10 ms·

Dropping out is probably not for you

326 points by vijaydev 15y ago

keiferski 15y ago
I think there's definitely some value in taking time off to figure out where you're going (and where you want to be.) Keeping your head down and finishing for the sake of finishing is probably not going to end well; you'll be in debt, you will have lost the opportunity cost of your time in school, and you still might not know what you want to do. Don't be the guy who's in debt from a degree in a field he doesn't want to work in.
- jackgavigan 15y ago
  > I think there's definitely some value in taking time off to figure out where you're going (and where you want to be.) Do you really have to take time off to do that? Does college take up so many hours a week that it simply leaves zero time for you to "figure out where you're going"? Seriously?
  - stdbrouw 15y ago
    Yes and no. It's not just about the time but about being in an environment that is conducive to those birds-eye-view thoughts, and stepping out of the environment you're currently in to gain perspective.
  - keiferski 15y ago
    No need for the hostility. My point was that continuing on along a path (staying in school) might not be the best action, and oftentimes it's hard to step back and get a sense of things when you're fulltime in school. Not to mention the debt you'll acquire and time you'll waste going down a wrong path.
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    A lot of students spend 2-4 years "trying to figure out where I'm going and what I want to be". Insofar as they haven't figured it out, and won't figure it out in that time, perhaps best if they take some time off and stop spending huge piles of money they don't have getting to where they don't want to go. To wit: the First Law Of Holes is "stop digging".
- tormentor 15y ago
  I agree with this. I left school because I realized what I wanted to do and it WASN'T I.T. administration. I didn't want to end up at a huge corporation wearing a suit and hating my life. Now I work doing what I love and I'm learning a lot from others using hands on experience. Eventually I will start my own business which is what I truly want. If you have a vision and the motivation; and you know you can do it without school, go for it.
edw519 15y ago
The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't. I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer? Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard. I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills. Check. Work well together. Check. Building cool stuff. Check. Have passion and in the groove. Check. Sell something. Oh shit. Let's not overlook the single biggest common thread to all those successful startups founded by college dropouts: they already had huge demand, often accompanied by people with checkbooks. Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own. By this point Micro-soft already had several $100K CDs in the bank and he said, "I don't think that'll be a problem." That would be about the only way I would want to do it.
- matwood 15y ago
  I agree with you. Students have more disposable time than any other segment of the population except the unemployed/out of school. If a person in school cannot build and sell something while still in school, then dropping out isn't likely to help. Getting an MVP build and finding those first critical customers (if they even exist) should be perfectly feasible while still going to class.
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  - nostrademons 15y ago
    Time is rarely the limiting resource for a startup - attention is. Students (at least ones who want to somewhat keep up with their schoolwork) do not have more disposable attention than most working people. As a student, you need to balance your attention between 4-5 different courses, all of which have their own deadlines and assignments and new concepts to learn, and you'll probably be distracted by parties and girls and campus events and a social life. As an entry-level worker, you will probably be given a well-defined task to do and can focus on it, and once you go home, you don't need to worry about it. I found it much easier to launch side projects once I got out of school, because I could leave my work at work and didn't really care about it anyway. I don't think I reached a level of distractedness equal to my college career until I made senior engineer (and hence have everyone asking me for advice) and started dating, 5 years later.
tintin 15y ago
Lately a lot of people think they can earn a lot of money without working hard. I'm not sure why people think this way. Maybe TV told them you can get whatever you want whenever you want.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  Not TV, The Social Network (seriously, how many of you had friends asking you about their "billion dollar" startup idea after seeing the movie?)
  - randomdata 15y ago
    Having just watched it two days ago, the Social Network shows Zuckerberg working all hours of the day, every day. If that doesn't give people the idea that it requires hard work, I don't know what will.
    - jtbigwoo 15y ago
      The words were all about hard work, but the context was not. I bet the Zuckerberg character was drunk and/or at a party in a majority of the scenes he appeared in. Especially if we exclude the scenes where drinking would have resulted in punishment (e.g. during depositions.)
      - randomdata 15y ago
        The words were all about hard work, but the context was not. I'm not sure I agree. They made a point on more than occasion to show Zuckerberg at home on his computer while everyone else was at a party. Even at the depositions, he was working during every available moment. In the one scene he was falling asleep in the lab, so, instead of sleeping, he went home to work on Facebook for the remainder of the night. I believe he was drinking alcohol during some of the work scenes, but there's nothing particularly abnormal about having a few drinks while coding. I even know of legitimate and profitable businesses who support the occasional drinking while coding days.
  - 15y ago
michaelochurch 15y ago
Thank you. Excellent article that needs to be read by everyone who's considering dropping out for "a startup". Let's ignore the complexities and focus on crude market value. A smart person with no college degree can probably earn $25,000 per year at 18. We're assuming a middle to upper-middle class background-- no special family connections-- and a reasonable work ethic. With a CS, math, or science degree from a good college, that jumps to about $80,000 at 22. That's a 34% annual growth rate in one's earning potential! (I'm ignoring the career prospects of Communications majors; a startup is much harder than getting 3.0+ in a CS program.) Typical income growth in the work world is 5-7% for average people and 10-20% (with ups and downs) for very ambitious people. I've been running at 17%/year since I left school, but that's likely to slow down as I trade off income acceleration for more interesting work and autonomy. My point is: being able to grow your earning potential at 34%/year, and probably have fun and learn a lot, while surrounded by intelligent people, over 4 years... is not something to walk away from. Yes, everyone hates college sometimes. The lowest of the lows truly suck. Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Realizing that some idiots get in no matter how elite a college you attend. On the whole, though, if you struggle with college the problem is probably with you-- or more specifically, your level of maturity, and college is a great place to improve that. Mark Zuckerberg could grow (in wealth and earning potential) much faster than 34%/year. College was slowing him down. Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. Most of us are not in that league-- not yet, anyway. That's just discussing market value. Here's another factor. Forget about the startup dream and focus on the reality (for the middle 90%) of the work world. College is more fun, interesting, and educational than the first 5 years of the work world for most people. Don't throw that opportunity away lightly.
- kiba 15y ago
  Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Sleep deprivation and final exam stress is mostly our own making. If you use SRS and study regularly, I am sure the college life is no problem.
  - dfield 15y ago
    SRS?
padobson 15y ago
"Don't do it. Why? Because if that's your character you need every bit of structure that your school or university is providing you. Before you can even think of starting your own business you will have to learn self-discipline." OR you can drop out and get a lousy, physical job - get the same structure you get from school, gain better appreciation for mental skills and abilities that university teaches you, and add to your bankroll (albeit, slowly) instead of your debt load. This, instead of coasting through school with lousy character and no discipline and getting less out of it then if you appreciate it more.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Yeah, going to university in the hopes of learning discipline is like going to [some place not commonly associated with X] to learn [X]. [1] If it's discipline you need, you'd be better off spending four years in the military. Perhaps you'll say that this is "discipline provided by others" rather than "self-discipline", but in practice I'm not sure there's much of a difference based on the ex-military folks I've met. [1] Sorry, the metaphor subsystem of my brain is broken today. Insert your own metaphor here.
bozho 15y ago
Agreed. But I'll just add one option that worked for me. I dropped out after the first semester. Then I found a job as a software engineer. In 4 years I'm a valuable senior java developer that everyone is trying to hire. Have I graduated? Yes, from the school of real-world software projects. I didn't have a startup business (well, I had one which failed, and I'm having one right now, on the side), but it was still a better option to drop out. Btw, I signed up for a external program at the University of London so that I could still get a BSc without actually doing anything academic - so now I'm 24 with 4 years of real-life work experience and a BSc (not that I need it, but it's there) So, perhaps it is better to summarize it that way: if you clearly see opportunities for yourself that are better than staying in university - drop out.
- super_mario 15y ago
  Yeah, and you will also NEVER be a computer scientist. You will never be hired by a team building a compiler, or a team building a database engine. You condemned yourself to a programmer title for the rest of your life, doing mind numbing business logic for the rest of your life (unless you decide to go back to school that it). Besides higher education is NOT about learning skills immediately useful for employment. It's about so much more. It's about mental gymnastics, about stretching your mind, it's about dedicating 5 years of your life to nothing but bettering yourself, reading and learning anything you can get your hands on, exchanging ideas with other great minds, and becoming better you. This is a unique time, that can't be reproduced otherwise simply because you never will have the time (unless you are a millionaire and don't have to work) to do that any more, and when you become older you become less plastic and more set in your ways. Dropping out of school is a tragedy really for any young mind. So is choosing easy school. If you are going to study anything, study hard things (Math vs English). They change you more.
  - hack_edu 15y ago
    While I fully agree with your point, the guarantee of developing software for a living and NOT building compilers or such sounds actually more attractive. Solving problems and designing systems is amazing but what you idealize sounds myopic and tedious to plenty of amazing and well-educated computer scientists. We don't need to get into the Scientist vs. Programmer debate but software can mean or be most anything. That too is a conversation left for the classroom. There are plenty of amazing, rewarding, lucrative, and challenging projects out there besides the poles of Hard CS and bland Enterprise work.
ctdonath 15y ago
Notice that all the lauded examples of "well, X dropped out and made it big!" entail X starting the business during schools and being so wildly successful at it that school was just in the way. Michael Dell was spending all his waking hours building PCs in his dorm. Gates was well on his way to selling DOS to IBM. Each had already gotten to where college helps you go. Remember Gladwell's "10,000 hours" rule of thumb for success? THAT is what college is. 50 hours per week for 50 weeks per year for 4 years is 10,000 hours. You graduate from high school, and realize you haven't mastered a marketable skill[1] - so you sign up for a four-year boot-camp that will drag you, kicking and screaming, through your obligatory 10,000 hours. Thing is, most the successful dropouts were already "practicing" well before they started college. Gladwell notes that Gates was putting in hours a day, for years, of programming before getting to college (at a time that programming required connections and money, being a motivated kid he was allowed free use at 4am). By the time they dropped out (perhaps long before), they already had their 10,000 hours in. A grade-school kid has opportunity for about 5,000 hours of "practice" available...and most use that time throwing balls or acting, building unmarketable skills.
- cperciva 15y ago
  50 hours per week for 50 weeks per year for 4 years is 10,000 hours Or for most students, 40 hours per week for 16 weeks per term for 2 terms per year for 4 years is 5,120 hours. Which might just explain why students coming out of college tend to be at most half good at something.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Grad school will give you the other half. But: Beware premature optimization. ;)
  - hugh3 15y ago
    40 hours per week? Sure, maybe if you're a total conch. For me, undergrad was more like eighteen hours a week for fourteen weeks, then fifty hours a week for one week. And that was with a heavy physics/maths courseload.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
I don't think (2) is correct: You don't like to learn, and you need more money...Don't do it. Why? Because that stuff you learn you will need later on, and you will need it badly. Of all the stuff I learned in college, I needed very little of it. This includes many classes I enjoyed. Most of it I've forgotten already. Not only that, I didn't even take the traditional college -> job route - I stayed in academia for 8 years after college. Some of the many classes I took: medieval literature, women's studies, chemistry (3 semesters), population dynamics for environmental engineering, 2 semesters of economics, optics, and all of this is just the stuff I can think of. Most of my college experience was spent learning stuff I don't need to know and have now forgotten. Stay in school for the sheepskin so that you can signal conscientiousness to the world. But focus on networking, not learning. Most of what you learn is a waste of time.
- alexholehouse 15y ago
  You may not use "what" you learn, but the skills you developed to help get through exams, hit deadlines, learn complicated concepts and work in groups are invaluable.
  - ohashi 15y ago
    I absolutely agree. I studied economics and people have asked about it - what do you actually learn? You learn maybe a couple actual skills (regressions being the big one) but more importantly, it was learning about how to think like an economist. The sciences had more practical skills I can say I learned about data structures, theoretical performance, etc, but the biggest thing I learned taking CS courses was how to solve problems and then how to solve them faster, more efficiently, planning my time, and other skills which aren't listed in a course description.
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- conductrics 15y ago
  Isn't this kinda like looking back after running a search algorithm and saying "look at all of those branches that were explored that had nothing of value in them, what a useless waste." You have to explore in order to learn. College helps one learn both how your actions affect the external environment but also the internal one - your goals, utility function whatever you want to call it. What is 'needed' will be a function of what you decide will be needed.
eof 15y ago
Surprised by the lack of support for dropping out. Is a 4 year education and a degree valuable? Of course. Is it worth $xx,000 in student debt and 4 year opportunity cost of doing something else? Rarely. Especially for this crowd. If you are a 19 year old with some programming skills, and you are paying for your own college (via loans or with cash) dropping out is a GREAT idea. Spend the next three years working on your own projects, open source projects, crappy little free lance whatever.. you are going to be in a much better spot than if you spent the next three years going to classes and coming out with 50k in student loan debt. If college is free, then yeah, you are crazy not to go. But if you are smart and willing to work hard anyway.. education is FREE these days. Save the cost of the house and the years.
- abyssknight 15y ago
  I have to disagree. A college education costs about $26,000 for Florida residents here in Orlando for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Compare that to my first year's salary which was roughly double that, and the cost begins to look minimal. The opportunity cost is relative, since the people you meet in college may very well be the best resources you have for maintaining your drive, innovative spirit, and will to keep on. Just the discipline of finishing something is worth the time and money spent. That said, it depends on _you_ and your situation. Personally, I wouldn't be who I am today without suffering with my peers through classes like CS1, Discrete Structures, and Computer Architecture. My first piece of real consulting work, the first proposal I ever wrote, was for an ad on our local university's job board. Disclaimer: The total cost of my education was paid by scholarships, so I do not have first hand knowledge of how this works, just providing my anecdote. $26,000 figure was calculated using my in state invoices from 2003-2007 so they may need adjusting for inflation.
  - keiferski 15y ago
    Unfortunately Florida is much, much less expensive than almost anywhere else. A college education from a decent university in Pennsylvania will run you about 15k a year (University of Pittsburgh or Penn State). Throw in living costs and tuition increases, and you're looking at 80-100k easily for 4 years.
mklappstuhl 15y ago
This is interesting. I just read four points and was completely like: "Not me, not me, not me, not me." Then I read the fifth point and just thought: "This more likely me. Except for the savings and the acing of exams without learning." I was a little confused about the "Do it" since all other points ended with "Don't do it" but it has been fun. Thanks for this article. PS. I am about to pause studying for half a year to one year and than continue to study. I am 19.
TheloniusPhunk 15y ago
I'd just like to say that if you're too lazy for University, then you're fucked either way.
mml 15y ago
As a dropout, I can tell you this: if you do drop out, you are choosing the hard way. Later on, even if you're wildly successful, you will wonder how much more successful you could have been if you'd finished. You'll also suffer from the impostor syndrome, and it will likely haunt you for the rest of your life, regardless of the outcome. Young smartasses have a way of becoming old maintenance programmers ;)
- randomdata 15y ago
  It is true that dropouts in the past have had to work hard to point out that college is not necessary for success. However, given how many articles we have seen about not dropping out on HN in the last week, it seems the tables have actually turned. It is the graduates now working hard to restore value to their degrees. College has no proven track record. The best we have is some loose correlation showing people who work hard to attain a degree are also likely to work hard in industry, and thus earn more money. No surprises there. Hard working people have always earned more typically. I don't want to diminish the value of college. It comes with a lot of great experiences for personal growth. It is a wonderful passtime. However, these articles are starting to highlight that it plays no role in business else there would be no reason to argue for going to college.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    If you could somehow determine the benefit of a college degree and graph it against the cost over time it would be obvious that college was a no-brainer for boomers, and is becoming quite dubious these days. 50 years ago a state college degree could be paid for by a part-time job at a gas station, and once you had it you were virtually guaranteed gainful employment. These days, easy loans are turning ignorant youth into indentured servants, and it's not even a guarantee of employment, so college could actually be harmful. Personally I got a great deal out of my college experience, and I did it without debt thanks to 2 years of community college and 2 years of staff employment at a University that paid my remaining tuition (ironically it was my self-taught web skills that landed me this job). If I had had to take on $30k or $40k of debt the equation would have been radically different.
- 15y ago
radagaisus 15y ago
Here is my plan: in a year I'm finishing my army service. I'll be 21. Instead of going to the university I'll take three years off. Right now I practice my software development skills. I practice BDD, pick up new mainstream languages, practice writing good and concise code, working with people, etc. When I'll finish the army I'll have three years experience in software development. I've worked at a couple of start ups already, I'm lead dev in the army and we are pushing a new project every month or so, I have my own start up and hopefully by the time I'll finish I'll have the elusive paying customers. And then I'll learn whatever I want for three years. All the math I want, all the algorithms I'm interested at. I'll design a language, I'll write my own compiler, I'll meditate on data structures and work on large open source projects. That's far better than university. And it's gonna be fun.
- marquis 15y ago
  Would army service not be similar to getting a degree, in that you are focused on a daily bases on core learning? It sounds as if your service experience has been as valuable as some schools.
  - radagaisus 15y ago
    I think it it good for my career. I think it's better to learn theory after a good practice, not before. Otherwise you don't have the context, and you fly into to the clouds without keeping your feed on the ground of I Can Build Stuff With This.
brador 15y ago
My take on this is pretty much the same. Drop out if you have something else to do. Do not drop out to sit at home smoking, drinking and playing Xbox. or in more words: http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-business-startup/ http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-bu...
vaksel 15y ago
frankly I think dropping out is retarded. 1. You get your food paid for, you get your housing paid for, you have 0 expenses. 2. Schoolwork doesn't take up a lot of effort...hell you can throw it to the wind, and coast by to get all Cs, and still graduate with a decent GPA...it might not be stellar, but at least you'll have something to fall back on 3. Dropping out is fine if you are profitable and the startup is paying for itself. But if you are still at the idea stage, or aren't making serious coin...then you are frankly an idiot for dropping out when you aren't ready. 4. Startups are a case of hurry up and wait, you can launch, and 99% of the chance, a month in, you'll be getting a few hundred hits a month. Don't throw away your backup plan for nothing.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  And where does this magical free food, housing, and lack of bills come from?
vsl2 15y ago
Why do most of the commenters seem to dislike college? Those were the best four years of my life, taught me real skills, programming and otherwise, that I use every day, and granted me that all-important degree which has come in handy for me and probably will for the vast majority of people who don't build the next Facebook or Apple. Unless you're in situation #5 that the article talks about, spend a few years to get the degree (graduate early if you can because that saves time and money) while working on your projects on the side. And maybe have some college fun in the process.
- TillE 15y ago
  Yeah. I got my CS degree (at a big state research university), learned a ton of computer software and hardware and theory and engineering stuff I absolutely would not have studied on my own because they weren't immediately practical, but were nonetheless extremely valuable. And I took a bunch of other classes that made me a much better thinker, in general and about various topics. I'm a vastly better software developer and a slightly more interesting person than I would have been without those classes. If you're not enjoying and getting value out of university, something's wrong.
- randomdata 15y ago
  I reached a hypothesis in yesterday's discussion about college being a substitute upbringing for those who may not have had many opportunities growing up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3150390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3150390 The dislike comes form it being pointless busywork. It may not have been pointless busywork to you, depending on your upbringing. And that is just fine. Everyone comes with different experiences. College is just not for everyone, plain and simple.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    The dislike comes form it being pointless busywork. It may not have been pointless busywork to you, depending on your upbringing. Or from what university you're at, and what you're studying. My advice to programmer types who come into university thinking they already know all about programming: forget CS and take as much mathematics as you can. That stuff is hard and you can't learn it anywhere else.
conductrics 15y ago
Why did you go in the first place? If you don't care about the 'system' why apply to college and waste a year or two on tuition? Or is it more about nurturing a chip? "yeah, I can get into your school, but here is what I think of it." Look, if you are trying to find an optimal policy in an unknown environment (w/drift) you are going to need to make the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. How you do it is your call, but if you think that the act of 'dropping out' is, in of itself, of positive value as signaling mechanism you are sadly mistaken.
navs 15y ago
I've been struggling in Uni for close to 5 years now. If I don't dropout then I'll just end up wasting more and more money. It looks like this semester my University may make the decision for me and kick me out for my low grades. I know University is supposed to teach me dedication, perseverance, hard work etc but it seems all it does is make me doubt myself which makes me depressed and lazy. I make reasonable money as a freelance web developer. I figure by dropping out of Uni completely, I can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects. This is what I want. This is what gives me excitement so why shouldn't I drop out if the only reason I'm in Uni is to finish a degree I don't even care for.
- brudgers 15y ago
  >"I figure by dropping out of Uni completely, I can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects." I figure that if you graduate Uni, you can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects. It's a false dichotomy. After you graduate, the jobs will be better and the personal projects more deeply informed.
jmj4 15y ago
> 4) You're in your last or next-to-last year and you're fed up with the system, you want your freedom and you want it now. Don't do it. Why? Because dropping out is easy, getting back in later is hard. Sure, the system sucks, but you are this close to bagging that piece of paper, you might as well go all the way. I fundamentally disagree with you on this one. Getting that piece of paper give you a quick escape plan for when things get tough. Lets say you graduate, and start your startup. In the back of your mind you'll be saying "If this doesn't work out, I'll just go get a regular, decent paying job". And then things start to head south. You can't raise money, or you have no traction, ect. That decent paying job starts to look more and more attractive. If you drop out, you're burning your bridges and forcing yourself to stay committed when shit hits the fan. Graduating leaves open an easy retreat strategy; it makes it much easier to quit.
adbge 15y ago
I dropped out of school last semester, so I think I can add some (unique) perspective. Maybe I will flesh these thoughts out into a blog post later. When considering dropping out of college, you're the one who is ultimately responsible for that decision, you're the one who will live with the consequences, and you're the one who has the best information for making that decision. It's all on you. You have to ask yourself if you really believe that you can live with the consequences and, if so, take the plunge. Now, I've only been a drop out for 3 months, so it's impossible for me to comment on the long term effects, but -- if there's one thing you need to realize before dropping out -- being a drop out is hard. For one thing, everyone thinks that kids between the ages of 18 and 22 should be attending college, and they'll be happy to tell you so. Lots of people attended college and, since it worked for them, they will believe that the system can work for you. Further, these people have a vested interest in telling you how important college is and what a worthwhile experience it is because, frankly, they are trying to justify spending however many years attending college and paying off their student loans Basically, don't expect a whole lot of support. In addition, being a drop out in today's climate is a little bit more difficult than it was in the past. Computer Science is now an established discipline and schools actually teach it, so being self-taught is less of a necessity and more of an oddity. Further, while the common wisdom seems to be that the current economic climate is not so bad for programmers, it's certainly harder to get a job now than it was during the dot-com boom. The final, and hardest part of being a drop out, is that it's incredibly lonely and incredibly difficult to stay motivated when you're on your own. I imagine that it's similar to being a solo founder. There are days when it's hard to find the strength to get out of bed, when you'll be filled with self-doubt, when you'll wonder if dropping out was the right decision. Hacking on your own for four years and building a portfolio, instead of attending school, might sound great on paper, but without your peers to support and motivate you, it's very hard.
- Gobitron 15y ago
  Interesting story. Do you have any regrets about your decision? Were you making money before you dropped out and are you making enough to support yourself now?
  - 15y ago
JupiterJazz 15y ago
The only reason the idea of dropping out is getting so much traction is because of the debt that's now required to get a degree. I haven't seen anyone defending college reconcile this fact. The point is that a degree is now extremely expensive and is getting more so all the time. Id like to make the point that holding all that debt is a lot scarier than the successful people with decent jobs trying to persuade us to start or stay in school think it is.
melvinng 15y ago
wow, amazing I wish I had a flow chart like this 2 years ago when my startup was making money..
JesseAldridge 15y ago
I don't think it really matters much either way. I dropped out and spent a few years doing a couple startup type things that didn't end up going anywhere. I ran out of money and got a job. The stuff I had put together + my various online profiles (Stack Overflow, Hacker News, etc.) seemed to be enough to get employers interested. No regrets here. I think Jacques' advice may be somewhat outdated. There are better ways to get educated and prove your competence these days.
ricardobeat 15y ago
the success rate of the average first-time start-up is so low that it makes playing the lottery look like a good investment People love lines like this, but a 20% chance is a million times better than any kind of lottery. Even here in Brazil, where it sucks to be a business owner, recent data shows that +50% of small business survive for over 2 years.
- 0x12 15y ago
  Yes, but that's not 'small businesses started by drop-outs'. If it were then the odds would be substantially less. People start businesses at all points in their life, and the failures skew significantly towards inexperience.
invalidOrTaken 15y ago
No one will read this because I'm posting so late, but I'll describe my experience: I was a stats major, emphasis actuarial science. On paper, I was set to go work for some insurance company and make bank. Except...I couldn't make myself care about it. Done purely for money, that stuff is pretty boring. No, I didn't drop out. The university did that for me as my grades plummeted. I'd learned a bit of java, so I applied for a job out of the student paper and ended up working on an application for...wait for it...insurance agents. Exactly what I couldn't make myself care about in school. In Visual Basic. Having read enough of pg's essays to somehow acquire the impression that I was a Great Hacker destined for startup greatness because I had played around with CL, I quit the insurance software gig to build....video conferencing software! I even found a customer willing to pay me for it. I was clueless and so was he, so we ended up negotiating a fixed-price contract. Cue the tragic cycle of I-didn't-realize-it-would-take-this-long-and-I'm-not-getting-paid enough on the developer's part, and it became a nightmare project that dragged on four months longer than it should have. Cue some more inexperienced-at-software-and-inexperienced-at-contracting horror stories, and I was kind of sick of being on my own. I found the one cool company in my area and bravado'd my way into an interview. They were everything awesome the insurance company hadn't been: smart people. Great conditions. Clojure and Ruby as main languages. Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information on the coffee table in reception. An engineer cofounder (vs. an insurance agent founder). And...I wasn't qualified. I'd plugged some libraries together for the videoconferencing thing, and the Rails stuff I'd done on contract was pretty basic. Any my stats knowledge was poor. I'd dropped out! So I decided to go back to school. Part of the reason I failed so badly in school is because I had a really hard time getting motivated when I could see how sucky most of higher-education is for actual education---many things are quietly optimized toward extracting money from the student's parents, or measuring things for future employers, or compensating for a model with many students and few professors. This is all true, but I can get a loan to attend school, while I can't get a loan to grab a bunch of textbooks and start cranking. So if someone were thinking of dropping out, I'd say---do it. Absolutely do it. If you're sick of school and can't get motivated, no inspirational talk will cure that, and you'll stumble through half-caring, graduating with either a useless degree (because you didn't learn anything) or failing out like I did. The only thing that will cure you of that is experience outside of school. That will be what tells you how off-base (or on!) you are. Since I left school my opinions on some portions of it being B.S. have only strengthened. But I have also gained an appreciation for certain parts that I took for granted. So if you leave, be cold-blooded about it. You may hate the system (it deserves it), but it might be useful to you later, so don't burn that bridge if you can help it.
Ryanmf 15y ago
Going to keep most of my crazy opinions to myself on this one, but a few points: 1. If someone dropped several thousand dollars in seed money in my lap today and said "Hire some people, establish a profitable business," I would feel more enthusiastic about an interview with someone who'd dropped out of CalTech, MIT, OTIS, Art Center, RISD, or Parsons than one with a graduate from anywhere. 2. Not that it necessarily matters, but whenever I encounter the argument that a university education is or should be considered a required component of "success" or "learning" my opinion of the person making the argument drops significantly. Specifically, I find myself treating their judgment of what constitutes "success" or a "learned" person with complete disregard. These feelings are especially strong when they're directed toward someone older than me. (Is there a fake formula to measure how forgivable someone's stupidity is, given their age?) 3. If you're between the ages of 16 and 24 and have convinced yourself that you must be "successful" by the time you're 25, you'll probably feel like a failure whether you drop out or not. In the event that you matriculate/graduate, you'll just be more likely to have picked up a lot of debt, and maybe a nasty alcohol and/or adderall habit. Worse case scenario: you'll be 21-23 with a fancy piece of paper, the false impression that you "get it," and not much else. (To be fair, I met my best friends in college—which is now a huge pain in the ass since everyone's scattered across the country—and the majority of my favorite memories are from that time. But after meeting those people my freshman year, I could have dropped out, done enough design work to cover food, gas, and rent in Pacific Beach—I went to school in San Diego–and had largely the same experience.)
peterwwillis 15y ago
There's a lot more positive benefit to staying in school than dropping out. For one thing, making money is something you'll do for the rest of your life (unless you're the kind of fiscally-responsible freak that can save enough to retire by 30). You have all the time in the world to start a company or join one. But right now, while you're young and have the time and resources available, you're at the best possible position to acquire the experiences and knowledge you'll need for the rest of your life. Yes there's debt; you'll pay it off. Yes it's tiring; you'll get used to it. Is it easy to drop out? Yes. Can you make money (assuming you're smart enough and have learned enough to get a job now)? Yes. Does it make sense to cripple yourself for the future just to get a couple years ahead of your peers? Hell no. Do whatever you have to do to finish school and try hard to enjoy yourself while you're there. Life isn't going anywhere that you need to drop out to get there.
danielrhodes 15y ago
"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems." Jacques appears to have a very shallow knowledge into the value of liberal arts. It has nothing to do with a marketable skill (if you want that, go to a vocational school), and everything to do with refining the quality if your thought and mind.
- jlcx 15y ago
  This is a very common argument, and it may have some merit. In the current economic situation, however, with high and increasing college costs, it is probably advisable to find a less expensive way to obtain the benefits of a liberal arts education.
- wanorris 15y ago
  I have a Philosophy degree, and there was definitely an opportunity cost associated with getting it. If my goal were to optimize my life in terms of income generation, it would have been a mistake. Happily, that hasn't been my goal in life, and I wouldn't trade my philosophy degree in for the world. There turned out to be plenty of time to go back to school and learn the technical skills I needed after I figured out that programming was what I wanted to do with my life. Having said that, I would be somewhat reluctant to counsel anyone to take a career-path-agnostic approach to college in the current climate. Times are tough, decent jobs for people without demonstrable technical skills are scarce, and college is even more breathtakingly expensive than it was 20 years ago.
- philwelch 15y ago
  As far as I can determine, a university education in the liberal arts does little to nothing to refine the quality of one's thought and mind. Someone intelligent, talented, and motivated enough to gain anything from a liberal arts education would undoubtedly achieve most of that on their own for the proverbial $1.50 in late fees at the local library. And someone who isn't will gain nothing but a now useless credential. Most 18 year olds would gain more perspective from two years in the Peace Corps or military than from a liberal arts education.
amandalim89 15y ago
Peter Thiel doesn't seem to think dropping out is such a bad idea. He set up The Thiel Fellowship to give 20 students Under 20 $100,000 to get their business ideas off the ground and quit school. http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k-to-drop-out-of-college/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k...
- 0x12 15y ago
  That's a common misconception about the Thiel foundation. Their main point is that they think that going into a multi-year debt in order to get an education is a losing proposition for many people and that because of that you might be better of dropping out. The 20 under 20 program is for exceptional people, see #5 in the linked article.
  - amandalim89 15y ago
    No doubt Peter Thiel means well. Thiel Foundation is a non-profit organization. Today it announced Breakout Labs which aims to fund very nascent research proposals — opportunities that are too early stage or radical to attract dollars from VCs or government grants.
TDL 15y ago
Much has been said about whether or not to drop out of school (or whether to go college at all.) How about those w/ limited technical skills going back to school to pick up a CS degree? Regards, TDL
jorangreef 15y ago
Sage words.
gaoshan 15y ago
Definitely not for me. I need a good project manager AND a good business manager on hand. Learned this after some lean, depression filled, years. Once I admitted this to myself and acted accordingly my income shot up from poverty levels to middle class levels. Now that I have kids and all of the uncertainty and financial hardship that can impose, I'll take what I've got. I'll never be rich but I'll still be happy.
aik 15y ago
"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems." I could be mistaken, but I'm convinced that over 80% of people in college would not qualify. If I'm mistaken, then I am saddened even more due to the existence of so many that could put forth so little effort for something they truly wanted to do. When I attended college I would not have qualified.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
All this talk of dropping out or not reminded me of a characteristic I've come to recognize in folks with Phds. There is an assumption that if you don't have a Phd like they do its because you could not get one, not that you chose not to get one. I think some of that flings back on people who drop out of college. Work, regardless of company size, is, to put it simply, work. That sounds circular of course but really the key is that if you can't find the motivation to get you through college then where are you going to find the motivation to get you through the 'last 10%' of a project which is what takes 90% of the effort? As pg pointed out, and Jacques does too, if you're wondering if you should drop out then you shouldn't. You've got bigger problems and you need to deal with those. If on the other hand getting school stuff done is hard because your business is growing in leaps and bounds and you don't have time for both, that is a completely different story. Work can suck at times, that is why you don't see travel agents advertising "Bankok Work Vacations." But getting stuff done rocks. You have to see the goal, if only in your minds eye, to get past the stuff that is lame and irritating.
schleyfox 15y ago
I psuedo-dropped out* a week ago. I think the thing that really stuck out in my case was that all of my family and friends responded with a sincere "congratulations!" when I told them about it. * I've scraped enough credits together to collect my CS degree in May with my peers, though I do miss the english lit classes I was taking.
compman775 15y ago
"If those three conditions are not met . . ." There are four conditions there, not three.
mannicken 15y ago
I'm 20. I dropped out of high school, studied for a couple of years in community college and am taking classes and workshops at an art school right now (no accredited degree). For me this provides a solid compromise between the extremes of fascist discipline and anarchist chaos. The first extreme relies completely on papers, degrees, and the value of adderalled-up memorization of facts and focusing your life on passing the tests. Life isn't about passing tests and I didn't want to go that route. So I dropped out of high school. The second extreme is an anarchist, 'fuck the power' immature, spontaneous chaos. It disregards discipline, it ignores the beautiful life-rhythm of doing something everyday. It glorifies chaos and disorder, and ultimately for me it would probably lead to jail and homelessness. I decided to ignore that, since I realized the value of discipline and the value of education in a classroom (but not for a degree). I have very little interest in the opiatish dream of a 'start-up that will make me filthy rich' too. Hence why I avoid startups. In fact I am skeptical of everything that alludes to 'becoming filthy rich'. I am not a typical successful dropout like Bill Gates (yet) nor do I think I will be, and I'm not a stereotypical dumb lazy fry-flipping dropout (yet). As an experiment to test my discipline and knowledge, I decided to spend a year working in a full-time IT job, and I have spent exactly one year there. So yeah, I'm that other guy :) Your mileage may vary.
rick_bc 15y ago
Neither John McCarthy nor Dennis Ritchie was college dropout. Steve Job sort-of was. 2 vs 1! Don't dropout!
jacoblyles 15y ago
Let's not forget the happy medium: going on leave. Stanford lets students take 3 quarters off and many other universities offer a similar program. A few months may be enough time to decide if your side business is viable.

326 points by vijaydev 15y ago

I think there's definitely some value in taking time off to figure out where you're going (and where you want to be.) Keeping your head down and finishing for the sake of finishing is probably not going to end well; you'll be in debt, you will have lost the opportunity cost of your time in school, and you still might not know what you want to do. Don't be the guy who's in debt from a degree in a field he doesn't want to work in.

jackgavigan 15y ago
> I think there's definitely some value in taking time off to figure out where you're going (and where you want to be.) Do you really have to take time off to do that? Does college take up so many hours a week that it simply leaves zero time for you to "figure out where you're going"? Seriously?
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  Yes and no. It's not just about the time but about being in an environment that is conducive to those birds-eye-view thoughts, and stepping out of the environment you're currently in to gain perspective.
- keiferski 15y ago
  No need for the hostility. My point was that continuing on along a path (staying in school) might not be the best action, and oftentimes it's hard to step back and get a sense of things when you're fulltime in school. Not to mention the debt you'll acquire and time you'll waste going down a wrong path.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  A lot of students spend 2-4 years "trying to figure out where I'm going and what I want to be". Insofar as they haven't figured it out, and won't figure it out in that time, perhaps best if they take some time off and stop spending huge piles of money they don't have getting to where they don't want to go. To wit: the First Law Of Holes is "stop digging".
tormentor 15y ago
I agree with this. I left school because I realized what I wanted to do and it WASN'T I.T. administration. I didn't want to end up at a huge corporation wearing a suit and hating my life. Now I work doing what I love and I'm learning a lot from others using hands on experience. Eventually I will start my own business which is what I truly want. If you have a vision and the motivation; and you know you can do it without school, go for it.

edw519 15y ago

The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't. I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer? Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard. I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills. Check. Work well together. Check. Building cool stuff. Check. Have passion and in the groove. Check. Sell something. Oh shit. Let's not overlook the single biggest common thread to all those successful startups founded by college dropouts: they already had huge demand, often accompanied by people with checkbooks. Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own. By this point Micro-soft already had several $100K CDs in the bank and he said, "I don't think that'll be a problem." That would be about the only way I would want to do it.

matwood 15y ago
I agree with you. Students have more disposable time than any other segment of the population except the unemployed/out of school. If a person in school cannot build and sell something while still in school, then dropping out isn't likely to help. Getting an MVP build and finding those first critical customers (if they even exist) should be perfectly feasible while still going to class.
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- nostrademons 15y ago
  Time is rarely the limiting resource for a startup - attention is. Students (at least ones who want to somewhat keep up with their schoolwork) do not have more disposable attention than most working people. As a student, you need to balance your attention between 4-5 different courses, all of which have their own deadlines and assignments and new concepts to learn, and you'll probably be distracted by parties and girls and campus events and a social life. As an entry-level worker, you will probably be given a well-defined task to do and can focus on it, and once you go home, you don't need to worry about it. I found it much easier to launch side projects once I got out of school, because I could leave my work at work and didn't really care about it anyway. I don't think I reached a level of distractedness equal to my college career until I made senior engineer (and hence have everyone asking me for advice) and started dating, 5 years later.

tintin 15y ago

Lately a lot of people think they can earn a lot of money without working hard. I'm not sure why people think this way. Maybe TV told them you can get whatever you want whenever you want.

zerostar07 15y ago
Not TV, The Social Network (seriously, how many of you had friends asking you about their "billion dollar" startup idea after seeing the movie?)
- randomdata 15y ago
  Having just watched it two days ago, the Social Network shows Zuckerberg working all hours of the day, every day. If that doesn't give people the idea that it requires hard work, I don't know what will.
  - jtbigwoo 15y ago
    The words were all about hard work, but the context was not. I bet the Zuckerberg character was drunk and/or at a party in a majority of the scenes he appeared in. Especially if we exclude the scenes where drinking would have resulted in punishment (e.g. during depositions.)
    - randomdata 15y ago
      The words were all about hard work, but the context was not. I'm not sure I agree. They made a point on more than occasion to show Zuckerberg at home on his computer while everyone else was at a party. Even at the depositions, he was working during every available moment. In the one scene he was falling asleep in the lab, so, instead of sleeping, he went home to work on Facebook for the remainder of the night. I believe he was drinking alcohol during some of the work scenes, but there's nothing particularly abnormal about having a few drinks while coding. I even know of legitimate and profitable businesses who support the occasional drinking while coding days.
- 15y ago

michaelochurch 15y ago

Thank you. Excellent article that needs to be read by everyone who's considering dropping out for "a startup". Let's ignore the complexities and focus on crude market value. A smart person with no college degree can probably earn $25,000 per year at 18. We're assuming a middle to upper-middle class background-- no special family connections-- and a reasonable work ethic. With a CS, math, or science degree from a good college, that jumps to about $80,000 at 22. That's a 34% annual growth rate in one's earning potential! (I'm ignoring the career prospects of Communications majors; a startup is much harder than getting 3.0+ in a CS program.) Typical income growth in the work world is 5-7% for average people and 10-20% (with ups and downs) for very ambitious people. I've been running at 17%/year since I left school, but that's likely to slow down as I trade off income acceleration for more interesting work and autonomy. My point is: being able to grow your earning potential at 34%/year, and probably have fun and learn a lot, while surrounded by intelligent people, over 4 years... is not something to walk away from. Yes, everyone hates college sometimes. The lowest of the lows truly suck. Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Realizing that some idiots get in no matter how elite a college you attend. On the whole, though, if you struggle with college the problem is probably with you-- or more specifically, your level of maturity, and college is a great place to improve that. Mark Zuckerberg could grow (in wealth and earning potential) much faster than 34%/year. College was slowing him down. Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. Most of us are not in that league-- not yet, anyway. That's just discussing market value. Here's another factor. Forget about the startup dream and focus on the reality (for the middle 90%) of the work world. College is more fun, interesting, and educational than the first 5 years of the work world for most people. Don't throw that opportunity away lightly.

kiba 15y ago
Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Sleep deprivation and final exam stress is mostly our own making. If you use SRS and study regularly, I am sure the college life is no problem.
- dfield 15y ago
  SRS?

padobson 15y ago

"Don't do it. Why? Because if that's your character you need every bit of structure that your school or university is providing you. Before you can even think of starting your own business you will have to learn self-discipline." OR you can drop out and get a lousy, physical job - get the same structure you get from school, gain better appreciation for mental skills and abilities that university teaches you, and add to your bankroll (albeit, slowly) instead of your debt load. This, instead of coasting through school with lousy character and no discipline and getting less out of it then if you appreciate it more.

hugh3 15y ago
Yeah, going to university in the hopes of learning discipline is like going to [some place not commonly associated with X] to learn [X]. [1] If it's discipline you need, you'd be better off spending four years in the military. Perhaps you'll say that this is "discipline provided by others" rather than "self-discipline", but in practice I'm not sure there's much of a difference based on the ex-military folks I've met. [1] Sorry, the metaphor subsystem of my brain is broken today. Insert your own metaphor here.

bozho 15y ago

Agreed. But I'll just add one option that worked for me. I dropped out after the first semester. Then I found a job as a software engineer. In 4 years I'm a valuable senior java developer that everyone is trying to hire. Have I graduated? Yes, from the school of real-world software projects. I didn't have a startup business (well, I had one which failed, and I'm having one right now, on the side), but it was still a better option to drop out. Btw, I signed up for a external program at the University of London so that I could still get a BSc without actually doing anything academic - so now I'm 24 with 4 years of real-life work experience and a BSc (not that I need it, but it's there) So, perhaps it is better to summarize it that way: if you clearly see opportunities for yourself that are better than staying in university - drop out.

super_mario 15y ago
Yeah, and you will also NEVER be a computer scientist. You will never be hired by a team building a compiler, or a team building a database engine. You condemned yourself to a programmer title for the rest of your life, doing mind numbing business logic for the rest of your life (unless you decide to go back to school that it). Besides higher education is NOT about learning skills immediately useful for employment. It's about so much more. It's about mental gymnastics, about stretching your mind, it's about dedicating 5 years of your life to nothing but bettering yourself, reading and learning anything you can get your hands on, exchanging ideas with other great minds, and becoming better you. This is a unique time, that can't be reproduced otherwise simply because you never will have the time (unless you are a millionaire and don't have to work) to do that any more, and when you become older you become less plastic and more set in your ways. Dropping out of school is a tragedy really for any young mind. So is choosing easy school. If you are going to study anything, study hard things (Math vs English). They change you more.
- hack_edu 15y ago
  While I fully agree with your point, the guarantee of developing software for a living and NOT building compilers or such sounds actually more attractive. Solving problems and designing systems is amazing but what you idealize sounds myopic and tedious to plenty of amazing and well-educated computer scientists. We don't need to get into the Scientist vs. Programmer debate but software can mean or be most anything. That too is a conversation left for the classroom. There are plenty of amazing, rewarding, lucrative, and challenging projects out there besides the poles of Hard CS and bland Enterprise work.

ctdonath 15y ago

Notice that all the lauded examples of "well, X dropped out and made it big!" entail X starting the business during schools and being so wildly successful at it that school was just in the way. Michael Dell was spending all his waking hours building PCs in his dorm. Gates was well on his way to selling DOS to IBM. Each had already gotten to where college helps you go. Remember Gladwell's "10,000 hours" rule of thumb for success? THAT is what college is. 50 hours per week for 50 weeks per year for 4 years is 10,000 hours. You graduate from high school, and realize you haven't mastered a marketable skill[1] - so you sign up for a four-year boot-camp that will drag you, kicking and screaming, through your obligatory 10,000 hours. Thing is, most the successful dropouts were already "practicing" well before they started college. Gladwell notes that Gates was putting in hours a day, for years, of programming before getting to college (at a time that programming required connections and money, being a motivated kid he was allowed free use at 4am). By the time they dropped out (perhaps long before), they already had their 10,000 hours in. A grade-school kid has opportunity for about 5,000 hours of "practice" available...and most use that time throwing balls or acting, building unmarketable skills.

cperciva 15y ago
50 hours per week for 50 weeks per year for 4 years is 10,000 hours Or for most students, 40 hours per week for 16 weeks per term for 2 terms per year for 4 years is 5,120 hours. Which might just explain why students coming out of college tend to be at most half good at something.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Grad school will give you the other half. But: Beware premature optimization. ;)
- hugh3 15y ago
  40 hours per week? Sure, maybe if you're a total conch. For me, undergrad was more like eighteen hours a week for fourteen weeks, then fifty hours a week for one week. And that was with a heavy physics/maths courseload.

yummyfajitas 15y ago

I don't think (2) is correct: You don't like to learn, and you need more money...Don't do it. Why? Because that stuff you learn you will need later on, and you will need it badly. Of all the stuff I learned in college, I needed very little of it. This includes many classes I enjoyed. Most of it I've forgotten already. Not only that, I didn't even take the traditional college -> job route - I stayed in academia for 8 years after college. Some of the many classes I took: medieval literature, women's studies, chemistry (3 semesters), population dynamics for environmental engineering, 2 semesters of economics, optics, and all of this is just the stuff I can think of. Most of my college experience was spent learning stuff I don't need to know and have now forgotten. Stay in school for the sheepskin so that you can signal conscientiousness to the world. But focus on networking, not learning. Most of what you learn is a waste of time.

alexholehouse 15y ago
You may not use "what" you learn, but the skills you developed to help get through exams, hit deadlines, learn complicated concepts and work in groups are invaluable.
- ohashi 15y ago
  I absolutely agree. I studied economics and people have asked about it - what do you actually learn? You learn maybe a couple actual skills (regressions being the big one) but more importantly, it was learning about how to think like an economist. The sciences had more practical skills I can say I learned about data structures, theoretical performance, etc, but the biggest thing I learned taking CS courses was how to solve problems and then how to solve them faster, more efficiently, planning my time, and other skills which aren't listed in a course description.
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conductrics 15y ago
Isn't this kinda like looking back after running a search algorithm and saying "look at all of those branches that were explored that had nothing of value in them, what a useless waste." You have to explore in order to learn. College helps one learn both how your actions affect the external environment but also the internal one - your goals, utility function whatever you want to call it. What is 'needed' will be a function of what you decide will be needed.

eof 15y ago

Surprised by the lack of support for dropping out. Is a 4 year education and a degree valuable? Of course. Is it worth $xx,000 in student debt and 4 year opportunity cost of doing something else? Rarely. Especially for this crowd. If you are a 19 year old with some programming skills, and you are paying for your own college (via loans or with cash) dropping out is a GREAT idea. Spend the next three years working on your own projects, open source projects, crappy little free lance whatever.. you are going to be in a much better spot than if you spent the next three years going to classes and coming out with 50k in student loan debt. If college is free, then yeah, you are crazy not to go. But if you are smart and willing to work hard anyway.. education is FREE these days. Save the cost of the house and the years.

abyssknight 15y ago
I have to disagree. A college education costs about $26,000 for Florida residents here in Orlando for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Compare that to my first year's salary which was roughly double that, and the cost begins to look minimal. The opportunity cost is relative, since the people you meet in college may very well be the best resources you have for maintaining your drive, innovative spirit, and will to keep on. Just the discipline of finishing something is worth the time and money spent. That said, it depends on _you_ and your situation. Personally, I wouldn't be who I am today without suffering with my peers through classes like CS1, Discrete Structures, and Computer Architecture. My first piece of real consulting work, the first proposal I ever wrote, was for an ad on our local university's job board. Disclaimer: The total cost of my education was paid by scholarships, so I do not have first hand knowledge of how this works, just providing my anecdote. $26,000 figure was calculated using my in state invoices from 2003-2007 so they may need adjusting for inflation.
- keiferski 15y ago
  Unfortunately Florida is much, much less expensive than almost anywhere else. A college education from a decent university in Pennsylvania will run you about 15k a year (University of Pittsburgh or Penn State). Throw in living costs and tuition increases, and you're looking at 80-100k easily for 4 years.

mklappstuhl 15y ago

This is interesting. I just read four points and was completely like: "Not me, not me, not me, not me." Then I read the fifth point and just thought: "This more likely me. Except for the savings and the acing of exams without learning." I was a little confused about the "Do it" since all other points ended with "Don't do it" but it has been fun. Thanks for this article. PS. I am about to pause studying for half a year to one year and than continue to study. I am 19.

TheloniusPhunk 15y ago

I'd just like to say that if you're too lazy for University, then you're fucked either way.

mml 15y ago

As a dropout, I can tell you this: if you do drop out, you are choosing the hard way. Later on, even if you're wildly successful, you will wonder how much more successful you could have been if you'd finished. You'll also suffer from the impostor syndrome, and it will likely haunt you for the rest of your life, regardless of the outcome. Young smartasses have a way of becoming old maintenance programmers ;)

randomdata 15y ago
It is true that dropouts in the past have had to work hard to point out that college is not necessary for success. However, given how many articles we have seen about not dropping out on HN in the last week, it seems the tables have actually turned. It is the graduates now working hard to restore value to their degrees. College has no proven track record. The best we have is some loose correlation showing people who work hard to attain a degree are also likely to work hard in industry, and thus earn more money. No surprises there. Hard working people have always earned more typically. I don't want to diminish the value of college. It comes with a lot of great experiences for personal growth. It is a wonderful passtime. However, these articles are starting to highlight that it plays no role in business else there would be no reason to argue for going to college.
- dasil003 15y ago
  If you could somehow determine the benefit of a college degree and graph it against the cost over time it would be obvious that college was a no-brainer for boomers, and is becoming quite dubious these days. 50 years ago a state college degree could be paid for by a part-time job at a gas station, and once you had it you were virtually guaranteed gainful employment. These days, easy loans are turning ignorant youth into indentured servants, and it's not even a guarantee of employment, so college could actually be harmful. Personally I got a great deal out of my college experience, and I did it without debt thanks to 2 years of community college and 2 years of staff employment at a University that paid my remaining tuition (ironically it was my self-taught web skills that landed me this job). If I had had to take on $30k or $40k of debt the equation would have been radically different.
15y ago

radagaisus 15y ago

Here is my plan: in a year I'm finishing my army service. I'll be 21. Instead of going to the university I'll take three years off. Right now I practice my software development skills. I practice BDD, pick up new mainstream languages, practice writing good and concise code, working with people, etc. When I'll finish the army I'll have three years experience in software development. I've worked at a couple of start ups already, I'm lead dev in the army and we are pushing a new project every month or so, I have my own start up and hopefully by the time I'll finish I'll have the elusive paying customers. And then I'll learn whatever I want for three years. All the math I want, all the algorithms I'm interested at. I'll design a language, I'll write my own compiler, I'll meditate on data structures and work on large open source projects. That's far better than university. And it's gonna be fun.

marquis 15y ago
Would army service not be similar to getting a degree, in that you are focused on a daily bases on core learning? It sounds as if your service experience has been as valuable as some schools.
- radagaisus 15y ago
  I think it it good for my career. I think it's better to learn theory after a good practice, not before. Otherwise you don't have the context, and you fly into to the clouds without keeping your feed on the ground of I Can Build Stuff With This.

brador 15y ago

My take on this is pretty much the same. Drop out if you have something else to do. Do not drop out to sit at home smoking, drinking and playing Xbox. or in more words: http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-business-startup/ http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-bu...

vaksel 15y ago

frankly I think dropping out is retarded. 1. You get your food paid for, you get your housing paid for, you have 0 expenses. 2. Schoolwork doesn't take up a lot of effort...hell you can throw it to the wind, and coast by to get all Cs, and still graduate with a decent GPA...it might not be stellar, but at least you'll have something to fall back on 3. Dropping out is fine if you are profitable and the startup is paying for itself. But if you are still at the idea stage, or aren't making serious coin...then you are frankly an idiot for dropping out when you aren't ready. 4. Startups are a case of hurry up and wait, you can launch, and 99% of the chance, a month in, you'll be getting a few hundred hits a month. Don't throw away your backup plan for nothing.

gnaritas 15y ago
And where does this magical free food, housing, and lack of bills come from?

vsl2 15y ago

Why do most of the commenters seem to dislike college? Those were the best four years of my life, taught me real skills, programming and otherwise, that I use every day, and granted me that all-important degree which has come in handy for me and probably will for the vast majority of people who don't build the next Facebook or Apple. Unless you're in situation #5 that the article talks about, spend a few years to get the degree (graduate early if you can because that saves time and money) while working on your projects on the side. And maybe have some college fun in the process.

TillE 15y ago
Yeah. I got my CS degree (at a big state research university), learned a ton of computer software and hardware and theory and engineering stuff I absolutely would not have studied on my own because they weren't immediately practical, but were nonetheless extremely valuable. And I took a bunch of other classes that made me a much better thinker, in general and about various topics. I'm a vastly better software developer and a slightly more interesting person than I would have been without those classes. If you're not enjoying and getting value out of university, something's wrong.
randomdata 15y ago
I reached a hypothesis in yesterday's discussion about college being a substitute upbringing for those who may not have had many opportunities growing up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3150390 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3150390 The dislike comes form it being pointless busywork. It may not have been pointless busywork to you, depending on your upbringing. And that is just fine. Everyone comes with different experiences. College is just not for everyone, plain and simple.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The dislike comes form it being pointless busywork. It may not have been pointless busywork to you, depending on your upbringing. Or from what university you're at, and what you're studying. My advice to programmer types who come into university thinking they already know all about programming: forget CS and take as much mathematics as you can. That stuff is hard and you can't learn it anywhere else.

conductrics 15y ago

Why did you go in the first place? If you don't care about the 'system' why apply to college and waste a year or two on tuition? Or is it more about nurturing a chip? "yeah, I can get into your school, but here is what I think of it." Look, if you are trying to find an optimal policy in an unknown environment (w/drift) you are going to need to make the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. How you do it is your call, but if you think that the act of 'dropping out' is, in of itself, of positive value as signaling mechanism you are sadly mistaken.

navs 15y ago

I've been struggling in Uni for close to 5 years now. If I don't dropout then I'll just end up wasting more and more money. It looks like this semester my University may make the decision for me and kick me out for my low grades. I know University is supposed to teach me dedication, perseverance, hard work etc but it seems all it does is make me doubt myself which makes me depressed and lazy. I make reasonable money as a freelance web developer. I figure by dropping out of Uni completely, I can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects. This is what I want. This is what gives me excitement so why shouldn't I drop out if the only reason I'm in Uni is to finish a degree I don't even care for.

brudgers 15y ago
>"I figure by dropping out of Uni completely, I can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects." I figure that if you graduate Uni, you can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects. It's a false dichotomy. After you graduate, the jobs will be better and the personal projects more deeply informed.

jmj4 15y ago

> 4) You're in your last or next-to-last year and you're fed up with the system, you want your freedom and you want it now. Don't do it. Why? Because dropping out is easy, getting back in later is hard. Sure, the system sucks, but you are this close to bagging that piece of paper, you might as well go all the way. I fundamentally disagree with you on this one. Getting that piece of paper give you a quick escape plan for when things get tough. Lets say you graduate, and start your startup. In the back of your mind you'll be saying "If this doesn't work out, I'll just go get a regular, decent paying job". And then things start to head south. You can't raise money, or you have no traction, ect. That decent paying job starts to look more and more attractive. If you drop out, you're burning your bridges and forcing yourself to stay committed when shit hits the fan. Graduating leaves open an easy retreat strategy; it makes it much easier to quit.

adbge 15y ago

I dropped out of school last semester, so I think I can add some (unique) perspective. Maybe I will flesh these thoughts out into a blog post later. When considering dropping out of college, you're the one who is ultimately responsible for that decision, you're the one who will live with the consequences, and you're the one who has the best information for making that decision. It's all on you. You have to ask yourself if you really believe that you can live with the consequences and, if so, take the plunge. Now, I've only been a drop out for 3 months, so it's impossible for me to comment on the long term effects, but -- if there's one thing you need to realize before dropping out -- being a drop out is hard. For one thing, everyone thinks that kids between the ages of 18 and 22 should be attending college, and they'll be happy to tell you so. Lots of people attended college and, since it worked for them, they will believe that the system can work for you. Further, these people have a vested interest in telling you how important college is and what a worthwhile experience it is because, frankly, they are trying to justify spending however many years attending college and paying off their student loans Basically, don't expect a whole lot of support. In addition, being a drop out in today's climate is a little bit more difficult than it was in the past. Computer Science is now an established discipline and schools actually teach it, so being self-taught is less of a necessity and more of an oddity. Further, while the common wisdom seems to be that the current economic climate is not so bad for programmers, it's certainly harder to get a job now than it was during the dot-com boom. The final, and hardest part of being a drop out, is that it's incredibly lonely and incredibly difficult to stay motivated when you're on your own. I imagine that it's similar to being a solo founder. There are days when it's hard to find the strength to get out of bed, when you'll be filled with self-doubt, when you'll wonder if dropping out was the right decision. Hacking on your own for four years and building a portfolio, instead of attending school, might sound great on paper, but without your peers to support and motivate you, it's very hard.

Gobitron 15y ago
Interesting story. Do you have any regrets about your decision? Were you making money before you dropped out and are you making enough to support yourself now?
- 15y ago

JupiterJazz 15y ago

The only reason the idea of dropping out is getting so much traction is because of the debt that's now required to get a degree. I haven't seen anyone defending college reconcile this fact. The point is that a degree is now extremely expensive and is getting more so all the time. Id like to make the point that holding all that debt is a lot scarier than the successful people with decent jobs trying to persuade us to start or stay in school think it is.

melvinng 15y ago

wow, amazing I wish I had a flow chart like this 2 years ago when my startup was making money..

JesseAldridge 15y ago

I don't think it really matters much either way. I dropped out and spent a few years doing a couple startup type things that didn't end up going anywhere. I ran out of money and got a job. The stuff I had put together + my various online profiles (Stack Overflow, Hacker News, etc.) seemed to be enough to get employers interested. No regrets here. I think Jacques' advice may be somewhat outdated. There are better ways to get educated and prove your competence these days.

ricardobeat 15y ago

the success rate of the average first-time start-up is so low that it makes playing the lottery look like a good investment People love lines like this, but a 20% chance is a million times better than any kind of lottery. Even here in Brazil, where it sucks to be a business owner, recent data shows that +50% of small business survive for over 2 years.

0x12 15y ago
Yes, but that's not 'small businesses started by drop-outs'. If it were then the odds would be substantially less. People start businesses at all points in their life, and the failures skew significantly towards inexperience.

invalidOrTaken 15y ago

No one will read this because I'm posting so late, but I'll describe my experience: I was a stats major, emphasis actuarial science. On paper, I was set to go work for some insurance company and make bank. Except...I couldn't make myself care about it. Done purely for money, that stuff is pretty boring. No, I didn't drop out. The university did that for me as my grades plummeted. I'd learned a bit of java, so I applied for a job out of the student paper and ended up working on an application for...wait for it...insurance agents. Exactly what I couldn't make myself care about in school. In Visual Basic. Having read enough of pg's essays to somehow acquire the impression that I was a Great Hacker destined for startup greatness because I had played around with CL, I quit the insurance software gig to build....video conferencing software! I even found a customer willing to pay me for it. I was clueless and so was he, so we ended up negotiating a fixed-price contract. Cue the tragic cycle of I-didn't-realize-it-would-take-this-long-and-I'm-not-getting-paid enough on the developer's part, and it became a nightmare project that dragged on four months longer than it should have. Cue some more inexperienced-at-software-and-inexperienced-at-contracting horror stories, and I was kind of sick of being on my own. I found the one cool company in my area and bravado'd my way into an interview. They were everything awesome the insurance company hadn't been: smart people. Great conditions. Clojure and Ruby as main languages. Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information on the coffee table in reception. An engineer cofounder (vs. an insurance agent founder). And...I wasn't qualified. I'd plugged some libraries together for the videoconferencing thing, and the Rails stuff I'd done on contract was pretty basic. Any my stats knowledge was poor. I'd dropped out! So I decided to go back to school. Part of the reason I failed so badly in school is because I had a really hard time getting motivated when I could see how sucky most of higher-education is for actual education---many things are quietly optimized toward extracting money from the student's parents, or measuring things for future employers, or compensating for a model with many students and few professors. This is all true, but I can get a loan to attend school, while I can't get a loan to grab a bunch of textbooks and start cranking. So if someone were thinking of dropping out, I'd say---do it. Absolutely do it. If you're sick of school and can't get motivated, no inspirational talk will cure that, and you'll stumble through half-caring, graduating with either a useless degree (because you didn't learn anything) or failing out like I did. The only thing that will cure you of that is experience outside of school. That will be what tells you how off-base (or on!) you are. Since I left school my opinions on some portions of it being B.S. have only strengthened. But I have also gained an appreciation for certain parts that I took for granted. So if you leave, be cold-blooded about it. You may hate the system (it deserves it), but it might be useful to you later, so don't burn that bridge if you can help it.

Ryanmf 15y ago

Going to keep most of my crazy opinions to myself on this one, but a few points: 1. If someone dropped several thousand dollars in seed money in my lap today and said "Hire some people, establish a profitable business," I would feel more enthusiastic about an interview with someone who'd dropped out of CalTech, MIT, OTIS, Art Center, RISD, or Parsons than one with a graduate from anywhere. 2. Not that it necessarily matters, but whenever I encounter the argument that a university education is or should be considered a required component of "success" or "learning" my opinion of the person making the argument drops significantly. Specifically, I find myself treating their judgment of what constitutes "success" or a "learned" person with complete disregard. These feelings are especially strong when they're directed toward someone older than me. (Is there a fake formula to measure how forgivable someone's stupidity is, given their age?) 3. If you're between the ages of 16 and 24 and have convinced yourself that you must be "successful" by the time you're 25, you'll probably feel like a failure whether you drop out or not. In the event that you matriculate/graduate, you'll just be more likely to have picked up a lot of debt, and maybe a nasty alcohol and/or adderall habit. Worse case scenario: you'll be 21-23 with a fancy piece of paper, the false impression that you "get it," and not much else. (To be fair, I met my best friends in college—which is now a huge pain in the ass since everyone's scattered across the country—and the majority of my favorite memories are from that time. But after meeting those people my freshman year, I could have dropped out, done enough design work to cover food, gas, and rent in Pacific Beach—I went to school in San Diego–and had largely the same experience.)

peterwwillis 15y ago

There's a lot more positive benefit to staying in school than dropping out. For one thing, making money is something you'll do for the rest of your life (unless you're the kind of fiscally-responsible freak that can save enough to retire by 30). You have all the time in the world to start a company or join one. But right now, while you're young and have the time and resources available, you're at the best possible position to acquire the experiences and knowledge you'll need for the rest of your life. Yes there's debt; you'll pay it off. Yes it's tiring; you'll get used to it. Is it easy to drop out? Yes. Can you make money (assuming you're smart enough and have learned enough to get a job now)? Yes. Does it make sense to cripple yourself for the future just to get a couple years ahead of your peers? Hell no. Do whatever you have to do to finish school and try hard to enjoy yourself while you're there. Life isn't going anywhere that you need to drop out to get there.

danielrhodes 15y ago

"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems." Jacques appears to have a very shallow knowledge into the value of liberal arts. It has nothing to do with a marketable skill (if you want that, go to a vocational school), and everything to do with refining the quality if your thought and mind.

jlcx 15y ago
This is a very common argument, and it may have some merit. In the current economic situation, however, with high and increasing college costs, it is probably advisable to find a less expensive way to obtain the benefits of a liberal arts education.
wanorris 15y ago
I have a Philosophy degree, and there was definitely an opportunity cost associated with getting it. If my goal were to optimize my life in terms of income generation, it would have been a mistake. Happily, that hasn't been my goal in life, and I wouldn't trade my philosophy degree in for the world. There turned out to be plenty of time to go back to school and learn the technical skills I needed after I figured out that programming was what I wanted to do with my life. Having said that, I would be somewhat reluctant to counsel anyone to take a career-path-agnostic approach to college in the current climate. Times are tough, decent jobs for people without demonstrable technical skills are scarce, and college is even more breathtakingly expensive than it was 20 years ago.
philwelch 15y ago
As far as I can determine, a university education in the liberal arts does little to nothing to refine the quality of one's thought and mind. Someone intelligent, talented, and motivated enough to gain anything from a liberal arts education would undoubtedly achieve most of that on their own for the proverbial $1.50 in late fees at the local library. And someone who isn't will gain nothing but a now useless credential. Most 18 year olds would gain more perspective from two years in the Peace Corps or military than from a liberal arts education.

amandalim89 15y ago

Peter Thiel doesn't seem to think dropping out is such a bad idea. He set up The Thiel Fellowship to give 20 students Under 20 $100,000 to get their business ideas off the ground and quit school. http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k-to-drop-out-of-college/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k...

0x12 15y ago
That's a common misconception about the Thiel foundation. Their main point is that they think that going into a multi-year debt in order to get an education is a losing proposition for many people and that because of that you might be better of dropping out. The 20 under 20 program is for exceptional people, see #5 in the linked article.
- amandalim89 15y ago
  No doubt Peter Thiel means well. Thiel Foundation is a non-profit organization. Today it announced Breakout Labs which aims to fund very nascent research proposals — opportunities that are too early stage or radical to attract dollars from VCs or government grants.

TDL 15y ago

Much has been said about whether or not to drop out of school (or whether to go college at all.) How about those w/ limited technical skills going back to school to pick up a CS degree? Regards, TDL

jorangreef 15y ago

Sage words.

gaoshan 15y ago

Definitely not for me. I need a good project manager AND a good business manager on hand. Learned this after some lean, depression filled, years. Once I admitted this to myself and acted accordingly my income shot up from poverty levels to middle class levels. Now that I have kids and all of the uncertainty and financial hardship that can impose, I'll take what I've got. I'll never be rich but I'll still be happy.

aik 15y ago

"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems." I could be mistaken, but I'm convinced that over 80% of people in college would not qualify. If I'm mistaken, then I am saddened even more due to the existence of so many that could put forth so little effort for something they truly wanted to do. When I attended college I would not have qualified.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

All this talk of dropping out or not reminded me of a characteristic I've come to recognize in folks with Phds. There is an assumption that if you don't have a Phd like they do its because you could not get one, not that you chose not to get one. I think some of that flings back on people who drop out of college. Work, regardless of company size, is, to put it simply, work. That sounds circular of course but really the key is that if you can't find the motivation to get you through college then where are you going to find the motivation to get you through the 'last 10%' of a project which is what takes 90% of the effort? As pg pointed out, and Jacques does too, if you're wondering if you should drop out then you shouldn't. You've got bigger problems and you need to deal with those. If on the other hand getting school stuff done is hard because your business is growing in leaps and bounds and you don't have time for both, that is a completely different story. Work can suck at times, that is why you don't see travel agents advertising "Bankok Work Vacations." But getting stuff done rocks. You have to see the goal, if only in your minds eye, to get past the stuff that is lame and irritating.

schleyfox 15y ago

I psuedo-dropped out* a week ago. I think the thing that really stuck out in my case was that all of my family and friends responded with a sincere "congratulations!" when I told them about it. * I've scraped enough credits together to collect my CS degree in May with my peers, though I do miss the english lit classes I was taking.

compman775 15y ago

"If those three conditions are not met . . ." There are four conditions there, not three.

mannicken 15y ago

I'm 20. I dropped out of high school, studied for a couple of years in community college and am taking classes and workshops at an art school right now (no accredited degree). For me this provides a solid compromise between the extremes of fascist discipline and anarchist chaos. The first extreme relies completely on papers, degrees, and the value of adderalled-up memorization of facts and focusing your life on passing the tests. Life isn't about passing tests and I didn't want to go that route. So I dropped out of high school. The second extreme is an anarchist, 'fuck the power' immature, spontaneous chaos. It disregards discipline, it ignores the beautiful life-rhythm of doing something everyday. It glorifies chaos and disorder, and ultimately for me it would probably lead to jail and homelessness. I decided to ignore that, since I realized the value of discipline and the value of education in a classroom (but not for a degree). I have very little interest in the opiatish dream of a 'start-up that will make me filthy rich' too. Hence why I avoid startups. In fact I am skeptical of everything that alludes to 'becoming filthy rich'. I am not a typical successful dropout like Bill Gates (yet) nor do I think I will be, and I'm not a stereotypical dumb lazy fry-flipping dropout (yet). As an experiment to test my discipline and knowledge, I decided to spend a year working in a full-time IT job, and I have spent exactly one year there. So yeah, I'm that other guy :) Your mileage may vary.

rick_bc 15y ago

Neither John McCarthy nor Dennis Ritchie was college dropout. Steve Job sort-of was. 2 vs 1! Don't dropout!

jacoblyles 15y ago

Let's not forget the happy medium: going on leave. Stanford lets students take 3 quarters off and many other universities offer a similar program. A few months may be enough time to decide if your side business is viable.