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Why Companies Founded By College Dropouts Rarely Hire College Dropouts
- nickpinkston 13y agoHaha, because people who are good at obeying school are good at obeying you ;-) Seriously though, is this really that surprising? Getting shit done includes bring able to finish what you start, I'd hire anyone with the portfolio proof of execution, and a degree can be evidence of this.
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- criley2 13y agoSchool teaches a valuable skill: can you sit your ass down consistently, day after day, week after week, year after year and become proficient in subject matters you don't find remotely interesting at first? People who are too inconsistent to attend class, or too undisciplined to learn a subject they dislike will probably suffer in many jobs, as if everyone did a job they loved, most work would never get done.
- wwweston 13y agoI'm struggling to think of a subject I didn't find remotely interesting. There were a handful of teachers whose presentation I found unengaging, but those were relatively few and my biggest problem with finishing school was narrowing my field of interests enough to choose a major and complete it.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago"can you sit your ass down consistently, day after day, week after week, year after year and become proficient in subject matters you don't find remotely interesting at first" No. May I now return to programming which I love?
- xfax 13y agoBecause hiring is hard (and a time suck) and a degree from a good college happens to be a pretty good filter for whatever attribute makes a decent employee?
- headShrinker 13y agoI was alway fond of googles attempt to thin the heard { the first 10-digit prime in consecutive digits of e }.com Someday I hope to use something like that for my startup.
- cschmidt 13y agoThis is one of those puzzles that just begs you to use Mathematica: In[20]:= Select[Map[FromDigits, Partition[RealDigits[N[E, 500], 10][[1]], 10, 1]], PrimeQ][[1]] Out[20]= 7427466391
- 001sky 13y agorelated: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=160966&ixReplies=23 http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=s...
- plorkyeran 13y agoIt's certainly a filter, but is there any real evidence it's a good filter? I would guess that is, but I really don't have much to back that guess up with.
- 001sky 13y agoIts cheap/cost effective is I guess why its used. Its also a demonstrable CYA. People are incredulous that a person can FUBAR shit with an degree from XYZ.
- auctiontheory 13y agoExactly. The "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" principle.
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- JamesArgo 13y agoWe need to separate instruction from assessment, allowing an ecology of assessment companies to filter potential employees through whatever gauntlet they chose. So many start-ups are focused on instruction. What we need is evidence-based, independent and affordable assessment.
- tjic 13y agoThe author of the article calls entrepreneurs who haven't graduated from college "children". No, seriously. plonk, as we used to say on Usenet.
- rhizome 13y agoAnd, just to fill in the backtronym gap: PLONK = Person With Little Or No Knowledge Coming this weekend: "college dropouts should always hire college dropouts" answerpost.
- bdcravens 13y agoPerhaps "children" is a bit derisive, but I'd argue that someone who hasn't really accomplished anything outside of the protective cocoon of their parents' home(s) and income is less than an adult.
- nknighthb 13y agoMy mother lives in my house and survives partially off of my income. I was making more by the time I was 21 than either of my parents ever had. I'm less than an adult because I don't have a degree? What the hell is wrong with you?
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- asdfologist 13y agoDid you even read what he said? There's no overlap between your scenario and "someone who hasn't really accomplished anything outside of the protective cocoon of their parents' home(s) and income".
- nknighthb 13y agoDid you even read the thread? He's either equating "hasn't really accomplished anything" with not having a degree, or he's utterly off-topic. And if someone actually does have wealthy parents who would always help if needed, does that mean they'll always be "less than adults"? Every possible way of reading the comment is so patronizing and elitist I can't believe you would seek to defend it.
- mtct 13y agoOk, in the hall of fame everyone have a college degree. But for the millions of anonymous workers, college is really convenient?
- austenallred 13y agoI say this with some trepidation, but I wouldn't hire myself. Every company I've ever worked for has wanted me to perform some specific task really well, and I have ended up working with the CEO to change things around, been offered an equity position, or have been fired. It's not that I'm against doing the work that I'm hired for, I just really suck at it. I try to shake things up - for better or for worse. The one time it was at a big company with 150+ employees that was definitely "for worse" - I didn't realize how strong politics and hierarchy could be and was fired pretty quickly for not doing my job and trying to do someone else's.
- MartinCron 13y agoThere are places out there that need exactly what you have to bring. You'll find one eventually.
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- roflzx 13y ago>read first sentence >two errors >close
- jpwright 13y agoYou might be interested in knowing that your comment consists only of sentence fragments, and that you are on Hacker News and not 4chan.
- tokenadult 13y agoDo we even know that this is a true statement about the facts of the world? Or is this something that the author just makes up, based on anecdotes he knows? (We have already had this same article submitted here before, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6368032 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6368032 from another online source, by the way.) There are no reliable statistics here about how various companies hire, and indeed no reliable classification of companies into those founded by college dropouts (what if a company has more than one founder?) and those that are not. If we are just slinging personal opinions around here, and that is the most the author of the article kindly submitted here is doing, then let me express the opinion that RESEARCH about what hiring procedures work best for companies might be a good thing for companies to look at. The research does not show that requiring degrees for jobs does much to guarantee hiring better workers. I have summarized the research in a well liked Hacker News comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923 that I am currently updating for posting on my personal website. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test. (Links and citations to sources available at the earlier HN posting linked above.)
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoMy startup was acquired by Dell. Without a college degree you couldn't get promoted. That was a decade ago though.
- smtddr 13y agoSame thing at at&t. Glass ceilings for those without degrees; at least in 2001.
- RKoutnik 13y agoIt's odd that this article (in it's various incarnations) manages to miss one of the more successful Theil startups: Zaption [0]. (Disclaimer: I work for Charlie). We've just launched, have had great success with funding, and are already on our way to profitability. As a bonus, we're helping teachers with tools to better reach kids, instead of the "simplistic SV startups" the author moans about. [0] http://zaption.com http://zaption.com
- untilHellbanned 13y agoSearching this thread, nobody is mentioning the total beatdown of Peter Thiel. Say what you will about the importance of college but the growing evidence on the Thiel Fellowship doesn't seem promising.
- bdcravens 13y agoThis is one of those topics where the topic of college being required creates such emotional noise that they completely miss the point. As I said in another comment, you can't manufacture success. All Thiel is doing is cargo-culting around dropping out of college.
- untilHellbanned 13y agoyeah, hits too close to home for the hacker news demographic,
- brianmcconnell 13y agoOn a related note, how's seasteading working out?
- bdcravens 13y agoBigger issue isn't college vs. no college. It's the fallacy that you can artificially generate success via specialized incubator. Everyone loves to point to Jobs and Gates-like examples. Had Steve Jobs been in a Thiel-like program, would he have created Apple, or caffeine spray?
- nulagrithom 13y agoI thought this article would actually be about the reason why companies founded by college dropouts don't hire other college dropouts. Seems "Why Thiel's idea sucked" would be a better title.
- BWStearns 13y agoThis is a repost of another article that was here yesterday or the day before, just on LinkedIn instead of a blog and with a new title.
- ritchiea 13y agoThe problem with comparing the Thiel Fellowship recipients with Zuckerberg or even with YC & TechStars startups is that the fellows are selected for being talented and having ambitious ideas, whereas the startups that make it into accelerators tend to already have a product (I know at one point this was not necessarily the case, but today first time entrepreneurs need to have a product to get funded and/or make it into an accelerator not just an idea).
- auctiontheory 13y agoThe verdict on the Thiel Fellows will be written in fifty years; it does not hinge on the success or failure of their first venture. Even if they return to finish their Bachelors, there's a strong case that Thiel Fellows will get much more out of college with the entrepreneurial experience under their belt. I certainly would have.
- capkutay 13y agoThey don't hire dropouts because they can't afford any more useless people on their staff other than themselves.
- star0zero 13y ago"And if they do become entrepreneurs, the companies they start will be far less successful than those started by degree holders." - suggests a zero-sum scenario which, by my anecdote back of the napkin assessment (which is all that seems to be required to be of merit), is ridiculous, pure and simple.
- bdcravens 13y agoThe great example of Jobs and Gates are poor examples to follow. Gates only dropped out once he was getting some traction on this business ventures. Jobs dropped in on creative classes even after he left college, and he credited these classes with much of what made it into the Mac years later. He also made many of his business contacts and early business while he was an employee at Atari. Neither one quit college and started a business with no business plan or income.