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You're entirely right, but it's a stupid plan. You know what happens when you get a bunch of college kids to build things? You get something that, uh, looks and
by overgard 11y ago
You're entirely right, but it's a stupid plan. You know what happens when you get a bunch of college kids to build things? You get something that, uh, looks and acts like a thing built by a bunch of college kids. IE, a dumpster fire. It turns out experience matters. I can't even get mad at the people that perpetuate this, because they're going to get what they deserve.
- spitfire 11y agoA VC payday? Seriously though, that's what many of these people /will/ get. Worse, they'll actually believe it was their own talent that got them there. The world is a cruel and unfair place.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoMany of the most valuable tech properties today were built by college kids, or better yet college dropouts. It turns out that having your whole life ahead of you matters, because you're more willing to take risks.
- fishnchips 11y agoOr maybe it's more about having less to lose. Once you have kids and mortgage you're less likely to take risks.
- overgard 11y agoMy point isn't that young people are incapable (some of them are great), rather, that the people that think they can build something by taking advantage of naivete are going to quickly discover that for every young brilliant programmer, there's 10 people that will some day be good, but at the moment they're inexperienced and they'll create junk if they're not mentored. But it's true, many of these companies are designed to be flipped, technical excellence might be a secondary concern. Ninjas beware.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoOh yeah, agreed, but capitalism doesn't care, just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks... Probably building something in grad school helps.
- pixelp3 11y agoI think you severely underestimate the amount of serious work put into all these "tech properties" (I'm guessing you mean Facebook/Dropbox) by very experienced, in-demand engineers.
- bunderbunder 11y agoThere's a survival bias at play here. We remember the (very) few companies that survive to become tech giants. We don't remember - haven't even heard of, really - the vastly greater number of ventures that crash shortly after liftoff.
- bdcravens 11y agoStarted, as in MVP. Additionally, some of those properties were built while in college by brilliant developers who dropped out to run their then growing companies. There have been many many many more companies started by kids who have failed miserably.
- x5n1 11y agoIt was not built by college kids. A prototype was built by college kids which was then commercialized by billionaires. The college kids got the credit, and some dough, and the billionaires got 70%+ of the profit. The stuff was built by a team of engineers, some young and some old.
- Retric 11y agoYet, if a young company built by collage kids is bought out the parent company generally dumps the source code as worthless. That might tell you something. The same thing happens at successful company's you just don't see it. Twitters Fail Whale did not end because they brought on more collage kids.
- gaur 11y ago> IE, a dumpster fire. Indeed it is.
- terinjokes 11y agoI think that's unfair to Edge. :)