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Obviously. I think the biggest benefit this group has is the safety to fail. I worked 40+ hours and was doing 12+ credits for my undergrad. When I graduated, I

Obviously. I think the biggest benefit this group has is the safety to fail. I worked 40+ hours and was doing 12+ credits for my undergrad. When I graduated, I had massive loans and bills to pay. I wonder what I could have done if I had two years with no bills to work on something and zero debt looming.

nostrademons 9y ago
The easiest way to take care of this problem is to continue to live like you're in undergrad but take a well-paying job in finance or tech afterwards, work for 4-5 years, pay off your loans, and bank a lot of money. If you're earning $160K/year but living on $20K/year, debt goes down really fast. You start later than someone who went to Stanford and comes from a wealthy, well-connected family. You're not going to be Mark Zuckerburg or Evan Spiegel and found a billion-dollar company at 22. But realistically, you're looking at late-20s, which is about when your Ph.D and M.D. friends are starting their careers and still gives you plenty of good productive years ahead of you. And the time you spend in industry is invaluable for learning how the world really works, which problems are really important, and all the other stuff they don't teach you in college.
- snarf21 9y ago
  That would definitely work if you can find it, but it is pretty impossible to find a $160K/year coming out of the local state school. At least where I'm from....
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    You don't do it directly. You find the best-paying job you can, work there, do some open-source work in your nights & weekends, and then start looking for a new job when you're about 6 months in, on the strength of your work experience & open-source portfolio. Repeat 2-3 times at roughly 1-year increments until one of the big firms comes knocking. I started at $8/hour at my first programming job and doubled my income every time I switched. You may have to move - if there are no jobs in your area, go where the jobs are! Once you're past entry-level positions you can often get a new employer to pay for your move though. The big secret about "elite" institutions is that they're constantly looking for signs that they fucked up about their judgment of a person, and are usually happy to rectify that if they see concrete information that they were wrong. This goes for universities (I know several people who totally slacked off in high school, got rejected by all the Ivies, went to a state school, did nothing but study in college, and then transferred back into an Ivy), for the big-5 tech companies (where oftentimes people will get in on the second try after a few more years work experience and demonstrable progress launching products for their current employer), and for venture capitalists (who will often pass on a company and then beg to be let back into a later funding round, at a much higher price, if it looks like a startup is taking off). The problem is that most people adjust their performance to the expectations of people around them. If you're not satisfied with where you are in life, act like the people who you want to be. Eventually they'll take notice and decide you're one of them.
    - njwi332 9y ago
      I'll second this. 4 companies across three years before landing at Amazon.
ryandrake 9y ago
The safety to fail is definitely part of it. Whenever I hear someone talk about how they succeeded by 'simply' failing over and over again until they hit it big, I'm reminded of the "Swamp Castle" Monty Python skit: "But the fourth one stayed up!" Well no kidding! If you have the safety net to survive lots of failed endeavors, chances are you'll eventually make it.
pge 9y ago
Having graduated Harvard myself with substantial student loans and no parental financial support, and knowing many others like myself, I think your generalization is off the mark. I would look at a different advantage, which is social capital rather than financial capital. VCs and other relevant players in the tech ecosystem also come from the same schools. If there is an advantagr, I think it is more likely through that network than that the entrepreneurs were rich enough to have a financial safety net (though that is certainly possible too - there may be a further selection of graduates that,those that were wealthy became entrepreneurs but I would think that effect would be less tied to school than social capital)
fjdlwlv 9y ago
More than safety to fail , they have millions of dollars of investment waiting for them before they even start

nostrademons 9y ago

The easiest way to take care of this problem is to continue to live like you're in undergrad but take a well-paying job in finance or tech afterwards, work for 4-5 years, pay off your loans, and bank a lot of money. If you're earning $160K/year but living on $20K/year, debt goes down really fast. You start later than someone who went to Stanford and comes from a wealthy, well-connected family. You're not going to be Mark Zuckerburg or Evan Spiegel and found a billion-dollar company at 22. But realistically, you're looking at late-20s, which is about when your Ph.D and M.D. friends are starting their careers and still gives you plenty of good productive years ahead of you. And the time you spend in industry is invaluable for learning how the world really works, which problems are really important, and all the other stuff they don't teach you in college.

snarf21 9y ago
That would definitely work if you can find it, but it is pretty impossible to find a $160K/year coming out of the local state school. At least where I'm from....
- nostrademons 9y ago
  You don't do it directly. You find the best-paying job you can, work there, do some open-source work in your nights & weekends, and then start looking for a new job when you're about 6 months in, on the strength of your work experience & open-source portfolio. Repeat 2-3 times at roughly 1-year increments until one of the big firms comes knocking. I started at $8/hour at my first programming job and doubled my income every time I switched. You may have to move - if there are no jobs in your area, go where the jobs are! Once you're past entry-level positions you can often get a new employer to pay for your move though. The big secret about "elite" institutions is that they're constantly looking for signs that they fucked up about their judgment of a person, and are usually happy to rectify that if they see concrete information that they were wrong. This goes for universities (I know several people who totally slacked off in high school, got rejected by all the Ivies, went to a state school, did nothing but study in college, and then transferred back into an Ivy), for the big-5 tech companies (where oftentimes people will get in on the second try after a few more years work experience and demonstrable progress launching products for their current employer), and for venture capitalists (who will often pass on a company and then beg to be let back into a later funding round, at a much higher price, if it looks like a startup is taking off). The problem is that most people adjust their performance to the expectations of people around them. If you're not satisfied with where you are in life, act like the people who you want to be. Eventually they'll take notice and decide you're one of them.
  - njwi332 9y ago
    I'll second this. 4 companies across three years before landing at Amazon.

ryandrake 9y ago

The safety to fail is definitely part of it. Whenever I hear someone talk about how they succeeded by 'simply' failing over and over again until they hit it big, I'm reminded of the "Swamp Castle" Monty Python skit: "But the fourth one stayed up!" Well no kidding! If you have the safety net to survive lots of failed endeavors, chances are you'll eventually make it.

pge 9y ago

Having graduated Harvard myself with substantial student loans and no parental financial support, and knowing many others like myself, I think your generalization is off the mark. I would look at a different advantage, which is social capital rather than financial capital. VCs and other relevant players in the tech ecosystem also come from the same schools. If there is an advantagr, I think it is more likely through that network than that the entrepreneurs were rich enough to have a financial safety net (though that is certainly possible too - there may be a further selection of graduates that,those that were wealthy became entrepreneurs but I would think that effect would be less tied to school than social capital)

fjdlwlv 9y ago

More than safety to fail , they have millions of dollars of investment waiting for them before they even start