5 ms·

A Letter to College Students

22 points by baristaGeek 11y ago

mwseibel 11y ago
Hey there - would love to hear what you guys think about the post :) - Michael
- andars 11y ago
  "real skills": not sure what you mean by this. Later you say "useful" and "different", is that the intended reading of "real", or is it advice to ignore the poseurs? "make friendships with really smart people. So get out of the dorm room or the library and be social." In my experience, those "really smart people" didn't get that way by the abundant time spent not studying, so isn't more likely that you will find the smart people studying? just a thought.
  - mwseibel 11y ago
    Real skills as the skills I didn't learn in poli sci classes. I went to Yale - there were tons of smart people who were almost never in the library - for example Justin Kan and Emmett Shear
- jarboot 11y ago
  I'm a 19 year old midwestern college student at an urban school who loved the article, especially the part about being social. My dad always said "it's not what you know, but who you know." Seeing the kinds of connections he made in college, his work, and his church pay off in astounding ways taught me a lot about that. However I've always had trouble with meeting other people that like to code. Striking up a conversation with people in my CS classes usually ends up in a "don't bother me" sort of situation, and many people I do meet are less into coding and more into video games. Finding a job in my school's understaffed IT department (help desk) has been a good start to the workforce, but is soul crushing. I'm never rewarded for anything that goes well, and people only remember the times I made customers angry. The job might give me some experience and a nice blip on my resume, but I feel it's setting me up for a soul-crushing sysadmin job at some major corporation around my city. From the perspective of somebody not even two decades old hopefully you understand that without much social or business experience a lot of these actions are difficult, especially meeting people eager to collaborate on technical projects. You can look back on your life and wish you prepared yourself for your adult life better, but in the moment as a youth there's so much stimuli on campus and paths that I could choose that it really weighs down on me. Do I keep working hard at a boring IT job to make a comfortable, stable living as a sysadmin, settle down with a nice midwestern wife and some kids, and join a Protestant church? Do I work for the Peace Corps for a couple years in China to improve my Chinese language proficiency and risk having rusty tech skills? Do I try moving to some high-rent city with a lot of startups and risk crashing and burning? These are the questions that keep me up at night. Thanks for reading my rambling slice of life, and thanks for writing this article. It got me thinking more about my future than I typically do on a Friday night in the dorms and helped me get some stuff out of my head. I'll be keeping a lot of these points in mind as ways to improve my chances for success.
  - mokomoko 11y ago
    Though it may not feel like it right now, you can do all of these things and more, you can do none of these things.... the truth is it actually doesn't matter what it is that you've done. What is more important is the attitude you bring towards living! Though grunt work is soul crushing to the average person, it does pay the bills when you are just starting out. Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let your mind think it is doomed to an unworkable situation. Conduct thought experiments often at work and in your spare time, and keep the friends you meet that are truly interesting people in consistent contact.
    - jarboot 11y ago
      Thanks a lot for the great advice! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to learn so much from such kind people on this community.
  - mwseibel 11y ago
    Choose startups - it's a ton of fun - want to bring people together in college - trying building something interesting
- sp527 11y ago
  Great advice, though I'd make explicit a single caveat: work at least a year or two at a reputable tech company after college. It's actually a more effective environment for networking (it seems every person in tech wants to strike out on their own these days), you can build up a cash base to extend your personal runway, and most importantly you'll have a more coherent and believable narrative about the direction you're taking, in case you ever need to be employed again. Plus knowing how abysmal the corp life is will keep you driven ;)
  - mwseibel 11y ago
    Lol - seems very reasonable - I always fear that people will get too used to the free lunches and 9-5 lifestyle
- baristaGeek 11y ago
  Thank you so much for this post Michael! I found this post really insightful not only in the sense that it gives confidence to us who prefer to build stuff to solve real world inefficiencies vs getting perfect grades (but at the same time value the human infrastructure that universities have), but in the sense that you are giving really good criteria to value other "studentpreneurs" as co-founders of something a little bit more serious than a side-project. I would like to ask you: Some of us have parents that are pretty liberal and open to these alternative career paths; but there are extremely talented people (genius coders, who are entrepreneurial enough to work on their side projects, who have a low burn rate and no student debt, etc.) who have parents that are really conservative and want to define a career path for them. As a co-founder and close friend of such kind of people, how should one deal with such situation?
crabasa 11y ago
tl;dr - Learn to code. - Meet people with real skills. - Have fun. - Take responsibility. - Be ready to hit the ground running. - Be your own career counselor. - It’s okay to ignore your parents. - Be careful with student debt.
- hackaflocka 11y ago
  Thank you. Good points all.
machinelearning 11y ago
What do you think about the value of grad school? It involves spending part of your 20s in school but allows you to have a bigger impact on the world through cutting edge technology. Any thoughts?
- mwseibel 11y ago
  I don't think it has value - my former co-founder Kyle Vogt is building self driving cars and he didn't graduate from college. I just think you learn a lot faster in a startup environment.
whoa-duder 11y ago
Or you can start a company when your older too.

22 points by baristaGeek 11y ago

mwseibel 11y ago

Hey there - would love to hear what you guys think about the post :) - Michael

andars 11y ago
"real skills": not sure what you mean by this. Later you say "useful" and "different", is that the intended reading of "real", or is it advice to ignore the poseurs? "make friendships with really smart people. So get out of the dorm room or the library and be social." In my experience, those "really smart people" didn't get that way by the abundant time spent not studying, so isn't more likely that you will find the smart people studying? just a thought.
- mwseibel 11y ago
  Real skills as the skills I didn't learn in poli sci classes. I went to Yale - there were tons of smart people who were almost never in the library - for example Justin Kan and Emmett Shear
jarboot 11y ago
I'm a 19 year old midwestern college student at an urban school who loved the article, especially the part about being social. My dad always said "it's not what you know, but who you know." Seeing the kinds of connections he made in college, his work, and his church pay off in astounding ways taught me a lot about that. However I've always had trouble with meeting other people that like to code. Striking up a conversation with people in my CS classes usually ends up in a "don't bother me" sort of situation, and many people I do meet are less into coding and more into video games. Finding a job in my school's understaffed IT department (help desk) has been a good start to the workforce, but is soul crushing. I'm never rewarded for anything that goes well, and people only remember the times I made customers angry. The job might give me some experience and a nice blip on my resume, but I feel it's setting me up for a soul-crushing sysadmin job at some major corporation around my city. From the perspective of somebody not even two decades old hopefully you understand that without much social or business experience a lot of these actions are difficult, especially meeting people eager to collaborate on technical projects. You can look back on your life and wish you prepared yourself for your adult life better, but in the moment as a youth there's so much stimuli on campus and paths that I could choose that it really weighs down on me. Do I keep working hard at a boring IT job to make a comfortable, stable living as a sysadmin, settle down with a nice midwestern wife and some kids, and join a Protestant church? Do I work for the Peace Corps for a couple years in China to improve my Chinese language proficiency and risk having rusty tech skills? Do I try moving to some high-rent city with a lot of startups and risk crashing and burning? These are the questions that keep me up at night. Thanks for reading my rambling slice of life, and thanks for writing this article. It got me thinking more about my future than I typically do on a Friday night in the dorms and helped me get some stuff out of my head. I'll be keeping a lot of these points in mind as ways to improve my chances for success.
- mokomoko 11y ago
  Though it may not feel like it right now, you can do all of these things and more, you can do none of these things.... the truth is it actually doesn't matter what it is that you've done. What is more important is the attitude you bring towards living! Though grunt work is soul crushing to the average person, it does pay the bills when you are just starting out. Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let your mind think it is doomed to an unworkable situation. Conduct thought experiments often at work and in your spare time, and keep the friends you meet that are truly interesting people in consistent contact.
  - jarboot 11y ago
    Thanks a lot for the great advice! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to learn so much from such kind people on this community.
- mwseibel 11y ago
  Choose startups - it's a ton of fun - want to bring people together in college - trying building something interesting
sp527 11y ago
Great advice, though I'd make explicit a single caveat: work at least a year or two at a reputable tech company after college. It's actually a more effective environment for networking (it seems every person in tech wants to strike out on their own these days), you can build up a cash base to extend your personal runway, and most importantly you'll have a more coherent and believable narrative about the direction you're taking, in case you ever need to be employed again. Plus knowing how abysmal the corp life is will keep you driven ;)
- mwseibel 11y ago
  Lol - seems very reasonable - I always fear that people will get too used to the free lunches and 9-5 lifestyle
baristaGeek 11y ago
Thank you so much for this post Michael! I found this post really insightful not only in the sense that it gives confidence to us who prefer to build stuff to solve real world inefficiencies vs getting perfect grades (but at the same time value the human infrastructure that universities have), but in the sense that you are giving really good criteria to value other "studentpreneurs" as co-founders of something a little bit more serious than a side-project. I would like to ask you: Some of us have parents that are pretty liberal and open to these alternative career paths; but there are extremely talented people (genius coders, who are entrepreneurial enough to work on their side projects, who have a low burn rate and no student debt, etc.) who have parents that are really conservative and want to define a career path for them. As a co-founder and close friend of such kind of people, how should one deal with such situation?

crabasa 11y ago

tl;dr - Learn to code. - Meet people with real skills. - Have fun. - Take responsibility. - Be ready to hit the ground running. - Be your own career counselor. - It’s okay to ignore your parents. - Be careful with student debt.

hackaflocka 11y ago
Thank you. Good points all.

machinelearning 11y ago

What do you think about the value of grad school? It involves spending part of your 20s in school but allows you to have a bigger impact on the world through cutting edge technology. Any thoughts?

mwseibel 11y ago
I don't think it has value - my former co-founder Kyle Vogt is building self driving cars and he didn't graduate from college. I just think you learn a lot faster in a startup environment.

whoa-duder 11y ago

Or you can start a company when your older too.