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What did I learn from this article? I learned that a college junior at the University of Michigan will stop talking to me, and won't be impressed with my resume

by freyr 14y ago

What did I learn from this article? I learned that a college junior at the University of Michigan will stop talking to me, and won't be impressed with my resume, if I take a summer internship. Great. Obviously, a student could learn a lot working on a personal project over a summer. That could be a great way to go. On the other hand, the initial exposure to the operations of a successful company bombards an intern with valuable information. He or she will discover that some things function extremely well and some things don't quite make sense, learn basic business etiquette, learn how things scale, etc. All of this information can be extremely valuable when you're ready to grow your own company. I'm sick posts telling young people to "DO this, NOT that, or ELSE!" What works for you might not work for someone else. There isn't one path to success. This an extremely limiting view of the world.

obviouslygreen 14y ago
Not only is it extremely limiting, there are so many explicit assumptions and so little reasoning in this article, it's barely even anecdotal. If it were, that's still one person's experience/opinion; as someone else predictably pointed out in this thread, Mark Zuckerberg. No, you're not him, and even if you were it wouldn't matter, because if he'd come along and someone had popularized an FB-like product first, chances are he'd still be just as obscure as most of us here. Further: I’ve talked to more CS majors who say, “I want to be an entrepreneur” than I care to share... Then they may be in the wrong program, unless they mean "I want to be a YC alum" or "I want to be a technical co-founder." An "entrepreneur" is someone who deals in business, not just a programmer who doesn't work for anyone else. If that's their goal, they shouldn't be in CS. In the reasonably likely case they do want to be something more specific and technical, hopefully they've thought about it further before committing to such a statement.

by freyr 14y ago

obviouslygreen 14y ago

Not only is it extremely limiting, there are so many explicit assumptions and so little reasoning in this article, it's barely even anecdotal. If it were, that's still one person's experience/opinion; as someone else predictably pointed out in this thread, Mark Zuckerberg. No, you're not him, and even if you were it wouldn't matter, because if he'd come along and someone had popularized an FB-like product first, chances are he'd still be just as obscure as most of us here. Further: I’ve talked to more CS majors who say, “I want to be an entrepreneur” than I care to share... Then they may be in the wrong program, unless they mean "I want to be a YC alum" or "I want to be a technical co-founder." An "entrepreneur" is someone who deals in business, not just a programmer who doesn't work for anyone else. If that's their goal, they shouldn't be in CS. In the reasonably likely case they do want to be something more specific and technical, hopefully they've thought about it further before committing to such a statement.