6 ms·

Hopefully this is related: can anyone give some advice or input on dropping out to work in silicon valley in general? I'm not close to done (first semester fres

by Jonanin 14y ago

Hopefully this is related: can anyone give some advice or input on dropping out to work in silicon valley in general? I'm not close to done (first semester freshman), but I have an internship at a certain large SV company this summer. If you were in my position, and that company offered a job, would you take it?

breckenedge 14y ago
Not to discourage you, but your education will likely benefit you far longer than most SV companies will be around. The benefits of education also brought, in my life, career choices that would not have been available without it. Choice is liberating. Who knows though, the world does seem to be changing.
- c_t_montgomery 14y ago
  I agree, but I think it's fair to say that education definitely exceeds the classroom in our fast-paced industry. I learned a lot during my 2.5 years in college, but very little of it, IMO, was related to classroom or homework-based criteria. It was almost all side projects.
- randomdata 14y ago
  > Choice is liberating. I find it to be overwhelming. I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get comfortable in your six figure job that you love and taking the risk on something new is a huge decision. Like, "should you divorce your wife to date the interesting new girl you met?" kind of huge. I did not have the opportunity to obtain a formal post-secondary education though, so maybe that is something you learn to manage in that process.
  - jarek 14y ago
    > I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get comfortable in your six figure job that you love One percent (of developers) problems.
    - randomdata 14y ago
      25% of the North American population are college educated. Based on the previous poster, I would assume at least 25% of the population have to deal with it. In fact, they probably have it worse given the more opportunities than I have access to.
c_t_montgomery 14y ago
I recently (2 months ago) dropped out to join Pinterest full-time, and I am extremely happy with my decision. I was in a similar situation as you, except the opportunity came to me as a sophomore, instead of a freshmen. Let me preface by stating that I think college is an extremely invaluable resource to grow up and learn outside of the classroom. I did, and love it. If I were you, assuming you do get an offer, I'd register it as a co-op with your college. I did that last year with Lift (http://lift.do http://lift.do), and think it was the best way to go about the situation. Here's why: it's still a full-time job, you're still technically a student, and you don't pay any tuition. If you like it, great — stay out there. If not, no harm-no foul, and go back to school. Happy to chat over email with you, if you'd like. Look in my profile for contact info. Good luck!
jacktoole1 14y ago
I could go on about my opinion on this for a while, but to keep it short [edit, ok, maybe I failed at "short"]: - If you like programming/CS, then studying CS in college can be fun (once you figure out if you're more into programming or theory you can take more systems or theory courses as appropriate). - Having a degree will never harm your chances at a company, and can be seen as a legitimizing factor at many [usually larger] companies. If things ever go south, getting a job at a bigger company will be much easier. - You learn a lot in a short time at university. A lot of this will be the type of things often asked in technical interviews, so it will generally make getting a job in the future easier (the CS interview process can be a little biased toward college type questions rather than industry type questions. Whether the system is broken is another topic). You will learn things in industry too, but if you stay in college you'll still learn them, just later. If you drop out, you might always wonder what topics you're missing out on. - I don't feel like you're delaying your life by attending university, as that's generally what people expect you to do with the four years after high school, IMO. As to how useful university has been, I found it very useful. But university, like many things, is what you make of it. It can be useless or very useful or somewhere in-between depending on what you do while there (what classes you take, what projects you work on in your spare time, possibly what clubs you find a fit in). I've technically been in that situation, and my manager at the time encouraged me to finish my degree. But take this with a grain of salt; I would have finished my degree regardless of what anybody said at that point. You have a better idea than anyone else of what's best for you, and you should make this decision, if it comes up, at the end of your internship rather than now. But I generally encourage people in CS to get their degree. If you have any questions related to that, I'd be happy to answer them.
jmathai 14y ago
The real question is, "are you someone who will start a business no matter what?". If so, then I'd say dropping out early is something to consider. But do so knowing the risks associated with it. Any business you start will most likely fail. And many companies will require that you have a degree to get a job^. If you have a chance to move to SV then do it. There's a lot of negative aspects (group think, etc) but the positives drastically outweigh them. You'll have the opportunity to surround yourself with people who think big and take big chances...the type of people who are great at starting businesses. You won't find it anywhere else. If not, then stay in college. A degree gets you a good amount of choice that you'd lose if you opt not to get one. But those choices are always when working for someone else. If that's something you can do (99% of the population) then the degree will go a long way. I'm 34, now living in SV. Dropped out in my 3rd year to take a contracting gig at GM in the late 90s. If I knew better I would have came out to SV. Instead I moved back to Cincinnati and did a startup for 3 years before I was married or had kids. Now I'm on my second startup (normally spend 3 years at a "real" company between startups) but this time I have a wife who stays home and I have 2 kids. The lack of degree has not yet had a negative impact on me. But I don't know if that will continue. ^ I've not yet finished college and I never have trouble finding work between starting up. YMMV
evmar 14y ago
My uncle told me: you're going to be working for the rest of your life -- five days a week, with minor breaks for vacations. Enjoy school while it lasts, make the most of it; there's no rush to get into work because there's no getting out. (Yes, some people end up rich or with atypical work schedules that make the above categorization not true, and others roll the startup dice and have a great time at that too, but the vast majority of people, including many intelligent, interesting, and otherwise nontraditional people, fall into the above pattern.) Ten years from now nobody's gonna care whether you've been in the industry for five years or eight, but some will care about your degree, and much more importantly you will care whether you took the initiative to learn something interesting (not about computers!).
- tunmisea 14y ago
  You see, the thing with this kind of advice that your uncle kindly gave to you is that this only settles into the mind of people who have the mentality that they can only really enjoy life at school/college before being locked in a confined work cell. I dropped out of college a few months ago & I'm focusing on self educating myself on subjects that I'm particularly interested in, investment, accounting, web design, I'm working on a few great ideas & I have no intentions of working five days a week with minor breaks for vacations in the future because I am currently working 7 days a week with no vacations in order to not only live a life that most people only dream of, but also to make a real impact in the world within a few years (I'm 19). I guess it's all opinion, but assuming that the process of enjoying life at school then going into work for the rest of your life to suffer is the standard among 'the vast majority of people' is just non-existent to me. I consider myself to be a normal person who is just damn willing to work hard for what he believes in, and fortunately at this time in my life, I have a concrete vision of what I believe in. If you love what you do, then your work days are just as fun and fulfilling as your vacation days, and believe me, I intend to do what I love. (Btw I hope I don't come across as arrogant or rude, I respect your comment and I'm just offering my opinion.)
  - evmar 14y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to read and think about my comment. I myself didn't take my uncle's advice seriously at the time, which is all the more reason I can still remember it now (over a decade later). To clarify it slightly: I enjoy my work, perhaps even more than I did school, but when I think back to meaningful events in my life the months I worked are a blur around the memorable parts. If there's any interesting life lesson I've learned in my few years it's this: just because you're different from the people immediately around you (due to intelligence, drive, etc.) it doesn't mean your broad needs in life (e.g. human companionship, time to unwind) are going to be significantly different than the billions of humans that came before you. That's not dooming you to mediocrity, that's just stats -- that's the intelligent read of the data we have. But despite a million cliche stories of the powerful magnate whose only life regret is that they had spent more time with their children (even Steve Jobs, perhaps: http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980520498 http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28... ), it may just be a lesson you can only learn from experience.
pg 14y ago
No!
- Jonanin 14y ago
  Care to elaborate? :) Thanks everyone for the replies. My logic is: I learned everything I know about programming on my own (specifically, almost exclusively from the internet), and I am dying to get to SV, get some industry experience, and hopefully soon start my own company (me and my brother hope to eventually apply to YC together, he's got big ideas too). I spend my spare time working on those "undergraduate hacker projects" pg mentions, but I would be regardless (possibly more so if I wasn't in college) I'm loading up on CS theory classes this semester in and the next semester, because I do appreciate the importance of them, so if I do drop out I'll have that mostly covered. I really feel like 3 more years of mostly fulfilling degree requirements will only delay me, I'm not learning anything from the applied CS courses I take. The internship is at Facebook, if that matters.
  - pg 14y ago
    At a good college you learn as much from the other students as from your classes, and not only about CS. It's also easier to work on side projects in college. You should not leave college as early as this unless (a) you start something so successful that it pulls you out, or (b) you are one of the very rare people who are temperamentally unsuited to it. Unless your college is awful, your longing for SV is a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. SV is full of people who wish they were back in college.
    - charleshaanel 14y ago
      I wish this could be sent to a legion of career planning and placement offices across universities in the US (and Europe too, for that matter). It reminds of an old Einstein saying (paraphrase), "education is what you have when you forget everything you learned in school".
  - TheMakeA 14y ago
    Could you transfer to a college in Silicon Valley instead?
rads 14y ago
I never felt like I was doing my best at college. After my first internship at a large software company, I didn't understand why people had told me to stay in school for as long as I could. I actually wanted to start working! So, a year before graduating, I dropped out and moved from Wisconsin to California. I worried at first that my lack of a degree would make it hard for me to find a job in the Bay Area, but the market is incredible right now. If you're good enough, it doesn't matter if you have a degree. I managed to find a great job with people I have fun working with. Sometimes I forget I'm getting paid for it. Reader, your mileage may vary. College is great, but it's not for everyone. I got a lot out of my three years (especially studying abroad -- if you can afford it, do it), but I knew I was ready for something else. The other path turned out great for me.
- Jonanin 14y ago
  Wisconsin, eh? Me too. UW-Madison?
nolastan 14y ago
My advice: make a list of all the reasons to stay in school. Go through each reason and determine if it's valid. For me, after doing this, dropping out was an easy decision and I have no regrets. I'm more engaged and challenged each day at TaskRabbit than I ever was in class. However, ensure you'll have no regrets about your college experience. I achieved my goals, tried new things, and got what I wanted out of college - it just didn't take me 4 years.

by Jonanin 14y ago

breckenedge 14y ago

Not to discourage you, but your education will likely benefit you far longer than most SV companies will be around. The benefits of education also brought, in my life, career choices that would not have been available without it. Choice is liberating. Who knows though, the world does seem to be changing.

c_t_montgomery 14y ago
I agree, but I think it's fair to say that education definitely exceeds the classroom in our fast-paced industry. I learned a lot during my 2.5 years in college, but very little of it, IMO, was related to classroom or homework-based criteria. It was almost all side projects.
randomdata 14y ago
> Choice is liberating. I find it to be overwhelming. I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get comfortable in your six figure job that you love and taking the risk on something new is a huge decision. Like, "should you divorce your wife to date the interesting new girl you met?" kind of huge. I did not have the opportunity to obtain a formal post-secondary education though, so maybe that is something you learn to manage in that process.
- jarek 14y ago
  > I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get comfortable in your six figure job that you love One percent (of developers) problems.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    25% of the North American population are college educated. Based on the previous poster, I would assume at least 25% of the population have to deal with it. In fact, they probably have it worse given the more opportunities than I have access to.

c_t_montgomery 14y ago

I recently (2 months ago) dropped out to join Pinterest full-time, and I am extremely happy with my decision. I was in a similar situation as you, except the opportunity came to me as a sophomore, instead of a freshmen. Let me preface by stating that I think college is an extremely invaluable resource to grow up and learn outside of the classroom. I did, and love it. If I were you, assuming you do get an offer, I'd register it as a co-op with your college. I did that last year with Lift (http://lift.do http://lift.do), and think it was the best way to go about the situation. Here's why: it's still a full-time job, you're still technically a student, and you don't pay any tuition. If you like it, great — stay out there. If not, no harm-no foul, and go back to school. Happy to chat over email with you, if you'd like. Look in my profile for contact info. Good luck!

jacktoole1 14y ago

I could go on about my opinion on this for a while, but to keep it short [edit, ok, maybe I failed at "short"]: - If you like programming/CS, then studying CS in college can be fun (once you figure out if you're more into programming or theory you can take more systems or theory courses as appropriate). - Having a degree will never harm your chances at a company, and can be seen as a legitimizing factor at many [usually larger] companies. If things ever go south, getting a job at a bigger company will be much easier. - You learn a lot in a short time at university. A lot of this will be the type of things often asked in technical interviews, so it will generally make getting a job in the future easier (the CS interview process can be a little biased toward college type questions rather than industry type questions. Whether the system is broken is another topic). You will learn things in industry too, but if you stay in college you'll still learn them, just later. If you drop out, you might always wonder what topics you're missing out on. - I don't feel like you're delaying your life by attending university, as that's generally what people expect you to do with the four years after high school, IMO. As to how useful university has been, I found it very useful. But university, like many things, is what you make of it. It can be useless or very useful or somewhere in-between depending on what you do while there (what classes you take, what projects you work on in your spare time, possibly what clubs you find a fit in). I've technically been in that situation, and my manager at the time encouraged me to finish my degree. But take this with a grain of salt; I would have finished my degree regardless of what anybody said at that point. You have a better idea than anyone else of what's best for you, and you should make this decision, if it comes up, at the end of your internship rather than now. But I generally encourage people in CS to get their degree. If you have any questions related to that, I'd be happy to answer them.

jmathai 14y ago

The real question is, "are you someone who will start a business no matter what?". If so, then I'd say dropping out early is something to consider. But do so knowing the risks associated with it. Any business you start will most likely fail. And many companies will require that you have a degree to get a job^. If you have a chance to move to SV then do it. There's a lot of negative aspects (group think, etc) but the positives drastically outweigh them. You'll have the opportunity to surround yourself with people who think big and take big chances...the type of people who are great at starting businesses. You won't find it anywhere else. If not, then stay in college. A degree gets you a good amount of choice that you'd lose if you opt not to get one. But those choices are always when working for someone else. If that's something you can do (99% of the population) then the degree will go a long way. I'm 34, now living in SV. Dropped out in my 3rd year to take a contracting gig at GM in the late 90s. If I knew better I would have came out to SV. Instead I moved back to Cincinnati and did a startup for 3 years before I was married or had kids. Now I'm on my second startup (normally spend 3 years at a "real" company between startups) but this time I have a wife who stays home and I have 2 kids. The lack of degree has not yet had a negative impact on me. But I don't know if that will continue. ^ I've not yet finished college and I never have trouble finding work between starting up. YMMV

evmar 14y ago

My uncle told me: you're going to be working for the rest of your life -- five days a week, with minor breaks for vacations. Enjoy school while it lasts, make the most of it; there's no rush to get into work because there's no getting out. (Yes, some people end up rich or with atypical work schedules that make the above categorization not true, and others roll the startup dice and have a great time at that too, but the vast majority of people, including many intelligent, interesting, and otherwise nontraditional people, fall into the above pattern.) Ten years from now nobody's gonna care whether you've been in the industry for five years or eight, but some will care about your degree, and much more importantly you will care whether you took the initiative to learn something interesting (not about computers!).

tunmisea 14y ago
You see, the thing with this kind of advice that your uncle kindly gave to you is that this only settles into the mind of people who have the mentality that they can only really enjoy life at school/college before being locked in a confined work cell. I dropped out of college a few months ago & I'm focusing on self educating myself on subjects that I'm particularly interested in, investment, accounting, web design, I'm working on a few great ideas & I have no intentions of working five days a week with minor breaks for vacations in the future because I am currently working 7 days a week with no vacations in order to not only live a life that most people only dream of, but also to make a real impact in the world within a few years (I'm 19). I guess it's all opinion, but assuming that the process of enjoying life at school then going into work for the rest of your life to suffer is the standard among 'the vast majority of people' is just non-existent to me. I consider myself to be a normal person who is just damn willing to work hard for what he believes in, and fortunately at this time in my life, I have a concrete vision of what I believe in. If you love what you do, then your work days are just as fun and fulfilling as your vacation days, and believe me, I intend to do what I love. (Btw I hope I don't come across as arrogant or rude, I respect your comment and I'm just offering my opinion.)
- evmar 14y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to read and think about my comment. I myself didn't take my uncle's advice seriously at the time, which is all the more reason I can still remember it now (over a decade later). To clarify it slightly: I enjoy my work, perhaps even more than I did school, but when I think back to meaningful events in my life the months I worked are a blur around the memorable parts. If there's any interesting life lesson I've learned in my few years it's this: just because you're different from the people immediately around you (due to intelligence, drive, etc.) it doesn't mean your broad needs in life (e.g. human companionship, time to unwind) are going to be significantly different than the billions of humans that came before you. That's not dooming you to mediocrity, that's just stats -- that's the intelligent read of the data we have. But despite a million cliche stories of the powerful magnate whose only life regret is that they had spent more time with their children (even Steve Jobs, perhaps: http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980520498 http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28... ), it may just be a lesson you can only learn from experience.

pg 14y ago

No!

Jonanin 14y ago
Care to elaborate? :) Thanks everyone for the replies. My logic is: I learned everything I know about programming on my own (specifically, almost exclusively from the internet), and I am dying to get to SV, get some industry experience, and hopefully soon start my own company (me and my brother hope to eventually apply to YC together, he's got big ideas too). I spend my spare time working on those "undergraduate hacker projects" pg mentions, but I would be regardless (possibly more so if I wasn't in college) I'm loading up on CS theory classes this semester in and the next semester, because I do appreciate the importance of them, so if I do drop out I'll have that mostly covered. I really feel like 3 more years of mostly fulfilling degree requirements will only delay me, I'm not learning anything from the applied CS courses I take. The internship is at Facebook, if that matters.
- pg 14y ago
  At a good college you learn as much from the other students as from your classes, and not only about CS. It's also easier to work on side projects in college. You should not leave college as early as this unless (a) you start something so successful that it pulls you out, or (b) you are one of the very rare people who are temperamentally unsuited to it. Unless your college is awful, your longing for SV is a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. SV is full of people who wish they were back in college.
  - charleshaanel 14y ago
    I wish this could be sent to a legion of career planning and placement offices across universities in the US (and Europe too, for that matter). It reminds of an old Einstein saying (paraphrase), "education is what you have when you forget everything you learned in school".
- TheMakeA 14y ago
  Could you transfer to a college in Silicon Valley instead?

rads 14y ago

I never felt like I was doing my best at college. After my first internship at a large software company, I didn't understand why people had told me to stay in school for as long as I could. I actually wanted to start working! So, a year before graduating, I dropped out and moved from Wisconsin to California. I worried at first that my lack of a degree would make it hard for me to find a job in the Bay Area, but the market is incredible right now. If you're good enough, it doesn't matter if you have a degree. I managed to find a great job with people I have fun working with. Sometimes I forget I'm getting paid for it. Reader, your mileage may vary. College is great, but it's not for everyone. I got a lot out of my three years (especially studying abroad -- if you can afford it, do it), but I knew I was ready for something else. The other path turned out great for me.

Jonanin 14y ago
Wisconsin, eh? Me too. UW-Madison?

nolastan 14y ago

My advice: make a list of all the reasons to stay in school. Go through each reason and determine if it's valid. For me, after doing this, dropping out was an easy decision and I have no regrets. I'm more engaged and challenged each day at TaskRabbit than I ever was in class. However, ensure you'll have no regrets about your college experience. I achieved my goals, tried new things, and got what I wanted out of college - it just didn't take me 4 years.