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What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real

by jtdaugh 14y ago

What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real world experience.

chriwend 14y ago
That happened to me buy my girlfriend wouldn't let me leave.
rayiner 14y ago
I had this opportunity about 10 years ago. I passed, and in retrospect I'm incredibly glad I did. Couple of years after graduation, I realized I had interests beyond software engineering, and while the lack of a bachelors can play in Silicon Valley, it doesn't pretty much anywhere else. Also, if one day you decide to go into the management route and want an MBA, the lack of a bachelors is going to be a deal breaker.
lsc 14y ago
Meh, maybe it's because I came of age during the first bubble... but I see life as a series of opportunities that open and close; they open and close in part based on your own attributes (e.g. you need to meet the minimum qualifications for the job, and you need to apply or otherwise make yourself available,) but also based on time, chance, and other things you don't control. I got out of high school and got my first programmer/sysadmin job in '97 or so. (I had a few years of cable monkey and hardware/windows work in high school.) - But that was almost entirely timing; The minimum requirements in '97 were really low, due to the dot-com bubble; Pure luck, really. But then I was able to learn enough that I made the cut when the minimum requirements went way up after the crash. (There is no way I would have made that cut right out of highschool.) If I had gone to college... well, it was really, really hard to find a job in my field with no experience, four years after '97. Maybe I would have learned enough in school to make the cut, maybe not. Maybe I would have been able to convince an employer that I was that good without paid work experience, maybe not[1]. Also, if someone else is paying for school? that's a big opportunity there, too, and it's possible that opportunity might not be there in a few years. (Is it a bigger opportunity than a job in the field you want? I don't know.) But that's how I'd look at it. [1] As a sidenote... if you are badass enough to go to school and have a job/internship in your field at the same time? that's best of all. Many of the best people I know did that. It's really difficult to pull off, though. I don't think I have what it takes to pull that off, not without stretching the school over 8+ years.
brandonhsiao 14y ago
I'm not targeting you specifically, but in general, I see a lot of people making the mistake of using their own experiences as general rules. Mark Zuckerberg's success neither supports nor challenges the value of the university. He's a unique person with his own set of circumstances for whom dropping out was a better option. It means neither that everyone with a startup idea should drop out, nor that they shouldn't.

by jtdaugh 14y ago

What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real world experience.

chriwend 14y ago

That happened to me buy my girlfriend wouldn't let me leave.

rayiner 14y ago

I had this opportunity about 10 years ago. I passed, and in retrospect I'm incredibly glad I did. Couple of years after graduation, I realized I had interests beyond software engineering, and while the lack of a bachelors can play in Silicon Valley, it doesn't pretty much anywhere else. Also, if one day you decide to go into the management route and want an MBA, the lack of a bachelors is going to be a deal breaker.

lsc 14y ago

Meh, maybe it's because I came of age during the first bubble... but I see life as a series of opportunities that open and close; they open and close in part based on your own attributes (e.g. you need to meet the minimum qualifications for the job, and you need to apply or otherwise make yourself available,) but also based on time, chance, and other things you don't control. I got out of high school and got my first programmer/sysadmin job in '97 or so. (I had a few years of cable monkey and hardware/windows work in high school.) - But that was almost entirely timing; The minimum requirements in '97 were really low, due to the dot-com bubble; Pure luck, really. But then I was able to learn enough that I made the cut when the minimum requirements went way up after the crash. (There is no way I would have made that cut right out of highschool.) If I had gone to college... well, it was really, really hard to find a job in my field with no experience, four years after '97. Maybe I would have learned enough in school to make the cut, maybe not. Maybe I would have been able to convince an employer that I was that good without paid work experience, maybe not[1]. Also, if someone else is paying for school? that's a big opportunity there, too, and it's possible that opportunity might not be there in a few years. (Is it a bigger opportunity than a job in the field you want? I don't know.) But that's how I'd look at it. [1] As a sidenote... if you are badass enough to go to school and have a job/internship in your field at the same time? that's best of all. Many of the best people I know did that. It's really difficult to pull off, though. I don't think I have what it takes to pull that off, not without stretching the school over 8+ years.

brandonhsiao 14y ago

I'm not targeting you specifically, but in general, I see a lot of people making the mistake of using their own experiences as general rules. Mark Zuckerberg's success neither supports nor challenges the value of the university. He's a unique person with his own set of circumstances for whom dropping out was a better option. It means neither that everyone with a startup idea should drop out, nor that they shouldn't.