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Comment by tobyjsullivan | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the article and the point of view but I have to disagree completely with his recommendation that you spend your years working for someone else before you launch your own business.

He talks about working for a company after finishing college to learn about how they operate and do business. You know what I learned in the five years after college I worked for a company as a dev? A whole lot about software development. Nothing about hiring (beyond what I gleaned while interviewing), basics of management and nothing about marketing or sales. You know what I learned in the first few months of trying and failing to launch a business? A heck of a lot about everything, including a lot more about software development.

Working in my trade for a few years out of school made me very good at what I do but it certainly did not make me a very good entrepreneur.

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I agree that working for another company doesn't always make you a good entrepreneur. But I do think that, depending on the size of the company, the dynamics and your role within the company you can learn, for free, a lot about what not to do, particularly regarding the basics of management. And regarding hiring, you can learn, what you actually want/value during the interview and in an employee vs. what you think you want.

No doubt it depends on the company - did you ask to be trained in management?

I know at my employer some people don't aspire to cease being developers and start being managers (which is fine) so they don't get trained to be managers (which is also fine).

Agreed. Being elsewhere for a few years, finishing school before that, doesn't guarantee you'll learn the managerial skills required to be a CEO.

I'm the exact opposite. I started in a tech support role and learned the value of proper customer service, then transferred to a sales engineering role and learned how to analyze a customer's needs and match them with the correct product offering. From a management side, just by looking at how my company is managed, I learned how not to manage a company. Every time a coworker got treated like crap, I told myself I would never treat my employees like that when I have my own company.

What would have happened if I had started a business straight out of college? Presumably, I'd have made a whole bunch of dumb mistakes, some of which could have cost me the business. I would have failed a bunch of times and learned things the hard way. Most importantly, I might have become demotivated and given up entirely. Which is actually what happens to most people.

I'd say that the past five years I've worked for a company (my first one out of college) have allowed me to find myself in terms of confidence, skills and purpose. I feel like I'm a much better, much more stable place for starting something on my own.

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