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I think there are upsides and downsides to starting young. On the one hand, you don't have much to lose, so failure is softer. On the other hand, you're missi
by jrockway 2y ago
I think there are upsides and downsides to starting young. On the one hand, you don't have much to lose, so failure is softer. On the other hand, you're missing some experience that would be useful.
I worked for a startup whose founder was a super young guy who had never had a job before being CEO. He was missing experiences like "what do I hate when my boss does" and so needed to repeat all the same mistakes. This resulted in things like... postmortem reviews with action items like "we should dock people's pay if installs are done incorrectly" instead of "we should ensure that the install crews have the tools they need to do the install correctly". (That action item was one of the few battles there that I won. We gave every installer a toolbox containing the tools to do the job. This improved the success of installs greatly. But who needs a meeting to come up with an "idea" like this?)
- duxup 2y agoAt least if young you got the energy, time, usually fewer family obligations, maybe even naive enough to do something others won't (as a good thing) and ... you know if that's the lifestyle you want. But I hear you starting at zero life experience, that is bad. I would find it pretty painful to work at a start up and have to talk to the founder "bro let's talk about the basics of picking your battles" and do it ... well.
- DonnyV 2y agoI think having an entrepreneur's mindset and starting young can work. But you will end up like every billionaire we know. Elon, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. They all started young as CEOs and didn't think twice about stepping on everyone and anyone around them to get the top. Now after years of this you have people that are very powerful and have no idea how the common person lives or how it feels like to work for someone.