
 New college grads: Don’t sell your time for a living - andrew_null
http://andrewchen.co/2013/06/03/new-college-grads-dont-sell-your-time-for-a-living/
======
7Figures2Commas
Yes, new college graduates, please do not be seduced by the idea that you can
be employed by a company that will pay you to learn how to do something of
value.

Instead, take everything you have (inexperience, limited funds, lack of domain
expertise, etc.) and invest it in making "something."

If all else fails, which it most likely will, join a startup, ideally one
filled with a bunch of other young people trying to learn how to make
"something" too.

~~~
joonix
No, just Make Something, it will Take Ten Thousand Hours, but remember,
Startups. Study those who have Made Something, and then copy them by Making
Something of Your Own.

------
rayiner
What a bunch of fluff. Most jobs involve "making things" it's just that the
opportunities for leverage are low. Being an employee versus an entrepreneur
isn't "selling your time" versus "making things" it's about how much leverage
you can utilize in the things you make.

~~~
sp332
But the _business model_ isn't making things, it's butt-in-seat time.

~~~
rayiner
Nobody pays anyone to keep a seat warm...

For a counter-factual to the article, consider a Subway franchise. The people
who really _make_ things in that business are the sandwich line workers
getting paid $8/hour. Everything else is in support of that core productive
function.

So why don't you want to be a "maker" at Subway? Because while the sandwich
line workers are the ones making things, it's the store owner that has the
leverage--he gets other people to make things for him. You want to be the guy
with the leverage, not (necessarily) the guy making things (though sometimes,
if what you make is valued/rare enough, you have a lot of leverage).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Amazing what controlling the means of production can do for you.

~~~
mindcrime
_Amazing what controlling the means of production can do for you._

Well, if others want to control the means of production, let _them_ go out and
take out loans, burn through their life savings, and crib money from friends,
family and fools, to take a chance on a business that might or might not
succeed, possibly leaving them broke, penniless and destitute. Let them figure
out how to promote and market the business, design all the processes needed to
make the business work, and develop the ulcers and headaches that come from
stressing over the possibility that the business might fail and you might have
to lay off your entire workforce, putting good people... people that you
hired, trained, trusted, and worked, sweated, laughed and bled alongside.. out
of work.

Because "owning the means of production" IS a total cakewalk after all. Just
retreat to your robber baron mansion, burn a few thousand dollar bills for
heat, and march down to the (store|factory|plant|refinery|etc) every few days
and kick the shit out of the lazy workers who are probably stealing from the
company anyway. Oh, wait, did I say "march"? I mean, "be driven by your
chauffeur in your Rolls Royce Silver Ghost". Because all business owners have
chauffeurs and a Rolls Royce.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
To my knowledge, limited though it be, actual entrepreneurship is neither as
cushy as you imply that I implied, nor as ultra-depressing as you imply
directly.

Your average failed start-up entrepreneur probably doesn't even get an acqui-
hire, but he certainly doesn't wind up "broke, penniless and destitute"
either. Solving this kind of problem is in fact the entire point of joint-
stock companies as we know them: the founder comes on-board as a majority
shareholder, a capital-adding founder, _and_ with a salary paid by the company
(once it has any money at all, but why are you founding a company if you have
no personal runway?). His personal survival becomes separate from the
company's survival, through that wondrous mechanism of _investment_.

But of course, if what we're _really_ talking about is 1-3 cofounders and a
small but growing group of investors beginning a joint-stock company in a
fashion explicitly designed _not_ to personally endanger _anyone_ , then
there's no reason you couldn't run the whole thing as a Mondragon-style
cooperative in the first place, with some charter modifications to allow for
issuing equity.

Now, you could say we _need_ to give the founders an outsized reward for their
outsized risk, but after multiple rounds of investment diluting their share
ownership, VCs and accelerators and other investors taking spots on the Board
of Directors and then further dilution of the founders' _individual_ ownership
and control of the firm by the time it reaches any kind of Liquidity Event...

Well, it ends up looking less like we're giving outsized rewards to the
_founders_ specifically, and more like we're giving outsized rewards to an
_investor class_ within a large collective enterprise that _could_ , _if_ the
founders were clever and lucky, contain the founders as a large or dominant
component.

But of course, there's also a dozen ways for the founders to wind up basically
proletarians _in their own company_.

So while I do think the cooperative model could do more to honor founding
entrepreneurs, I can't say it does distinctly _worse_ than our current model
of investor-driven enterprise, ie: capitalism.

~~~
mindcrime
It's a fair point that taking investment money, as opposed to debt, changes
the equation. Even so, I personally don't mind seeing founders get rewarded
for taking the initiative and stress involved in founding a company, as long
as all the transactions involved (re: employees, investors, etc.) are all
voluntary.

 _then there's no reason you couldn't run the whole thing as a Mondragon-style
cooperative in the first place, with some charter modifications to allow for
issuing equity._

I'm not real familiar with the Mondragon Corporation specifically, but from
looking at the Wikipedia article[1] just now, it sounds pretty interesting.
I'm a fan of the idea of employee owned collectives and cooperatives (both for
profit and non-profit), and see them as just as much a desirable part of our
overall society / economy as "traditional" corporations. Maybe more so.

Being a libertarian / voluntaryist / anarcho-capitalist / $pick_your_label, I
find the modern corporation problematic, in that it explicitly breaks the
premise of "liability for the outcome of your actions" for the individual
investors. Arguably that's a good thing, because it makes it easier for people
to pool their capital and more or less allows for the existence of the modern
mega-corporation. Arguably it's a _bad_ thing, because it allows for the
existence of the modern mega-corporation.

In either case, I'd love to see worker owned collectives, and /or private
coops replace both many traditional for-profit companies AND many government
agencies / services.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation>

~~~
eli_gottlieb
For replacing government agencies/services, look into the concept of a
"commons trust". The basic idea is that the organization for managing the
resource or providing the service holds a property title over the necessary
resources, but holds it in-trust on behalf of the general public so that they
have strict, legally-enforcible limitations on what they can do with the
resource and to whom the benefits must accrue.

In general, we can actually make a lot of progress on what I would call
"engineering socialism" once we get our brains out of the "individual
capitalism versus government socialism" paradigm, a paradigm they only got
trapped in by the peculiarities of the Cold War.

------
JDGM
There is a reason people sell their time: they need money to live. Advising
new graduates (most of whom will have student debt) to eschew a "job" and go
it alone "making something" is dubious advice.

A professional-level graduate career gives a ground to hit running after
college, and in terms of steps in the direction of one day managing one's own
affairs it provides experience, connections, and a chance to build up savings.

Going straight from school to no job and making "an app, blog, table, YouTube
channel, or video tutorial" is very unlikely to lead to equivalent success,
and don't let survivorship bias trick you otherwise.

The people I admire are those who have worked professionally but even in cases
of soul-destroying office politics, bureaucracy, and mismanagement, have never
given up on their "plan", slowly moving in the direction they want and
eventually being in a position (e.g. financially, domain-experience, network)
to break free and do it their way.

In the case of many HNers, I observe a movement from salaried employee to
consultant with the freedom to work on their own stuff to...well a tonne of
interesting things. I think that kind of approach is much more likely to
succeed than the extremism and anti-"job" mentality of the submitted article.

------
minimaxir
As a recent college grad (Carnegie Mellon University Class of 2012), I take
issue with the "working on a startup is more _meaningful_ than working a 9-5
corp job" stance. It's not about skills, it's about security and certainty,
especially in this job market (which still isn't great), even if you have the
technical skills and education to do basically whatever you want.

There's no harm for a college grad to wait a few years before doing a startup
once they've built up savings and a positive reputation.

It's worth noting that very few Computer Science students my year created a
startup relative to the amount of CS students who instead decided to work for
a large startup/Microsoft/Google/Amazon.

[http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2012-sur...](http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2012-survey/pdfs-one-pagers/2012_SCS.pdf)

~~~
darrellsilver
Agreed. Just after college is the time in your life when you're freest to take
the biggest risks. However, way too many people are saddled with crazy college
debt that the only logical option is to "play it safe."

An unfortunate dynamic. At <http://www.thinkful.com/> I've encouraged our
interns to consider how much savings or debt they'll have upon graduation.
It's something they basically never consider, and immediately when they do all
sorts of priorities change about their spending habits, goals, etc.

Well worth the exercise.

------
rm999
I know I'm taking this article out of context... so who is it targeted
towards? Some background would likely help this article tremendously because
as-is it's obviously ridiculous.

Most people out of college are not in a position to forego a job to vaguely
"build something". The issues are numerous: money, knowledge, ability, a
realistic world-view, etc. I'd suggest the opposite to most smart engineering
grads: sell your time (i.e. get a 9 to 5 job) and invest the money, knowledge,
and free time you get into learning how to build things.

~~~
spiek
My reaction to this article:

"That'd be nice, but I live in New York".

That's why that Onion headline is so brilliant: you HAVE to do the thing you
love on nights and weekends until you get good enough at it to attempt to do
it full time. In the meantime, you have to pay your rent, you have to buy your
food and have a social life and a girlfriend and all those other things that
make life pleasant.

------
cuttooth
"At least the traditional version of a job, in which you do something you
sorta hate, from 9-5p, and are paid for your time to just grit your teeth and
do it. Let’s call this the “sell your time” version of a personal business
model: You sell your time to an employer, and they pay you for that time."

This is called being an adult and getting a job, much like the other 99% of
the adult population. Some of us just end up being happier with what we do
than others. Some people don't care about what they do at all as long as their
non-work life makes them happy.

------
jarrett
Whenever I hear this, I think: Is this just meant to be advice for the elite,
gifted few? Or does the author mean that nearly everyone should eschew wage
labor? If the latter, then who will do all the only-mildly-interesting things
in our world? There is a need for people who are willing to get _work_ done.
And by work, I mean stuff that's not fun or glamorous, but still important.
Yes, you can hand-wave all that away with some vague claims about technology
making drudge work obsolete. Except it hasn't yet, and we don't know if it
ever will.

Besides that, not everyone has the right attributes for self-employment. I
suspect that much of what makes traditional employment painful is bad
coworkers/bosses. Do we expect these same people to be successful running
their own enterprises?

------
adamio
Better advice would be to know what you're time is worth, and don't sell it
for less - even to yourself.

------
volandovengo
Could somebody please explain what andrew chen does? Is he an entrepreneur?

~~~
duggieawesome
He apparently trains "growth hackers."

~~~
sliverstorm
Ah, so he's the proverbial shovel seller in the gold rush.

------
gordaco
If working has taught me something, it's that _every_ job is "selling your
time for a living", including entrepreneurship of any kind (selling your time
to your clients, not your boss, but it's not different), and unfortunately
that's a necessary evil if you want luxuries like a steady amount of food,
clothing or shelter. Also, that _every job is a day job_ , or becomes such
after not many months. If you don't think so, you're either deluding yourself,
a very boring person without a life, or extremely lucky (and remember, no
matter how much do you believe this last option represents you, it's still
extremely unlikely).

Also: don't fall into the "be passionate" trap. Be passionate about your life,
and don't conflate your work with your life. Keep your job out of your life,
and if possible, consider yourself unemployed from 5pm to 9am.

------
qdpb
Don’t sell your time for a living. Starve.

------
drfurly
I'm graduating college with a BS is software eng next year so this grabs my
attention. Programmers of the real world: Is it this bad? I can't imagine that
it can be. I enjoy what I do. I even often enjoy frustrating programming
assignments. Can a job really be that bad? I'm inclined to say that this
attitude that we (programmers) are better than regularly jobs is a little too
forward thinking.

~~~
potatolicious
No, it's really not this bad. I "sell my time" for a living and I frakkin'
love it. I work with really talented people I respect and love, working on
interesting products that I like, with little to no bullshittery.

It's not like this everywhere, but these spots in the industry exist, and if
you're halfway decent at what you do, they will want you also.

As rayiner said also, entrepreneurship is also "selling your time" - you're
just trying to sell it at a very high price with no guarantee that anyone will
end up paying you for that time.

There is also no guarantee in entrepreneurship that you'll spend a substantial
portion of your time doing things you enjoy. A lot of startup life is
thankless toil. Putting together a startup is a _lot_ more than writing some
code and slapping together some designs - as a founder you _will_ go neck-deep
in territory you do not enjoy, whether that's sales, marketing, business
development, design, or something else.

~~~
rayiner
> There is also no guarantee in entrepreneurship that you'll spend a
> substantial portion of your time doing things you enjoy.

If your start-up turns into a successful business with real customers, you
almost certainly won't.

At the start up I worked for, I watched as the founder quickly became too
important to do much if any technical work. Can't very well spend time sitting
and futzing with algorithms when you're busy making PowerPoint presentations
and poring over contracts.

------
adamz123
I think the "don't work, but start a business" mantra is overdone. Starting a
business IS working -- probably much harder than you'd ever work at a 9-5 if
you plan to be successful. Even people that are passionate about what they do
can burn out. There is no "quick fix" to having a job and it certainly isn't
"just follow your passion and start a company."

------
darrellsilver
After 10 years in the workforce it seems to me the most important thing to
focus on is getting a job that'll give them exposure to new things.

Our students at <http://www.thinkful.com> often find themselves a couple years
out of school, languishing in their 1st jobs since college, wishing and
yearning for more.

Unfortunately, incredibly talented people take the safest job they're offered
because they have crazy college debt. A couple years later they're totally
unfulfilled and want more.

Planning how to "not sell your time for a living" while in college (or before)
is just as important as not being compelled into a "steady" job at the point
in your life when you should be exploring new things.

------
aridiculous
One's life != a business

------
macspoofing
Some people don't view work as an end goal of their life.

------
hkmurakami
do what you're interested in. don't do boring things for the money, provided
you have alternatives that let you live comfortably and afford interesting
opportunities.

it took getting hit by a car going 50mph for me to really have this sink in.
We shouldn't need a potential near death experience to convince us to abandon
our vanity and achievement chasing and do what we really want to do.

------
derrida
TL;DR: Jobs bad. 1. Make things. 2. Make sure people want it. 3. Keep trying
this for a long time.

~~~
cheald
0\. Have a bunch of money so you can fail for a long time while you don't know
what you're doing, rather than learning it while gainfully employed.

------
romeonova
Good use of Onion News article.

