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Why would the legend of Facebook motivate someone to finish a degree in CS? Zuckerberg dropped out! Steve Jobs dropped out, Bill Gates dropped out, I believe S
by mechanical_fish 15y ago
Why would the legend of Facebook motivate someone to finish a degree in CS? Zuckerberg dropped out!
Steve Jobs dropped out, Bill Gates dropped out, I believe Steve Wozniak saved himself the trouble of dropping out by never going in the first place... Larry and Sergey have big-time CS degrees, but they also aren't as famous.
Let's assume (apparently falsely, according to Alexis Ohanian's anecdotes) that PG is universally famous among techie 18-year-olds. PG literally wrote important books in CS. But does PG encourage everyone who applies to YC to get their CS degree as a top priority? Methinks not. He wants you to build something. To the extent that studying engineering and math doesn't feel like building anything, it doesn't feel like a hot new SV startup.
There's a big demand for software talent, but how are teenagers supposed to grasp that getting a difficult CS degree is the best way to acquire or demonstrate that talent? Especially when we're not even very sure that's true? On the one hand, I've got a lot of Ph.D.-trained colleagues in my job (though, perhaps tellingly, none are in CS) but on the other hand several of our most valuable colleagues have degrees in music or English, and others are too young to have a degree at all.