
Why I dropped out of college to work on a startup  - benjlang
http://leostartsup.com/2012/12/why-i-dropped-out-of-college-to-work-on-a-startup/
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keiferski
Meh. I dropped out for awhile, learned a lot, went back to college, learned
some more. Dropping out should be a non-issue, something that just happens
because you ran out of time. Making arguments for it just always struck me as
apologetics.

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y4m4
HN is filled with this kind of crap these days

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seiji
It's not crap. It's someone's life. It just makes you (us) feel bad because
they appear happier than we are.

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zalzane
I would agree with you if there wasnt a dozen posts on HN each week along the
lines of "[How/Why] I [verb]'d [occupation] to [verb] [activity]"

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y4m4
Agree

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fudged71
If I had discovered HN and the lean startup methodology earlier in college I
might have done the same. But he's very fortunate to have created such a
popular service to be able to change his life direction like this so early.

In university, the faculty is very open with the fact that they are
shoehorning us into software jobs at big oil and gas companies, which is why
they don't provide resources and awards for students with innovative ideas. So
it often does feel like my university experience isn't helping me achieve the
goals that I want in life.

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dbecker
_In university, the faculty is very open with the fact that they are
shoehorning us into software jobs at big oil and gas companies_

I don't know where you went to school, but I don't think this is common at
most schools (it's the first time I've heard it suggested).

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fudged71
The oil province of Canada :|

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saosebastiao
I have mixed feelings about this. I got terrible grades in college, and
dropped out three times. The idea of ever going back makes me feel queasy. I
hated it, and I wouldn't wish it upon anybody that feels like me.

Then again, nobody took me seriously before I graduated. I always had lots to
offer, but no opportunities to offer it. Graduating gave me opportunities to
meet people who could look past my grades and still see me as an intelligent,
capable person. Those people ended up helping me to get my first "real"
job...a job I got fired from for being "too technical", but nonetheless, a job
which put an immense amount of experience on my resume in a short amount of
time. In other words, college sucked ass, but it opened so many doors that I
can't be too bitter about it.

I guess my true feelings on the matter are as follows: drop out, but make sure
you are dropping out because you have an amazing opportunity...not because you
don't like it.

Oh, and if you do drop out, never say to yourself "I don't care what anybody
thinks of my decision". You do, and you are lying to yourself. You can't
succeed anywhere without a decent subset of people trusting you. If you can
earn their trust without a degree, awesome. If you can't, you either need to
find a different subset of people, or you need to earn it the way that they
expect.

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michelleclsun
He made a good point here in eliminating unnecessary risks (for him, dropping
out of college) by retaining as much optionality for as long as he can, and at
the same time working hard at his startup. As an entrepreneur there are lots
of risks in running a startup, a lot of which are not within the founders'
control (traction, market direction, etc). Managing risk is an important part
of managing one's psychology as a founder.

Leo's story is one of humility and gratitude - I have always found them(the
Buffer team) as an inspiration not just because of their startup's traction
(which can be unpredictable) but more because of their character, endless
seeking of improvement professionally and personally, and passion in giving
back to the startup community.

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seiji
(most ignoring the post and going off on a rant)

When I read the title, I see "Why I left a culture of strict rules and
judgement to be happy and do whatever the heck I want."

It's kinda simple really. Why go to college when you can work for yourself,
get hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars to play with, and not have to
study, try, and stress out about getting The Right Answers all the time? Going
your own way removes an entire level of judgement from your life. You get to
cut ties with the voice constantly whispering "I may not be good enough." But
-- then you may never know how good you can be. It'll take you longer to
figure out you don't know what you don't know.

It almost feels like "Why I stopped training 8 hours a day to qualify for the
Olympics and instead decided to become a fisherman in Hawaii." (Sorry, my
analogy machine is on the fritz.)

Be happy, do good work, but not everything in the world can be a my-first-
crud-app (though, we haven't found a limit to my-first-crud-app success yet --
there are still tens of thousands more that can be made and generate
significant income for the owners). The most impressive things to come will
take comprehension obtained through learning, pain, failure, growth, then
finally, one day, understanding. If too many clever people abandon the pain of
learning for the joy of quickish superficial success we won't be advancing the
world very quickly.

Life is pain, highness.

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haeric
You _did_ say your analogy was on the fritz, but still... the "training for
the olympics" analogy has a huge flaw: When he gets his degree, it probably
wouldn't change anything, the coolest thing he could possibly do would
probably STILL be that same startup, or something equivalent.

So why go through college? He can probably learn just as much, if not more,
doing what he is doing now. The only thing I see him missing out on is "the
college experience", which is a lot of different things for different people.

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seiji
Part of me thinks going through the whole process of one level of education
can make you better. If you are doing the same thing after four years of
school that you would do when you started, either you weren't paying
attention, are unteachable, or were brilliant to start out. Part of me sees 16
year olds changing the world with only skin-deep knowledge (APIs, but not
knowing the underlying processes), but ambition enough to float over
mountains.

I can't seem to reconcile our broken world of code with things that require
real education. You don't see an architecture student dropping out after two
years to start his own architecture firm. We don't see premed students
dropping out to start hospitals. We don't see kids in the air force academy
dropping out and declaring themselves three star generals. But they'll
certainly drop out to start a design firm or an online medical records system.

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easong
If collegiate computer science education weren't so utterly worthless, there
might be fewer dropouts - why would a motivated and intelligent person spend
four years of the most productive part of their life and approximately a
hundred thousand dollars to learn things that are both largely useless and
easily self-taught? If one's goal is to build a useful product and run a
company (or do anything at all outside of academia), college is a very poor
choice - the debt accumulated alone would sink any entrepreneurial dreams.

My only experience is with computer science, but I would suspect we would see
a lot of rapid innovation in military fields were it possible for highly
motivated and intelligent 20-somethings to drop out of the air force academy
and become local warlords. The fact that the tech sector has so few
consequences for failing and so few insurmountable bureaucratic standards is
only for the best.

