

Doing a startup taught me the value of staying in school - Swizec
http://swizec.com/blog/doing-a-startup-taught-me-the-value-of-staying-in-school/swizec/1819

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byrneseyeview
_[Taking the default path of every other middle-class kid in search of a
middle-class job] teaches you to better question everything, not to question
for the sake of questioning, but for the sake of proving to yourself and
others that what you’re doing, that what somebody else is doing, is really the
way it should be done. It also gives you a much wider berth of existing
theories and hypotheses that you can use to create new knowledge from._

It seems unlikely that there would be some kind of mass-market institution
that teaches _everyone_ to question authority, especially if so many
authorities had gone through that institution. It seems much more likely that
any institution that markets to 18- to 22-year-olds is going to market itself
as totally rad and rebellious.

Here's what I think happened: I think the author of this post got older and
wiser. That tends to happen to people, even if they participate in the
extended adolescence of school. Granted, it happens a lot faster to people who
drop and and have to pay bills and _don't even have a meal plan_. But it
happens to nearly everyone.

------
michaelpinto
I realize that this unfashionable to say, but the ability to finish your
degree is a sign of discipline. I come from a creative background so this is
critical when I'm looking to work with someone, so perhaps it doesn't apply to
CS or business majors where people pick the major as a default rather than out
of passion. I think we've prized dropping out of school thanks to Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates, but I don't think we should view dropping out as a
requirement.

~~~
vbtemp
"doesn't apply to CS or business majors where people pick the major as a
default rather than out of passion"

While there exist a _very_ small amount of people who do CS as "default"
rather than "passion", they are very rare, and most CS students are extremely
passionate about some aspect of computer science.

~~~
michaelpinto
You have a fair point — maybe I'd say more "IT Dude" than CS. In the corporate
world I see many folks to doing IT who are doing it out of a default mode.
Also sometimes said people will start with out with a passion, but pretty
quickly it just becomes a job to them.

------
bedris
Like many things, the quality and value of your education is not only a
function of the institution you attend, but also of your goals, drive, and
temperament.

If your goal is to simply obtain a degree so that you can get a job with your
credential, then school might do little to further your useful education.

If your goal is to learn how to solve problems, to learn to think critically,
to gain fundamental understanding of difficult concepts, to grapple with how
much is _not_ known, and to meet like-minded people, then a university can be
a great setting to achieve these goals, with the resulting credential simply
acting as a by-product of your education.

School is a tool, just like everything else. It's all what you make of it.

------
pgroves
University isn't worthless, merely wasted on the young. The most obvious
example (to old people) is teaching history to 18 year olds who haven't
experienced anything. I didn't _really_ understand how the Vietnam War was
possible until I saw the Iraq War happen.

Wouldn't all of these be better career tracks:

\- Soldier in the army, then military academy, then military command.

\- Work at an alderman's office, then get a degree in political science, then
run for office.

\- PHP developer for a marketing firm, then CS degree, then technical
cofounder at a startup.

The only programs I know that capitalize on this is are some MBA programs that
are geared toward middle-management types trying to get into upper management.

~~~
wnewman
I think a certain amount of "horses for courses" caution is called for here.
Some skills seem much more suited to learning by doing than others. Even
within a particular field of endeavor, some skills seem more suited to
learning by doing than others. Didn't various militaries converge on the
practice of sending people to school to become artillerists and celestial
navigators even as they continued to honor learning by doing in other
specialties? If you want to rise in politics or design user interfaces, it may
work pretty well to learn by doing, while studying only as the need arises: as
far as I know, there isn't that much formal knowledge that's foundational for
that kind of work. There's still lots of valuable stuff to read and learn
from, but it doesn't seem foundational: trying to read a UI book without
studying the prerequisites doesn't seem to be nearly as confusing as e.g.
trying to read a physics or engineering book without studying the
prerequisites. And math-y stuff beyond the usual public education level seems
foundational in a fair number of specialties, not just physics and
engineering. If you want to price portfolios of derivative securities or write
software that recognizes faces, a couple of years spent on math and/or on
related fundamentals of software (algorithms and data structures, various
other programming skills) may be a good way to start.

I'm not suggesting those man-years are necessarily best spent at school. I
notice that most of the valuable formal foundational knowledge tends to be
open to self-study if you're motivated enough, and I have run into people
who'd learned a lot of them for themselves before they got out of high school.
(E.g., my freshman roommate at college.:-) But I am suggesting that in school
or not, some of those man-years are best spent before you need to rely on the
knowledge: learn a lot of what you need to know about spherical trigonometry
and log tables or gunpowder mixes and metal fatigue before you need it, not as
you need it.

~~~
pgroves
I love this word "foundational" you've introduced.

My point is that entry level employees are typically just doing what they're
told to by someone considered an expert. This low level work in any field
provides context for what is important to learn and why. I think it would be
better to obtain this context first, and then take a step back from the day-
to-day rat race to fill in the "foundational" knowledge needed to become a
true expert.

College would then be like a mid-career sabbatical. When the sabbatical is
over, you're ready to be in charge of the big decisions. eg, Be a carpenter
for 15 years then go to architecture school.

------
wccrawford
Talk to us again in 5 years when you've got some experience under your belt
and you find out how woefully unprepared school has left you, despite your
recent epiphany.

Then talk to us in 10 when you figure out that you could have learned all that
same knowledge for free, in less time. Or that you could have been doing a job
and someone would PAY you to learn it, and you'd learn even more in even less
time.

~~~
ori_b
As someone who graduated from university while doing summer jobs, I am
extremely happy with my education, and I find it useful on a regular basis.
Even the physics that I won't be using as a software developer is a great
framework that helps me pick up stuff that would have normally been beyond me,
and the approach to problems that I picked up there makes many software tasks
easier -- either to grasp, or to implement.

As for school itself - it both pointed me in the right direction, making me
take classes that were related, useful, and built on each other in a
meaningful way. It lead me down the right paths, and the access to professors
that were willing to spend time to answer questions and point me in the right
direction for further study were invaluable.

Of course school isn't a complete education, but it's a vital component of it.

~~~
tjr
I agree that university is useful in that it makes you take classes. I was
becoming a reasonably competent programmer before I started university, and
for every topic that I was interested in, I believe I could have learned it on
my own.

I had no interest in database systems; it looked boring to me. My schedule and
class requirements had a hole in it, and I took a database class. I'm glad I
did.

I did want to learn Lisp, but I wasn't getting my head wrapped around it on my
own, and was content to not push myself and just stayed with C. Then I took a
language interpretation class and was forced to use Lisp. After a week or so
the basic concepts clicked, and now I greatly enjoy Lisp. But I wasn't forcing
myself to learn it.

I also ended up studying a bunch of other totally unrelated things that I
wouldn't have on my own, at least not any time on the visible horizon: Russian
history, economics, Spanish language, development of jazz music, public
speaking... and I feel I'm overall better for it, partly because of what I
learned in these classes, and partly because it made me realize there are
interesting things to learn all over the place, not just in my favorite areas
of study.

That said, if I've ever used any of this stuff that I didn't learn on my own
in my actual work, I'm not aware of it. But that doesn't mean I'm not happy
that I went through university.

------
synnik
"It gives you better frameworks for thinking."

This is vitally important.

People who think school should prepare your for a job are missing the point.
What school does is increase your capacity for thought, teaching you new
methods. You cannot get out of higher education without learning multiple ways
to approach, de-construct, and re-construct problems and questions.

~~~
smokeyj
"It gives you better frameworks for thinking."

Better frameworks than what? Real life? Trial and error? Empiricism? Sounds
like he learned to generalize and impose his experiences on others.

> You cannot get out of higher education without learning multiple ways to
> approach, de-construct, and re-construct problems and questions.

My personal experiences would prove otherwise. I may be an exception.

------
romain_g
Great post. However, deciding whether the range of options you are considering
to solve a problem is too narrow seems to be more easier in small business
structures as a result of efficient interactions. University didn't teach me
which method is the best, but that other methods very often exist. And how to
decide which one is the most interesting for my own need.

------
trustfundbaby
tl;dr -> Confronting the vast vastness of everything you don’t know and can
never hope to understand will leave you a better man (or woman).

It gives you better frameworks for thinking.

\---------------------

Right on the Money!

I love my education not because of the specifics of what I learned but because
it taught me HOW to learn difficult things quickly (computer/electrical
Engineering major) ... it gave me the confidence that I could also learn
anything as long as I had good plan for how to go about it.

I can never put a price on that.

------
saraid216
A university education is kind of a hammer, isn't it?

Maybe there isn't just one thing called a "university education". Maybe this
"critical thinking" thing is more than just a nail. And maybe dropping out of
university is a great way to pull that hacksaw out of your backpack for once.

------
rkon
His entire argument boils down to the belief that universities can greatly
improve your critical thinking skills. On the other hand, one of the main
criticisms of universities these days is the fact that they seem to be doing
very poorly in that regard ([http://chronicle.com/article/New-Book-Lays-
Failure-to-Learn/...](http://chronicle.com/article/New-Book-Lays-Failure-to-
Learn/125983/))

I tend to agree with the critics, and couldn't find anything compelling me to
think otherwise in this post.

~~~
hugh3
Once again, it all comes down to what you choose to study. Mathematics? Yes.
Womyn's Studies? No.

~~~
alain94040
What's wrong with women studies? One of the fascinating benefits of college is
that you will bump into people with completely different world view from
yours. Some of them will tell you at the university cafe why women studies is
more likely to impact the world than your tech startup.

If you focus only on programming between the age of 18 and 30, you may believe
than HN represents the universe.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
"What's wrong with women studies? One of the fascinating benefits of college
is that you will bump into people with completely different world view from
yours. Some of them will tell you at the university cafe why women studies is
more likely to impact the world than your tech startup."

You explained exactly what's wrong with women's (now called gender) studies:
all they can do is talk and react. They don't do. In the sciences (I use that
term loosely), there is a boundary of what isn't known. Scientists probe that
boundary and make it further by testing and finding out what is and isn't.

Now, what does 'gender studies' do? They sit around in a circle and blab about
stuff that affects them. From IU Bloomington, the first campus to offer this
type of degree:

"Women’s Studies and Gender Studies offer exciting interdisciplinary courses
that concentrate on the position of women and men across many cultures.
Courses explore issues related to women and gender across academic
disciplines, examining such topics as race and class, business and politics,
health, the body, sexuality, developing societies, the arts, academic
institutions and knowledge, sports and leisure, law, and the media." Cited
<http://www.indiana.edu/~wostgens/>

Engineers make stuff. Programmers make stuff. Chemists make stuff. Creators
create, and that adds a lot of value to civilisation. What does gender studies
add? A whole lot of nothing. We only have their own website to go by.

