com

Someday I hope to use something like that for my startup.

This is one of those puzzles that just begs you to use Mathematica:

In[20]:= Select[Map[FromDigits, Partition[RealDigits[N[E, 500], 10][[1]], 10, 1]], PrimeQ][[1]]

Out[20]= 7427466391

It's certainly a filter, but is there any real evidence it's a good filter? I would guess that is, but I really don't have much to back that guess up with.

Its cheap/cost effective is I guess why its used. Its also a demonstrable CYA. People are incredulous that a person can FUBAR shit with an degree from XYZ.

Exactly. The "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" principle.

I guess it's a good filter when justifying your decision to your boss (unless you are the boss).

e.g. hey boss, they are all MIT graduates

We need to separate instruction from assessment, allowing an ecology of assessment companies to filter potential employees through whatever gauntlet they chose. So many start-ups are focused on instruction. What we need is evidence-based, independent and affordable assessment.

It's odd that this article (in it's various incarnations) manages to miss one of the more successful Theil startups: Zaption [0]. (Disclaimer: I work for Charlie). We've just launched, have had great success with funding, and are already on our way to profitability. As a bonus, we're helping teachers with tools to better reach kids, instead of the "simplistic SV startups" the author moans about.

[0] http://zaption.com

I say this with some trepidation, but I wouldn't hire myself. Every company I've ever worked for has wanted me to perform some specific task really well, and I have ended up working with the CEO to change things around, been offered an equity position, or have been fired.

It's not that I'm against doing the work that I'm hired for, I just really suck at it. I try to shake things up - for better or for worse. The one time it was at a big company with 150+ employees that was definitely "for worse" - I didn't realize how strong politics and hierarchy could be and was fired pretty quickly for not doing my job and trying to do someone else's.

There are places out there that need exactly what you have to bring. You'll find one eventually.

Searching this thread, nobody is mentioning the total beatdown of Peter Thiel.

Say what you will about the importance of college but the growing evidence on the Thiel Fellowship doesn't seem promising.

This is one of those topics where the topic of college being required creates such emotional noise that they completely miss the point. As I said in another comment, you can't manufacture success. All Thiel is doing is cargo-culting around dropping out of college.

yeah, hits too close to home for the hacker news demographic,

On a related note, how's seasteading working out?

The great example of Jobs and Gates are poor examples to follow. Gates only dropped out once he was getting some traction on this business ventures. Jobs dropped in on creative classes even after he left college, and he credited these classes with much of what made it into the Mac years later. He also made many of his business contacts and early business while he was an employee at Atari. Neither one quit college and started a business with no business plan or income.

The problem with comparing the Thiel Fellowship recipients with Zuckerberg or even with YC & TechStars startups is that the fellows are selected for being talented and having ambitious ideas, whereas the startups that make it into accelerators tend to already have a product (I know at one point this was not necessarily the case, but today first time entrepreneurs need to have a product to get funded and/or make it into an accelerator not just an idea).

The verdict on the Thiel Fellows will be written in fifty years; it does not hinge on the success or failure of their first venture.

Even if they return to finish their Bachelors, there's a strong case that Thiel Fellows will get much more out of college with the entrepreneurial experience under their belt. I certainly would have.

Bigger issue isn't college vs. no college. It's the fallacy that you can artificially generate success via specialized incubator. Everyone loves to point to Jobs and Gates-like examples. Had Steve Jobs been in a Thiel-like program, would he have created Apple, or caffeine spray?

I thought this article would actually be about the reason why companies founded by college dropouts don't hire other college dropouts. Seems "Why Thiel's idea sucked" would be a better title.

Ok, in the hall of fame everyone have a college degree. But for the millions of anonymous workers, college is really convenient?

"And if they do become entrepreneurs, the companies they start will be far less successful than those started by degree holders." - suggests a zero-sum scenario which, by my anecdote back of the napkin assessment (which is all that seems to be required to be of merit), is ridiculous, pure and simple.

This is a repost of another article that was here yesterday or the day before, just on LinkedIn instead of a blog and with a new title.

>read first sentence >two errors >close

You might be interested in knowing that your comment consists only of sentence fragments, and that you are on Hacker News and not 4chan.

They don't hire dropouts because they can't afford any more useless people on their staff other than themselves.

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