4 ms·

Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?

by vph 14y ago

veyron 14y ago
Thiel wouldn't let his kids skip college unless they had a blockbuster idea. I thought there was an article recently which showed one of his job offers actually required a college degree.
- qxcv 14y ago
  As pointed out above, most of the jobs advertised by Thiel's startup require a college education: http://palantir.com/careers/positions http://palantir.com/careers/positions Edit: their about page says "We were founded in 2004 by a handful of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists." Sounds like Thiel doesn't like the taste of dogfood.
  - veyron 14y ago
    Ah http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 That was posted an hour after my post :)
kiba 14y ago
I read the wikipedia biography of Peter Thiel several time, and nothing indicates that he have children. Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring.
- zzzeek 14y ago
  > Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring. that means pretty much exactly nothing as gay couples adopt children all the time, and a wealthy individual like Thiel can also pay a surrogate mom to carry a child for him.
randomdata 14y ago
I will point out that Thiel is not completely anti-college. His position on the matter is that if you want to go to college, you should have a firm grasp of what you hope to achieve out of it, not because you are blindly following your peers or acting on advice from elders. If you do have very specific goals in mind during your stay in college, $100K isn't going to sway you away anyway. Otherwise, it is probably a blessing to realize that there are other options available to you. Too many end up going to college simply because they do not see any other options or believe it is the only path to success and that is what Thiel is against. If Thiel were to have children that decided to go to college, I am sure he would support their endeavours. It would not go against his worldview as long as they attended for the right reasons.
- planetguy 14y ago
  >If you do have very specific goals in mind during your stay in college, $100K isn't going to sway you away anyway I dunno. To a naive eighteen-year old, $100K is a lot of money, easily enough to sway them into making potentially dumb decisions. Mind you I assume Peter Thiel can't stop you from ever going to university, can he? [Can he???] So at worst you're putting it off for a few years.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    It is, at best, equivalent to a salary anyone bright enough to graduate with a college degree could make straight out of high school. Perhaps often less, as the expenses of running a business can start to pile up even more quickly than that. The money alone isn't going to promote sway any more than the compensation out of any job would. What it does gain someone, however, is the ability to work on their own ideas full time. Given that you are reading HN, I'm sure you can see how that can be appealing. If they have something amazing that they are ready to run with at that age, going to college at that juncture would have probably been a poor idea anyway. College is not about finding a job or making money, so anyone who is interested in what college really has to offer is not going to find this offer by Thiel particularity appealing to begin with. Their sights are set on something much different.

Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?

by vph 14y ago

Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?

Thiel wouldn't let his kids skip college unless they had a blockbuster idea. I thought there was an article recently which showed one of his job offers actually required a college degree.

qxcv 14y ago
As pointed out above, most of the jobs advertised by Thiel's startup require a college education: http://palantir.com/careers/positions http://palantir.com/careers/positions Edit: their about page says "We were founded in 2004 by a handful of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists." Sounds like Thiel doesn't like the taste of dogfood.
- veyron 14y ago
  Ah http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 That was posted an hour after my post :)

kiba 14y ago

I read the wikipedia biography of Peter Thiel several time, and nothing indicates that he have children. Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring.

zzzeek 14y ago
> Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring. that means pretty much exactly nothing as gay couples adopt children all the time, and a wealthy individual like Thiel can also pay a surrogate mom to carry a child for him.

randomdata 14y ago

I will point out that Thiel is not completely anti-college. His position on the matter is that if you want to go to college, you should have a firm grasp of what you hope to achieve out of it, not because you are blindly following your peers or acting on advice from elders. If you do have very specific goals in mind during your stay in college, $100K isn't going to sway you away anyway. Otherwise, it is probably a blessing to realize that there are other options available to you. Too many end up going to college simply because they do not see any other options or believe it is the only path to success and that is what Thiel is against. If Thiel were to have children that decided to go to college, I am sure he would support their endeavours. It would not go against his worldview as long as they attended for the right reasons.

planetguy 14y ago
>If you do have very specific goals in mind during your stay in college, $100K isn't going to sway you away anyway I dunno. To a naive eighteen-year old, $100K is a lot of money, easily enough to sway them into making potentially dumb decisions. Mind you I assume Peter Thiel can't stop you from ever going to university, can he? [Can he???] So at worst you're putting it off for a few years.
- randomdata 14y ago
  It is, at best, equivalent to a salary anyone bright enough to graduate with a college degree could make straight out of high school. Perhaps often less, as the expenses of running a business can start to pile up even more quickly than that. The money alone isn't going to promote sway any more than the compensation out of any job would. What it does gain someone, however, is the ability to work on their own ideas full time. Given that you are reading HN, I'm sure you can see how that can be appealing. If they have something amazing that they are ready to run with at that age, going to college at that juncture would have probably been a poor idea anyway. College is not about finding a job or making money, so anyone who is interested in what college really has to offer is not going to find this offer by Thiel particularity appealing to begin with. Their sights are set on something much different.