
Advice for ambitious 19 year olds (2013) - Jarred
http://blog.samaltman.com/advice-for-ambitious-19-year-olds?repost=yes
======
stiff
If you describe yourself as an "ambitious 19 year old" (and ambition by itself
is not necessarily a virtue) and if you tie your happiness to doing "something
great", you are likely in for a very unhappy life.

Everything we do, will ultimately be undone, if you extend the time horizon
long enough. The greatest scientists, inventors, football players and
political leaders get forgotten after a few generations, in fact whole
civilizations have been living on this very earth, and were since erased from
its surface, many of which we might have not a single trace left of. Being
"great" in our culture typically accounts to beating hundreds of people, so by
definition for every person who succeeds there will be hundreds of "loosers".
This is a ridiculous game, and I think every wise person should refuse to
participate in it in the first place and set their own priorities. You should
do things to try to have a happy life from day to day, not to "get somewhere".

~~~
mseebach
> You should do things to try to have a happy life from day to day, not to
> "get somewhere".

I read an article a while ago that resonated very strongly with me,
particularly this bit:

 _It is Mr Rottenberg’s view that the current vogue for the “pursuit of
happiness” may perversely push certain people towards depression. Happiness,
he argues, is the result of achieving a goal, rather than a goal itself. He
cites recent evidence suggesting that depression or low mood can be triggered
by setting unobtainable goals. Rather than becoming depressed because of
underachievement, he suggests that perhaps depression is an overcommitment to
goals that cannot be reached._

[http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-
arts/21600653-callin...](http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-
arts/21600653-calling-new-way-thinking-tidal-wave)

> Being "great" in our culture typically accounts to beating hundreds of
> people, so by definition for every person who succeeds there will be
> hundreds of "loosers".

Mostly in sports, which obviously is artificial. In real life, very few things
are actually zero-sum. Who are the "losers" that Einstein beat? MLK, Ghandi?
Jimi Hendrix?

In general, I think your comment contains a false dichotomy. Yes, it's
extremely unlikely that yours will become a household name for generations to
come, but the alternative isn't that you're forgotten. Be something positive
for someone else - start a family and be a good parent: whatever your children
achieve (even if it's similarly modest) you will have had a part in that. Be a
good friend, spouse, lover. Start a business, provide good jobs for your
employees. Build a good library/tool that you and your peers need. You can
easily touch dozens and hundreds of lives, but in a small way, and they then
build on top of that. Just because they don't build you a statue on the town
square, it doesn't mean your work is undone.

------
gedrap
Many people say that college/university is not worth it but I disagree.

If the one you are attending makes you think it's not worth it, just get to a
better one.

I think university is a safe default choice. Yes, you will be learning things
that you might never need. On the other hand, you will learn things you
wouldn't have learned otherwise and they will open up your eyes. Also, you get
to be surround with smart people (given you are at a good uni). And attending
university doesn't mean you can't work on something on the side, and drop uni
if things go well.

Of course, there are cases when starting/continue working on your business is
much better. But I believe those are exceptions, and if that's the case for
you, you won't need anyone to tell you that. It will be obvious that you
should do that.

~~~
reillyse
Agreed, I've spent 10 years in university and I couldn't be happier with my
choices. I feel I've really got a deep appreciation for my craft and my own
abilities and I've always been able to work on my side projects at the same
time. So I'd say going to university is rarely ever a bad choice. Also, there
will be plenty of time later to work, why not have some fun first and make a
huge peer group of interesting intelligent people who have similar hobbies and
interests to you.

~~~
arethuza
"So I'd say going to university is rarely ever a bad choice."

If you are motivated, passionate about the subject and going to a good
university then I would agree - personally I think these factors are actually
more important that the exact subject you do (YMMV).

However, if you are not motivated, not really interested in the subject or not
going to a particularly good university then I would question the wisdom of
going - especially if you are going to end up with a large amount of debt
afterwards.

[NB I also spent 10 years in a university environment - 4 as an undergraduate
and 6 as a postgraduate researcher and I thought it was great, but I am also
acutely aware that I also knew a lot of people who dropped out or who did
subjects they really weren't that interested in just because they felt they
had to do _something_ ].

~~~
reillyse
OK, so I guess the big caveat here is I wasn't living in the US at the time
and left university without any debt. I can see how stressing about how much
money you are spending would make hanging out in college a lot less fun.

------
jqm
Here is my advice:

-Take everything with a healthy bit of secret skepticism but don't be cocky nor disrespectful. Very seldom does anything good come of that...but don't forget the skepticism.

-Learn to control your passions. Character really is important even though people who say things like this are usually dimwillys.

-Romantic relationships can break some people. Be aware, but don't give up the best things in life for lesser things. Certainly romantic relationships are among the best things in life.

-Stay curious about other fields. Isolating in one discipline can give people myopia. But do focus and specialize. This is important.

-Keep in mind that a lot will change in the next 60, and even next 10 years. Expect change and you won't be as thrown by it. Adaption is a very valuable skill.

As far as college and starting a company... do what you feel is best.
Certainly people succeed at many paths and likewise fail at many.

The advice in the article about seeking out the smartest people is good
though. Avoid the "party always" crowd. Bad things generally follow them.

------
withdavidli
"I just watched someone turn down one of these breakout companies because
Microsoft offered him $30k per year more in salary—that was a terrible
decision. He will not build interesting things and may not work with smart
people."

Quite the blanket statement. Microsoft is a gigantic company, it will greatly
depend on the team they're on.

One great advice, be around smart and ambitious people. This is contagous and
helps motivation.

~~~
semerda
I agree. Building an OS or associated platform/cloud software at MS requires
some clever brains/engineering. That will be more rewarding from an experience
point than building another link sharing web app / a regurgitated clone.

~~~
Namrog84
I agree with you both and that's what I'm hoping for. I start in 1 week at MS
to work on some cloud related software. I sure hope it's
interesting/rewarding!

~~~
semerda
Congrats!

One advise I can give you (assuming you are a graduate) is DO NOT focus on the
money, just focus on building your skills & experience. But don't let anyone
take advantage of that either. Sooner or later you will demand a premium when
you are a rockstar! Connect with as many people as possible and ask a ton of
questions.

"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a
fool forever. ~ Chinese Proverb"

------
maj0rhn
When I look around Silicon Valley, I see a lot of 40-somethings and older who
have been very successful in their technical endeavors, but now have narrow
lives because they never took the time to become complete persons.

The best thing you can do as ambitious 19 year old is recognize that there is
a lot more to the world than technology, and that college is effectively the
only time in your life that you can, guilt-free, learn about the arc of
civilization, or study Shakespeare in depth, or have a hope of learning
biochemistry.

Remember Henlein: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet,
balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Starting a company is rather a ridiculous thing to do when the entire world is
open to you.

~~~
VLM
"effectively the only time in your life that you can, guilt-free, learn about
the arc of civilization..."

You've got to be kidding, speaking as a well educated older guy. Also, if you
feel your education ended permanently at 22, your educators probably want to
leap off a building. When you stop your education, you may as well be dead.

You can and should train for a vocation to make a living when you're 19 (even
if for cultural reasons you call that vocational training "getting an
education"), otherwise with no income stream, life will be a bit rough at 60
when you're supposed to continue your live long self education, seeing as with
no vocational training you'd have starved to death at 23.

"or study Shakespeare in depth"

If you hate Shakespeare, why bother? If on the other hand, you love it,
especially in our modern era of public libraries, internet, ebooks, MOOCs,
free online university video lectures, how do you propose to stop me in my 40s
from doing the same, better than I ever could have it in my early 20s? Its not
like technology and culture stop progressing making it less likely you'll be
able to learn in the future. Could happen, sure, but...

~~~
maj0rhn
Of course education doesn't stop at 22. But the interests you develop at that
age have a way of carrying forward, and lower the threshold for re-engaging
those interests later in life. If you never appreciated the genius of
Shakespeare or Thoreau at 22, why would you be motivated to pick them up at
40?

The other big point is that, during those 20 years from 22 to 42, you have the
advantage of wider learning in your bag, and it helps you communicate.
Remember the "Space Seed" episode of the original Star Trek (the one with
Khan)? At the end Scotty explains Khan's acceptance of exile to Kirk by
saying: "Have you ever read Milton, Captain?" It's understanding references
like that that make you a complete human, vs. understanding pointer
dereferencing, which make you a tradesman.

------
doctorpangloss
>If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout
trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are
usually identifiable to a smart young person.

>Working on something good will pull you along a path where good things keep
happening to you.

So his advice is, to boil it down, "Do successful stuff, but hopefully it's
obvious to you what is going to be successful."

~~~
ryandrake
By the time you've identified that a company is truly that one out of a
thousand that are on a breakout trajectory, it's too late, they've already got
50 other employees who will have all the equity. Basically, the advice boils
down to, "Spin the startup roulette wheel or go join Microsoft for 30K more
salary."

VCs can increase their odds of lucking into the rocket ship growth company by
investing in 100 companies. I can't work for 100 companies simultaneously.

------
ARama
> "be around smart people. "

I couldn't agree more. I'm 20 years old and dropped out of university after my
first year. There was a large amount of people I was surrounded by who weren't
motivated at all and didn't really seem to take interest in anything we were
doing.

I moved to San Francisco ( from New Zealand ) after I dropped out in the
beginning of 2013, attended a programming bootcamp and was surrounded by smart
people who all shared the same drive and passion as me. It made a world of
difference, my core group of friends were all people who breathed code. We all
motivated each other to better ourselves and to learn new technologies. Moving
to the valley was the best thing I've ever done, I learned so much in such a
short amount of time and was even approached by some companies with some great
offers. Unfortunately I had to move back to New Zealand as my year was up and
US work visas require a degree or an extensive amount of experience. That was
probably the biggest downside of dropping out, a degree can definitely open up
many doors.

------
yzzxy
This article worried me - because I'm ~19 and hadn't even considered not going
to college. This is despite being directly in the discussed demographic. I
have pretty conclusive evidence that I'm hiring material to some of these
companies and have conceived of, planned, and built user-facing multiple
technical projects independently.

However, I've never thought of skipping out on college. I live in a very
affluent area and even the academically worst-off seniors usually end up going
to decent 4-year programs.

The idea that so many people similar to me at my age would miss college for a
startup or similar experience worries me because it makes me think that the
community I've grown up with has distorted my perception of the opportunities
available to me. It's time to take a long reevaluation of my plans, I think.

~~~
brianchu
Yeah, it's definitely a Silicon Valley thing. I grew up in SV and go to school
at Berkeley, and dropping out is definitely considered a valid choice. People
I know in SF encourage me to drop out all the time, and I know of several
college students that dropped out.

Edit (reply to below): I took a year off to work before I went to college, so
I think I have a good perspective when I say this. You assume that: 1) college
is going to educate someone about the world, get them a good job (not a measly
startup job), give them discipline, and introduce them to cofounders; and 2)
college will do this so much better than you could by working in industry that
it justifies the cost (anywhere between $150-200k tuition for a good school,
and possibly $200k in lost savings). Suffice to say, not all of those things
are necessarily true.

I'd be happy to talk about this perspective to anyone over email.

~~~
semerda
Maybe I cannot see why this is so cool.. being a foreigner now living in
Silicon Valley, having grown up in both Europe and Australia.. education is
pivotal to getting anywhere in life.

I hate the common "get rich quick advise" to ambitious 19 year olds by
"dropping out of school" to "join a fast paced start-up" for measly equity and
few dimes to live on. Better advice to just buy a lottery ticket, cross ya
fingers and pray.

If you want to "change the world" you need to 1st understand the world. But
before one does one must have discipline and some core skills. That's what
colleague teaches. Discipline and core skills + may introduce you to your
future cofounder. Then go and learn from the world by working at many many
places so you can understand the world and it's problems. Then change the
world.

Maybe then we will have far better start ups that are actually building a
business and changing the world than regurgitating (cloning) other businesses.

------
personlurking
"One big con is that it’s easy to start a company for the wrong
reasons—usually so that you can say you’re starting a company—and this makes
it easy to cloud your judgment."

Recently, I've randomly come across a lot of people here in Lisbon, all in
their 20s, saying they're in a brand-new startup or starting one. When I ask
them about it, mum is the word. They hesitate and fumble for words, say a key
word or two, then speak very generally before clamming up. It's amazing how
many times I've seen this exact scene play itself out in the last few months.
It's a mixture of being unsure about what they're doing and not wanting
someone to steal their idea. They're all either novice coders without a
business-minded partner, or vice-versa. It's to the point that I often feel
like I'm in a scene from the Truman Show.

Seeing this happen, and while being in the midst of starting my own thing, I'm
hesitant to say I'm doing a startup. I find myself preferring to say 'I'm
starting a business online'.

~~~
abledon
The idea of not being able to express what your company is about was kind of
covered in silicon valley episode 4 haha

------
FiloSottile
> Working on something good will pull you along a path where good things keep
> happening to you.

Words to live by. I'm 19, not attending college and experiencing some bits of
success. I have friends that like to say (not maliciously) how I'm that kind
of person that can keep making risky decisions because has big strikes of
luck.

What I keep trying to tell them, is that I have "big strikes of luck" because
I keep myself always as exposed as possible to them. And I do so exactly with
those decisions they deem risky, like not going to college, spending money on
conferences, relocating, loosing ties.

~~~
jxf
It's apocryphal [0], but I'm reminded of Thomas Jefferson's quote:

"I am a great believer in luck -- the harder I work, the more I have of it."

[0]: [http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/i-am...](http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/i-am-great-believer-luckquotation)

~~~
fossuser
There's also the other kind of luck that you're not really in control of. You
can attempt to position yourself for the best possible outcome, but even the
ability to do that may be determined by original surroundings.

[https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S33/87/54K53/ind...](https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S33/87/54K53/index.xml)

------
edanm
"If you start a company, only do so if you have an idea you’re in love with.
If you’re hanging out with your friends trying to come up with an idea, I
don’t think you should start that company (although there are many who
disagree with me)."

I'm one of those that disagree with this.

Entrepreneurship is a long-term "profession" all of its own. If you plan to be
an entrepreneur, you need to treat it as such. You need to work in it by e.g.
building companies, you need to fail it in a few times before you succeed,
etc.

Most importantly, unlike most Software Developers, you need to realize the
goal of an entrepreneur is to _make money_. You shouldn't be starting a
company because you have a great idea, or because you feel like starting a
company, but rather, because you want to make money and have identified that
the path to make it is to be an entrepreneur and start this particular
company. This affects both which companies you do start and which you don't.

This is not to say I necessarily think starting a company at 19 is the right
thing to do. My advice to ambitious 19 year olds who want to be entrepreneurs
would be to find a job as a personal assistant to a CEO of a small company in
the field they want to work in, and learn the ropes from her.

NOTE: I give a very "entrepreneur==trying to get rich" perspective here, which
I believe is sorely lacking in most young Software Developers. Some people
start startups for other reasons entirely, which is of course great and
absolutely your choice.

~~~
mseebach
What are your thoughts on Alex Payne's Letter to a Young Programmer?

Personally, I found it overly pessimistic, and my instinct is to be skeptical
of such things - but I'm not knowledgable enough to actually pick apart his
arguments.

[https://al3x.net/2013/05/23/letter-to-a-young-
programmer.htm...](https://al3x.net/2013/05/23/letter-to-a-young-
programmer.html)

------
the_watcher
I love this post, especially this:

"The secret is that any of these can be right answer, and you should make your
decision based on the specific circumstances of each option."

My general advice to ambitious young people - go do something fun,
interesting, and challenging that your unique age allows. Generally, this
means it is something made possible by the combination of an abundance of free
time and absence of major life responsibilities (like bills and children). So
long as it meets all 3 of those characteristics, if you think you'd want to do
it someday, just do it now. Leave the US and travel. Go to college and have
fun (but remember that challenging is one of your key characteristics, and
don't forget to challenge yourself). Start a company. You are 19. If you fail,
no one will hold it against you, and you'll never regret it if you actually
did something fun, challenging, and interesting.

The one piece of (slightly depressing) advice I would add this: student loans
can be great for ambitious 19 year olds. Just know that you have to start
repaying them 6 months after you quit going to school (if you can, only take
subsidized loans and do your best to pay at least the interest+at least $1
towards principal of the rest while in school. Had one friend who did this,
and I was shocked at the difference it made, perhaps naively), and if what you
do after that doesn't allow to rapidly pay them off, you'll lose a lot of the
freedom you had at 19 before you expected (coming from someone who has a small
enough loan burden to have some freedom as a 25 year old, but large enough to
prevent me from simply not having a steady income).

------
nickporter

      be around smart people
    

Can't stress that enough. It made a huge difference for me during university.

~~~
theghostofLT
Indeed - I would say this is probably the most important thing. I spent the
first three years of my career in an Office Space BigCorp environment with
colleagues and managers who were - well, I don't want to say stupid, but not
terribly motivated, or intellectually curious, or particularly invested in the
quality of their work. Emerging from that environment into one full of
extraordinarily sharp and ambitious people who had spent years honing their
craft and investing in themselves, and having to suddenly perform on their
level, was a shock and an extremely unpleasant lesson in opportunity costs.

------
klunger
Someone should write advice for ambitious 29 year olds who only recently
discovered the marvelous world of web development and entrepreneurship, after
a more typical decade of school and work drudgery...

~~~
Gustomaximus
Would it be that different? Perhaps swap university for MBA and a few smal
things but the fundamentals stay the same.

------
jw2013
Great article.

>> If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout
trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are
usually identifiable to a smart young person... Spending a few years at a
company that fails has path consequences, and working at an already-massively-
successful company means you will learn much less, and probably work with less
impressive people.

I actually find it opposite. First of all, it is not so easy to identify a
company on a breakout trajectory. The line between a breakout success and
failure is just too thin on an early-stage startups. Even if the startup works
on the same field as your expertise, you have been following that field for
years, and you think the founders are brilliant, you can still get the
judgement wrong a lot of the time.

I think a startup's failure is not so bad for a young and ambitious employee.
There are just as many lessons can be learnt from failure as from success. As
for path consequences, the young kids got so many productive years left and
one failure is not really destructive or harmful. And a great thing is, if a
startup fails most likely it fails fast. For your next job, people won't
hire/reject you because the previous company you worked for failed, they
hire/reject because you are brilliant or not. Likely the stuff you learnt in
the failed startup will make you a brilliant person (tech and non-tech wise).

------
jmscharff2
I am very scared about this new trend in, hey you like tech/programming and
want to be an entrepreneur skip college join/start a company. While yes you
can be very successful and you can learn a lot, if you fail or the company
fails you are stuck with a resume where you have no degree, no formal
education just a job where you may have learned a lot but a lot of the time
that cannot get you in the door of the next company. I worry that people who
went to these top schools MIT/Harvard/Yale etc are telling people to not go to
school, if you take a very smart person and they drop out of a top school that
is completely different than having a 19 year old kid not sure what to do with
his life and he enjoys programming.

It just seems like a scary trend that is cropping up in tech, sure you can
learn a lot if not more from a startup than your college education but the
degree is what will get you in the door to a lot of places in your future.

That degree is the base for your career, its great to join/start a startup but
if that fails you have nothing to fall back on, if you think you can get an
interview with no degree to a top tier company and you dont have some kind of
crazy resume then you are clearly living in a dream world. A single job where
your company failed will not be the same as a degree.

(all assuming that you dont become a billionaire from this startup)

------
mqsiuser
I live in Germany and I can't move to the valley easily (will investigate on
"work visa" and I will take part in the green card lottery over the next
couple of years :)

But even if I make it to SV, nothing ever relieves you from thinking really
hard constantly (and informing yourself). There are so many influencing
factors and the article is great, but I can also see that people tend to
overestimate themselves (including me). Thought exchange is key and you'll
find people you can do that with, e.g. _in_ _College_.

Ryan Dahl did node in Germany and he was exchanging thoughts with someone who
was just (only) listening and giving him (sanity) feedback. So though exchange
may or is also very valuable (from someone) when you have a genius idea.

College or university can also be an accelerator and maybe you'd consider
joining to actually have a lot of spare time to do the next Facebook by
exploiting it's context (e.g. people). And think of the big ones: They
_dropped out_ of college (when they were successful)!

We are always having (very) limited knowledge and there usually is (always) a
high risk. If Google or Apple just decides to do cars this may wipe out all
car manufactures in the rest of the world, since for some reason they seem to
be just able to do so.

------
hayksaakian
> Remember that there will be lots of other opportunities to start companies,
> and that startups are a 6-10 year commitment—wait for the right one

I've heard conflicting advice on this topic.

I'm currently of the opinion that you should fail fast. Does it really take
six to ten years to determine if your startup failed?

From my understanding if you've survived to year 6 and you're not delusional
about your potential as a company, then you've already made it.

~~~
Gustomaximus
I see this more in the case of a business is not failing, but it's only slowly
growing. I've met quite a few entrepreneurs who keep their business slowly
growing for the 5 or so years perhaps move from them to a couple of employees
and then around year 5/6/7 go into hyper growth and have 20 employees by year
end. I think this happens particularity in business that has a personal
element to do business. It takes time to get credibility, reputation and hone
your business pitch.

~~~
hayksaakian
Can you suggest some examples? I'd like to read about them.

------
mvembu
"No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people. “Stuff”
can be a lot of different things—open source projects outside of class, a
startup, a new sales process at a company you work at—but, obviously, sitting
around talking with your friends about how you guys really should build a
website together does not count."

Building stuff is true for to all age groups including VC's

------
Balgair
The best advice for the young man (most techy people at 19 are men, and I
assume this onward), is and will always will be:

1)You can never overdress

2)Dance a lot

3)Always ask out the best looking girl in the room.

4)Leave college or any job with a piece of work (thesis, rock opera, example
circuit boards, etc)

5)Go left. If your opponent knows you can't shoot left, you are done for.
Applies to war, business and arguments.

6)Shake hands very firmly. Especially with women. It's respect.

7)Keep the gas at a half tank. Emergencies happen.

8)Family is more important to most people than their own life, or yours.

9)Use tools, learn to fix your own car.

10)Learn to cook well. Flip burgers and steaks ONCE and ONLY ONCE. DO NOT
squeeze the juices out of them.

11)DO NOT become addicted. Do not develop alcoholism or start smoking. Enjoy
these things, sure, but chemical addiction is horrible.

12) Set goals every 6 months. Write them down, tell your family about them,
post them on your fridge.

Nothing here has anything to do with ambition. That's more a personality trait
and isn't really adoptable or disposable. Luck has so much to do with life and
business and can't be assumed. But that is OK. Relax, dance, drink wine with
your new wife. Play with your niece and grandfather. But hustle your ass off
when you aren't. Work hard at things you enjoy. If you don't enjoy them, set a
goal for when you are leaving and work on that at least once a day. Happiness
is NOT success. Happiness is what you are and if you let others define your
happiness, be they heroin or cigarettes or Harvard admissions committee or
Palantir or Jeff Bezos, then you are not going to be happy.

I have literally 919 more one-liners and lots of quotes I hope to give to a
son someday. Most of it is stupid simple reminders, but some I hope will help
that young man along in life.

------
sdnguyen90
I dropped out but looking back it was a very risky decision even though I was
already making a little bit of money. I was confident in my skills at the time
but now looking back I didn't know shit. There are so many potential
unforeseen situations in life that can take you off track pretty
bad(relationships, family passing away, etc.).

I was lucky to have a job that allowed me to have time to hone my technical
skills at the same time. If any of those situations happened to me, I probably
would be stuck in a very bad financial situation that I would never have been
able to bounce back from.

I see a lot of my friends who dropped out because their families couldn't
afford to not have them working full time and it looks like they won't be able
to make that much more than minimum wage for a while.

------
gabzuka
I don't understand why people would want to go straight to work when only 19
if they have the choice not to. That's the best age to enjoy and learn about
life, to grow as an integral person.

I would never ever exchange the time I had at uni for being at work, no matter
what I could be doing. At uni not only did I become a programmer, I also met
by best friends, I met my now wife, I got involved in social issues, I
traveled, I formed a band, learned foreign languages and yes went to lots of
parties, nothing wrong with parties. It's not related to what I do on a daily
basis for work? No, so what?. Has it helped me in my career? I don't know, but
I still got my dream job and it has surely made me a much happier person.

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lispylol
> If you’re hanging out with your friends trying to come up with an idea, I
> don’t think you should start that company

The difference between a founder that started a company this way versus a
founder that started a company out of significant personal experience is
astounding. The way they talk about their company is utterly different and I
imagine that has a great deal of influence on hiring as well.

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sorpaas
This article is talking about 3 important things:

* Build important stuff.

* Learn new things / be around talented people.

* Take right risks.

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NAFV_P
> _No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people._

That depends on whether these 'smart' people respect you, it is a horrible
situation to have to hang around smart people who don't hold the same opinion
of yourself.

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kamaal
One advice from my end is to cultivate the discipline to save and invest
money.

You will be surprised how much this one thing will put you light years ahead
of many others folks by the time your turn 35 or 40. You will turn 35 and
realize the past 1.5 decades went like a second, yet the the investments you
made are bearing fruit during middle age.

Time is on your side, the biggest weapon when it comes investments. Don't
waste it.

Keep loans away(unless your country has high inflation). Avoid credit card
debt. Buy gold routinely. Try to get your self a own home to stay in, even if
you actually can't stay in it(rent it out). Buy yourself a life insurance and
most important of all investments by the time you turn 30 try to get married
and have at least one kid.

~~~
spacehome
I will not mince words. Gold is a terrible investment. Historically, the price
of gold matches inflation (plus or minus short-term variation). It doesn't do
anything. Your lump of gold just sits there and is worth no more in a "real"
sense 40 years from today. Any reasonable portfolio should be comprised almost
entirely of stocks, bonds, and real estate, all of which have in common that
they're actively working for you in the interim.

Life insurance should only be purchased if you have dependents who depend on
your income (not assets) and even then you only ever need term. This is
definitely situationally dependent.

The years of 18-35 are essentially what form the adult version of "you". The
mathematics of the value of saving early is quite clear, but I argue that
cultivating the best version of yourself during these years is vastly more
important. Money is nice, but there's pleny of problems it doesn't solve.

Why would you advocate getting married and having kids before 30? Women
probably need to before about 35, when it starts getting increasingly
difficult, and men can even reasonably wait another decade after that.

~~~
tim333
I agree gold is bad - anyone in doubt check out the graph at the beginning of
'stocks for the long
run.'([http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ij02vzUijQM/Td6x_8jISdI/AAAAAAAAAP...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ij02vzUijQM/Td6x_8jISdI/AAAAAAAAAPM/YCYbMqeawtk/s1600/RealReturns.jpg)).
Usually the best as an individual is real estate. Buy stuff you like that is
not stupid overpriced with borrowed money. Come back 10 years later and the
real value of the borrowed money will be down, property probably up. It's
probably the most common way people get wealthy.

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AYBABTME
Not getting a degree pretty much only applies as a viable option for US
citizens.

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lifeisstillgood
it's pretty good advice for 49 year olds too

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michaelochurch
_Even if you want to be a VC, you’re much better off starting or joining a
startup, and getting partner offers when you’re 28. Plus, good founders want
to work with an investor that has operational experience._

This is the kind of misleading startup bullshit that needs to stop. The vast
majority of people who enter the startup racket are _not_ getting partner-
level VC offers 9 years later.

The VC Valhalla that awaits failed startup founders doesn't really exist.

That happens if you get extremely lucky (< 0.01%) or have rich parents, in
which case normal advice doesn't apply.

If you want to be a VC, get a Harvard MBA. It's a lot easier than doing a
startup (you're competing against MBAs instead of hackers, which means that
what good programmers would consider average intelligence would put you in the
top 5%) and the path is surer. The reason risk-averse people prefer the MBA
path is because (surprise?) it's more likely to work.

