[ask hn]How many of you are dropouts?
Anyone of you dropped out of highschool/college but still manage to have a successful life?share your story along with some suggestions for future dropouts.
Higher education doesn't guarantee success, but it probably doesn't hurt. If you have the practical means to stay in school, just do it. And take advantage of it. For the amount of effort you have to put into it, you do get quite a lot back in terms of self confidence, how other people perceive you, social network..etc. And if you actually try to actively learn, you can potentially learn a lot too.
Unless you have an extraordinary or unique skill, just stay in school. What's so bad about delaying adulthood, be self indulgent and just enjoy learning for a couple of years. It's probably not something you'll get to do later.
If you don't have the practical means due to financial or other reasons that are outside of your control, then that's another story.
You are obviously fishing for an affirmative answer but the truth of life is that having a Masters degree opens 100x more doors than not having it. If you are to talk to someone who has a degree you will always be in the position needing to prove that you are at least as equal as they are. For two people with MSc the conversation is simple -
- I got my MSc from this uni
- And I got mine from that one
- I got my MSc from this uni
- I don't have a degree, but ...
... <a list of accomplishments to
establish your credibility>
And dropping out of high school is just entirely altogether idiotic. That's not even up for discussion.
This is true in some industries but not all. In the world of programming, it is perhaps true for your first couple of jobs. After that, if you have done well, it is basically irrelevant.
If you have access to an excellent CS program like Stanford or MIT, then that is definitely worth it, and any university is good for making social and business connections which can be very valuable later on.
But from a strict getting-a-job perspective - well, I hire programmers for a startup, and I don't place too much weight on a degree. I've seen people with CS degrees who were absolutely useless, and absolute top-notch developers without a degree, and vice versa. I will look at their work and their personalities over some long-ago half-forgotten theoretical knowledge every time.
Other people (HR, collegues, etc..) might be very superficial. As a dropout, best case scenario, you will have to prove your knowledge on a daily basis. It will happen, quite often, that some people will not even try to understand what your real level is and will simply consider you "inferior".
You should dropout if and only if you have something concrete and important worth the loss of a missing degree. Which it means: 1) you are the founder of a successful business 2) you have a serious offer from a well-known company
In any other scenario, not having a degree will put you in the horrible position of continuously confirm that you are worth your salary.
That said, I must admit that the idea of returning to education at some point does arise now and then. I'd love to be able to do it now, in my 40's, when I think its really worthwhile - with what I have under my belt in terms of industrial experience, I think I'd have a lot more fun at school than I would have in the 80's - when the closest thing I could get to a CompSci course back then would have had me using technologies that were already outdated by then, and which wouldn't have taught me anything I wasn't already learning in my non-school hours, hacking away.
Its been a long, hard slog though. I have to tell you that if you decide to go the industrial route over education, be prepared to work hard. Harder than you would work at school, that is for sure - and also, be prepared for the responsibility of having to learn new things, yourself, in an industrial setting, without much hand-holding. I was fortunate enough to have had the right kinds of guru's over the years, as an apprentice working with masters you do get a lot of benefits that school does not provide.
Maybe when I hit 50, I'll go back to school .. mostly so I can contribute, somehow, to the educational scene, and maybe also so that I can write a few of those papers that have been backlogging in my mind over the decades ..
Maybe its better in the 10s.
I did the night school / online thing nearly a decade ago after having been in the field a little longer than yourself. What I enjoyed the most was variety. Some schools don't have many electives, avoid those.
I got an associates degree when I initially got started. 99% of hiring managers consider that toilet paper if not used toilet paper. That's "OK" because after your first real job no one cares about degrees anymore. It just makes the initial job search, pure hell. The only difference between an associates and a bachelors is about 32 credits of liberal arts, lots of math, and some random stuff (public speaking, survey of engineering, business 101, that kind of thing). I was kind of pissed off at not getting transfer credit for my FORTRAN and COBOL classes, I got to take some intro to programming C++ classes in the early 00s, that was, um, interesting, it was very easy but still very time consuming.
Liberal arts are wasted on the youth. For example I hated history class in 8th grade, absolutely loved college level history when I was about 3x that age. Lit classes were awesome. You'll hear a lot of 19 year olds on the HN echo chamber mode telling each other that liberal arts classes are a waste of time, that kind of talk goes away once (or if?) they age and get some wisdom.
That said, I am not a proponent of the "college for everyone" theory. Some people aren't cut out for college, and that doesn't make them people of lesser intrinsic worth.
When I was pondering putting college on hold, my dad gave me this advice: Do the thing now that gives you the most opportunities later. Finishing my bachelor's would give me more opportunities than not doing so.
Over the years, I've added my own corollary to dad's advice: Do the hardest thing you're capable of. For example, if you can handle advanced math courses, you should take them, and get a "mathy" degree (engineering, comp sci, mathematics, etc.) If you really like Art History you can minor in it, but do the hard thing as your major.
Can you succeed as a dropout? Absolutely. Will it be harder? Yes it will. And the success rate is a lot lower, for most definitions of success.
It is true that my professional life would be considered successful by many (I lead a very niche field of research now) and that I dropped out of undergraduate school (while on a full scholarship + stipend no less), but not a day goes by that I don't wish I had finished some of my classes and taken it a bit more seriously, even though I full well know I made the right decision to drop out for mental/psychological health reasons.
If you are having trouble in school due to life issues, find a professional who can help guide you. Doesn't have to be a psychiatrist; find a mentor. I wish I had done so earlier in my life.
Just because dropouts do succeed doesn't mean it's the right path for everyone. And this comes from someone who is very anti-academic.
That's an excellent point. Most of the people here are gainfully employed as developers, or in some tech-adjacent role. There probably aren't many people here who tried it, decided it wasn't working, and went back to school to become a doctor.
That doesn't mean those people don't exist, but you're not likely to find them on HN.
I was lucky to study in one of most sane universities in Ukraine, but my bad choice of the physics department lead me into severe depression which cut my studies and I dropped out right in the middle of the BS course. There was some harsh time but then I managed to be a well-paid software developer in well-known Eastern European outsourcing companies working with US and European clients.
But here's another problem: for some weird reason 1 year of university is equal to 3 years of work experience (in my opinion, this is reasonable for the U.S. education, but this should be reversed for Eastern Europe) for H1B US visa evaluation. So now I'm studying at correspondence courses (I don't even know how to describe this weird form of education exactly: self-education mixed with a two weeks of intensive courses before exams) at CS department at the same university to gain more freedom to move wherever I want. Also, it's a nice way to make my autodidact CS knowledge more systemic and the professors are often nice and interesting people.
tl;dr: education is worth it if you're academically inclined and choose your department right. Even more, it's good to drop out if and only if you're sure that's necessary. In case of doubts it's better to stay.
Beyond that, college offers many opportunities such as making friendships, meeting people from other countries and having access to vast stores of information and industry professionals. This is something that is difficult to duplicate simply by striking out on your own. Possible, but difficult.
It's true that some people simply don't need to go to college. They are already emotionally and intellectually mature enough to enter the world of business. But you must realize that they are the minority. Not everyone can be Steve Jobs.
Personally, I didn't drop out. But I did take several years off between high school and college. I worked one awesome job until it went out of business. Then I tried freelancing but I just didn't have the technical ability nor the salesmanship to make any money. During undergrad I continued freelancing on and off but I got burned by more clients than I actually got paid by. During my master's though I worked for the university on several great projects and that allowed me to have an awesome resume. Then it pretty much started raining jobs. By the end of my coursework I was working 3 jobs and I ended up killing my 4.0 and graduated with a 3.9 (I may never get over the shame).
Now I am qualified, have a track record of success, and above all else have the confidence to sell myself and my abilities. And I didn't have any of that before college.
I'm not saying my path is for everyone, and as always Your Mileage May Vary. However, if I had a time machine I'd go back and slap my younger self around until he decided to forgo college entirely :-) In my experience, it wasn't worth it - from the 'you NEEEEEED a degree to get a good job!' perspective AND the 'crushing amounts of debt' perspective.
Lets have fun with "scare quotes". No one told me I "had to" "either" attend university full time or drop out completely, so crazy me, I chose the 3rd option.
I ran out of money and motivation after about a year full time, man cannot live on ramen alone, got an offer for about 1/2 the pay of a real job but full tuition reimbursement while 1/2 real pay was still a modest integer multiple of minimum wage, so needless to say I jumped. Dramatic increase in standard of living, etc.
Personally I found one weeknight class (typically 2 hrs tue/thr or mon/wed) and one weekend class (typically a brain numbing 4 hr saturday morning/afternoon) was about right when things were boring, but family + work pressure etc occasionally resulted in only one class per semester. I knew people who tried to pull off 3 or even 4 classes with a full time 1st shift job, but they suffered horribly.
I studied and did homework every lunch time at work and very rarely did homework at home other than the occasional term paper.
Trying to get a US visa now, the decision to not get a degree is pretty bitter. That said, this is the first and I optimistically anticipate the last time a degree would have been any use to me, so I'll just power through and hope for the best.
Software is a huge anomaly because it is so ear easily self learnable. The supposition that someone good at it needing a degree is patently false. It's really a shame. I know a few people with things like psychology degrees who are proficient programmers, and their path to a visa is not straightforward :(
I understand to some degree the rationale behind the absurd process, at the same time it's incredibly frustrating to have a company that wants me here, and no avenue or realistic end in sight to make it happen.
So far there's a pile of documents about 30cm high, and that hasn't yet been enough to appease USCIS.
We basically have a gimme with the E3, but it has the degree requirement.
Any hope of being transferred under that category instead?
I dropped out on my last semesters of CS BEng, and in retrospective, I think I made a great decision: After dropping out school I launched a community of Android Developers in Mexico, which a year later helped me close a 1 year contract with Motorola advocating about Android SDK. During the same year I did consulting gigs for Google here in Mexico also, which led to became the youngest ever Android SDK contractor in LATAM, at age 24.
This could sound great for you, but being totally honest, the main reason I dropped out was because I didn't feel passionate about the stuff I was doing there. On the other side, I fell in love with Android because I saw an opportunity of doing code and make a living, in a year where no one knew about that technology.
I never finished my 6-year CS college degree. I had been making commercial games since high school, and during college I was collaborating with researchers, working part-time at a bank and also doing freelance videogame work in whatever time was left. Once I realized I would never pursue an academic career and I had been exposed to "enough" different subjects (I had already completed the first four years and some stuff from 5th and 6th year), my motivation to keep studying for grades disappeared. Something had to give.
Funnily enough, I have been involved with projects, lectured and taught subjects at most universities in my city, but never the one I studied at.
On the other hand my aspirations have always outstripped current skills but that has, on net, helped me move forward. What does success mean to you?
Last semester some organization introduces nationwide competition for all colleges on various professions (programming included) with sponsors like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco etc.
So I won competition in the college itself since they only can send one applicant.
I won national-wide competition as well thus showing that my college is the best in the field.
After that my grades got cooked and I graduated with accomplishment diploma and pretty good grades.
I chose Electronic Engineering at college, mostly because they said getting a job was easier.
After 4 years of Maths, and never ever having SEEN a lab, I kissed them goodbye and went to the freshly opened CS course.
After another 4 years of mostly bad teachers, I decided that my thirst for learning was better satisfied working.
And here I am, not (yet) successful, but knowing WAY more than any of my then college mates.
That said, i'm making a good living on my company anyway.
Luckily, running an IT company is not only about programming but also about people skills, finding the right clients and fulfilling their needs.
Since then, I worked some blue collar jobs, and am now learning web development.
I never recommend skipping college to anyone. If you have a unique opportunity that can't wait, you have a solid plan, AND you have unique skills, then it might make sense. Or maybe if you have a very strange combination of strengths and weaknesses such that you are mature enough to succeed on your own, but not capable of making school work for you. Or if you can't find a way to get to a school where you will be with a good set of intellectual peers.
I know quite a few people who have dropped out of or skipped college, and in all but one or two cases I think they're worse off for it, or at least, they spend many years struggling to replace or replicate the college experience.
There are three big things you have to replace if you skip college: The social experience (learning how to exist both socially and intellectually in a group of peers). The material (in some hypothetical sense you can learn it all on OpenCourseWare, but in practice, most people find this to be a serious grind). The intellectual discipline (learning to think clearly and maturely, filing down your rough edges).
Your best bet is to find a group of really smart people who will be absolutely merciless in instilling intellectual discipline in you (constantly challenging you be rigorous, to know your field, to fully back up your ideas), and that will also be your close friends and romantic interests, and then find a way to have lots of spare time to hunker down and work through OCW or your favorite MOOC or textbooks. I know several brilliant people who have created these situations for themselves, and I think they've all found that it takes a huge input of energy to even approximately replicate what is readily available at top colleges, even for people that are smart enough to breeze through or basically intuit/rederive the course material.
Logistically, dropping out will close some doors forever. People with degrees can switch fields later in life by going to grad school; it is harder to switch fields if you don't have a degree. Immigration situations are far more difficult without a degree. There are ways around the closed doors but you will have to fight very very hard for them and become the top in your field. On the other hand, you also have a huge advantage (at least if you skip college entirely) which is that you don't have student loans and that may significantly increase your freedom during a period of your life when freedom is critical. In my own life I think these logistical factors came out about even.
In the end, I think it was right for me to leave in '99 and dive into startups, but, like, I made that decision in Stockholm, at the Nobel prize ceremony, where the establishment sent me after winning the top prize at world science fair, so I had every possible advantage and it was still a very difficult road. Do it only if you really don't see a future for you at college.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billion...
Oh, the irony.
To presume that this decision is entirely motivated by how hard uni is is astonishingly naive, imo.
I got an entry level job in a data center when I was ~20 years old. The work was boring; mostly physical labor. Management realized how bored I was, but saw some potential in me. I was rapidly promoted several times, eventually making my way into a junior developer position. The pay was still terrible, and a lot of the other developers looked down on me.
Eventually the company ran into some financial difficulties and I was laid off. As luck would have it, I was scheduled for an interview the very next day. Things went well and I was hired on the spot. It was one of the most stressful and rewarding periods of my career. The pay was still terrible, but I was the only developer. Every decision was mine to make, and I made as many bad ones as good. I learned a lot about writing stable code (since I was the only person available to clean up the mess).
After working there for two years I got tired of the bad pay. I went to a meet-up and got to know a couple of developers. I earned the respect of a few, which was my first foray into professional networking. The VP of one company said he wanted to hire me and asked how much money I was looking for. At the time I was only making $36k per year, so I figured $85k would be a decent number. He pulled me aside and suggested I ask him for $105k instead. That should give you some idea of how strange and enjoyable it was working for him.
That job was a wonderful learning experience. For the first time I was surrounded by people who really knew what they were doing. No one looked down on me or questioned my lack of degree. Even though some of these people had a decade more experience than me, we ran the place like a democracy. I have also never seen management that was so understanding of the development process. They understood work would be ready when it was ready, and gave us a lot of creative freedom.
Fast forward a couple of years and now I'm at another company. I have a pretty nice title, and my salary has continued to climb. I'm considered to be the company's foremost expert in my specific technology, and I'm frequently asked to train people. Far from being looked down on, people usually treat me with deference.
You can interpret my story however you like, but this is what I've taken away from it:
My arrogance forced me to spend a few years working jobs that I hated. I got lucky, a few people saw something in me, and I was given opportunities. I had to prove myself a bit at first, but that got better once I had a few years of experience under my belt. These days I've got an impressive title, a great salary, and people respect my knowledge and abilities.
I managed to do pretty well without an education, but it took a lot of hard work and a number of incredibly kind people deciding to take a chance on me. I'm really happy with the way things turned out, but it's hard to imagine life would be worse if I'd stayed in school.
Oh, and people still occasionally tell me what to do.
After getting married, I joined my wife's family business of commercial printing. I headed up the IT department there, which mostly meant making sure our servers didn't blow up, and building/enhancing some FileMaker databases. It was by no means the dream job, but it was pretty nice - I learned a ton of things I never would have learned if I dove straight into development.
After I got fed up with being an IT guy, I tried out a semester of college - turns out I hated that just as much as I hated high school. I joined the startup world and became a developer at MySocialCloud[1]. That was my first job where I really got to work and develop with a team. It was remote, which kinda sucked, but it was pretty good for awhile.
MSC had an exodus in December 2012 that I was a part of. I roamed around for a few months looking for a job. I almost took another job with a startup called Elicit Search, but I saw some of the same bad management traits there that I had seen at MSC. Instead, I took a development job with one of my friend's design agencies, Cultivate Studios. It's a mostly menial job - server management, leading an overseas team of developers, maintaining some of our legacies sites - but it's nice. The people are great. I've thought a lot about priorities[2] lately, and while it might not seem like it at first glance, I'm finding Cultivate Studios to be my dream job.
As far as "success" goes, we certainly all define it differently, but I'm finding professional success in my side projects. The biggest challenge with not going to college is you start 4 years behind everyone else in the market. There's a lot of deep computer science knowledge that you can't learn just by "hacking". I've made it a point to dig into those things as often as I can with my side projects. It's starting to pay off, as my most recent project[3] was featured in the New York Times[4]. It's not success yet, but I think I'm getting there.
[1] https://mysocialcloud.com/ [2] http://wegnerdesign.com/blog/on-priorities/ [3] http://getwaltz.com [4] bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/new-clef-plug-in-lets-you-forget-about-your-password/?ref=nicoleperlroth&_r=1