

Ask YC: How did you escape the pressures of school? - iamdave

I'm realizing that I haven't learned a single new thing in two years of school, and I'm fully prepared to drop out at the end of this semester and focus on business endeavors.  My only fear is the student loan I'll have to pay back.<p>How many of you were able to escape the student loan barrier in life and succeed after dropping out, if that's the route you took.
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hacklite
Perhaps this list of _billionaire dropouts_ may have some relevance to the
topic at hand:

<http://www.pennylicious.com/2006/10/09/billionaire-dropouts/>

Also listen to Steve Jobs talk about dropping out in his commencement speech:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+commencement>

Dropping out is one of the worst things you can do if you want a _job_ , and
one of the best things you can do if you want to make sure you won't end up in
one. Essentially you throw yourself in the deep end with nothing to "fall back
on".

~~~
neilc
I'm really skeptical that there's a _causal_ relationship between dropping out
and subsequently becoming a billionaire, or otherwise very wealthy. There may
be a correlation (both require independent thinking, etc.), but I think most
of those billionaires would have been as successful or even more so if they'd
have spent the time to finish school.

And looking at a handful of examples of billionaire dropouts and then
generalizing more broadly is pretty silly: that is pure selection bias. You
could also look at the set of billionaires who are, say, born in June and draw
similar conclusions. Either way, you're ignoring the vast number of common
cases in favor of a few spectacular exceptions.

~~~
hacklite
Sure, if you throw yourself in the deep end, you may sink to the bottom.
However, those who make it out will be better swimmers than those who stay in
the kiddie pool, that's all.

> but I think most of those billionaires would have been as successful or even
> more so if they'd have spent the time to finish school.

Dropping out can be a necessary condition due to timing reasons alone. Gates
dropped out of Harvard because he was worried about missing his chance to make
it big in the computer industry. There's also the non-trivial issue of losing
your most energetic years as a young adult (18-22) by spending them on
something other than your life ambition. Not to mention, if you aren't
interested in college and _force_ yourself to do it, that may well have such a
spirit-crushing/soul-numbing effect that you kill off your own motivation to
the point where you lose your drive to DO your own company. It depends on your
personality.

I think for the most part, ambition to take over the world as an entrepreneur
is incompatible with jumping through _anyone_ else's hoops, including sitting
in class and doing what someone else tells you.

So it's not that dropping out makes you a world-changer, but staying _in_ is
frustrating to the ambitions of world-changers.

If you look at the Forbes 2007 list of richest Americans who didn't inherit
their wealth, you get 1. Gates (college dropout), 3. Adelson (college
dropout), 4. Ellison (college dropout), 5 and 6. Brin and Page (grad school
dropouts), 7. Kerkorian (8th grade dropout!), 8. Dell (college dropout), 9.
Allen (college dropout). Only Warren Buffet at #2 didn't drop out of school at
some level, but he was already established in business before he went to
college, and only went because his father pressured him into it. He hated it.
(I left out the Koches because they inherited Koch Industries.)

The causal effect is that the same thing that drives them to be successful
also drove them to drop out.

~~~
neilc
I think you can easily get into trouble by looking at only the very richest
people: by definition, they are the 1-in-a-million who took the right risks,
and got fantastically lucky. Dropping out could very well be high risk, high
reward -- but that doesn't mean the overall expected value is particularly
high.

    
    
      Dropping out can be a necessary condition due to timing reasons alone.
    

Sure, if you're sitting on an opportunity that is truly once-in-a-lifetime,
then dropping out can be justified. But I think that is almost always not the
case: if you have opportunities now, you'll have opportunities in a few years
once you graduate. Good business ideas are not scarce.

    
    
      There's also the non-trivial issue of losing your most
      energetic years as a young adult (18-22) by spending them
      on something other than your life ambition.
    

I think more people should view entrepreneurship as a _career_ , not as
something you do for a few years in your early 20s to make a few quick bucks.
IMHO you have 20+ years to start businesses, and there's not much to be gained
by rushing. The long-term value of a good education is considerable:
credentials, quality of life, networking, and simply a much broader base of
knowledge.

~~~
hacklite
> if you have opportunities now, you'll have opportunities in a few years once
> you graduate.

Sure, but not all opportunities are created equal. Think how different things
would be if Gates waited a couple years, or Woz and Jobs, or even the Google
guys. Google would have incorporated right around the dot-bust and likely
would've tanked because it wouldn't have had those couple years to become
established first. If ViaWeb had waited a couple years then instead of selling
to Yahoo in 1998 they would have run into the bust as well, making it that
much harder to get bought. WebTV would've missed out on two years' worth of
being viable back when websites were designed for 640x480. Microsoft would
have been a couple years behind and would've missed the IBM deal.

In this industry, a couple of years is a _long_ time and things are constantly
moving, so there's always an incredible opportunity cost for waiting.

On the flip side, college will always be there. Woz went back and got his
degree after Apple went public.

> I think more people should view entrepreneurship as a career, not as
> something you do for a few years in your early 20s to make a few quick
> bucks.

You can do it as long as you want. However, as an oldie, I can tell you that
my productivity level was MUCH higher when I was younger. In the 18-22 range,
this stuff is EXCITING. You've never DONE it before. Everything motivates you!

I don't think it's an accident Reddit was done by guys that age. It's such a
simple site with a boring design that people with massively more experience
wouldn't even _bother_ to do something like it. But they started out in Lisp,
so it was an adventure! Then they learned Python and rewrote it. New and
interesting!

Nothing substitutes for enthusiasm because enthusiasm leads to getting things
_done_. New things are exciting. Youth = inexperience = more things are new
and therefore exciting and so you have more enthusiasm. Youth also means
higher hormone levels, which means more energy and caring about things more
and being irrational by expending irrational amounts of energy on projects
that interest you. Lower hormone levels mean indifference or just talking
about something but not having the excitement level needed to break your
energy-conservation threshold and DO it.

~~~
cheponis
Also as an oldie, I'd say my productivity today is the highest it has ever
been. How do I keep myself motivated? By constantly being a beginner. I do web
programming, GUI programming, embedded systems, drivers, unix, mac, PC, bare
metal, lisp, python, C, dozens of assembly languages, Verilog, hardware,
analog, RF, antennas, etc.

In my opinion, you are just making excuses for why you are less productive
than you should be; it's called rationalization. ;-)

My advice is to dive in to some area of s/w (or whatever) that you don't know
at all (i.e. become a beginner) and see if that doesn't spark your excitement
again. It does for me, over and over again!

~~~
hacklite
If you're constantly a beginner, your productivity is not going to be high.
That's a given.

I'm not sure why you thought I'd need your psychoanalysis or advice :) We have
different neurobiology.

I've dived into new things many times. It's just not exciting to me the way it
was when I was younger.

~~~
cheponis
I think you're depressed.

But, you're right: why should I care?

------
aristus
I went to community college for the first 60 credits, at $50/credit. I
financed that with a part-time job and picking a college 2 miles from my
parent's house. By the time I dropped out I was... gosh a couple grand
positive, no credit cards & no debt.

Maybe I'm missng something, but at least the first couple years of college
don't have to be $900/credit plus dorm plus xyz extravaganzas. You're taking
mostly required crap like Science credits and English 2. At least that way if
you decide college is not for you, you haven't mortgaged your future.

~~~
SwellJoe
I also went this path, and never ended up getting a degree worth noting. I'd
recommend against it.

Sure, I've made a good living since then and have never had a hard time
getting a job when I wanted one (I've mostly consulted and ran my own
businesses), but there are a lot of opportunities closed off to me. I've
gotten recruitment letters from Google, among others, based on my Open Source
work and a book I wrote a few years back, but I suspect strongly (and with
ample knowledge of the Google hiring process and requirements) I wouldn't
actually be able to get a job at Google today (maybe three or four years ago,
but the "elite university" bar has become far more important these days).

So, if I ever really wanted to try the everyday normal software developer
lifestyle...ya know, go to work for about 40 hours each week, eat free food,
enjoy subsidized massages, call the ergonomics team when my bottom feels funny
in my chair, make enough money to buy big TVs and a Prius but not enough to
buy property in the valley, etc. I almost certainly would not have that
option. I could contract for any number of small and large businesses, and I
have, but being an "employee" with all of the good and bad that comes with
that, at any place where I would consider working, is unlikely.

Having those options is nice...at 18 or 19, it's hard to know exactly what one
will want out of life. I'm content with the path I've taken, but I'm sure I
wouldn't regret having spent my college years at a good school instead of
screwing around at community college, either.

~~~
nostrademons
For a counterpoint...I worked for a year, went to an elite college, got a
degree, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it either. Yeah, I could probably get
hired at Google if I wanted, but I _don't_ want to - and the rest of my resume
isn't nearly as impressive as yours is.

If you're bright and independent-minded, the opportunity cost of that 4 years
of college is _huge_. I did very little related to computers in those 4 years
- I did get my degree in CS, and I worked on a large volunteer website, and I
did a couple projects for my school, but I spent most of my time there as a
physics major or trying out various liberal-arts classes. I graduated when I
was 24. I have a friend that's 23, and he's currently maintaining 2 open
source projects, formerly on another one (LiveJournal), has a good job in a
specialized niche, previously had been a startup cofounder that went bust
really quick, and has done webmonkey consulting for dozens of different
organizations.

So I dunno. As you say, the problem is that it's impossible to tell ahead of
time what you want out of life. When I was 20 and entering college, I sorta
instinctively knew I wanted to be a startup software engineer (which is what I
wanted at 19) yet told myself I wanted to be a theoretical physicist (which is
what I wanted at 18) and went to a liberal arts school (which is what I wanted
at 17). If it turns out you were wrong when you were young, then you thank
your lucky stars that you went to that elite college and have many doors open
before you. But if it turns out you were right, then you might be cursing
yourself for the lost time spent hedging your bets instead of developing your
specialty.

One other thing: doors do slam shut if you choose not to walk through them. I
have friends who are in their late 20s or early 30s, straight-A alums of this
elite college, and they've had a series of temp jobs because they couldn't
decide what they wanted to do with their life. They're finding now that
they're on the "no career" career. And while most of them are reasonably happy
with their lives, they can't go _back_ to the investment bank or biotech
research lab or big software company that they turned down a job from upon
graduation.

------
martythemaniak
I find it hard to believe you haven't learned anything in two years. Unless
you're a genius, you're probably not approaching it the right way.

As for student loans, I had a 16 month internship between 3rd and 4th years of
university that paid well, so that allowed me to cover my loans from the first
three years, get a ton of experience and save up for 4th year. I graduated
without debt and some money in the bank, but the price was, a living very
cheaply for a very long time. For example, I am 24 and I still don't own a car
- that's more cheaply that many people can tolerate...

~~~
hacklite
The first two years are typically gen ed and are often not aligned with a
student's particular interests. This can make someone feel like it's a waste
of time. If they feel that way, then they aren't going to be in a receptive
state for learning, even though technically the material is new to them -- it
holds no interest.

"If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the
police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college
how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of
teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what
you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of
delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted
to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies
elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a
pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening
to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking
is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is
an ungracious work to put on a professor." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

------
goofygrin
I took a semester between HS and college to move back to the US (I was in
south america). Best move ever since I was on the fence about school and
working with my uncle at a sewer and drain cleaning business (and plumbing
too) gave me a great reality check.

I then went to a state school where, except for one semester, I worked full
time and school full time for 2.5 years (1 $4,500 student loan only and about
$2k in credit card debt + a car loan). I got an offer for a $35k a year job in
Dallas through a friend and quit my $7.50 an hour job the next week.

Took another semester off and then continued taking classes in the evenings
and weekends at a community college and local commuter college.

When I finally graduated it was basically a non-event for me (didn't walk or
send announcements) since I realixed I'd just paid $30k for a piece of paper
that is a one liner on my resume and that really didn't teach me much.

So, like I tell lots of people these days, take the basics at a community
college, take the upper level classes at a college and just get the paper
since unless you're going into the hedge fund business or med/law school noone
cares about your grades, just that you have a degree.

Of course if you own your own business, noone cares about a degree :)

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vikas5678
Not sure why you havent done useful things already, there's a ton of things
you can do as a student, and IMO, dropping out should not be one of them. Why
didnt you be a part of an open source project? Why didnt you write useful
little applications for yourself? Why not try and get an internship? The
problem with dropping out is, if things go bad with your buisness, you dont
have the cushion of getting a regular job, all you are left with is the scars
of a failed buisness, all your friends in good jobs, no college degree and not
sure of income and the lack of social life you have as a result of all this.

------
cpr
It really depends on what you mean by "school." There's an almost incomparable
qualitative difference between Stanford (or Harvard, my alma mater) and your
local community college, if you're talking about a CS degree.

But college these days is pretty much a waste of time, except as a trade
school (even Stanford or Harvard, to be brutally realistic). Everything else
has been so compromised by the everything-is-relative PC mush-heads that it's
not worth even $50/credit, much less nearly $2,000 at the big-name schools.

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bluelu
If you don't learn a single new thing, why don't you just continue school and
do your business enadeavors at the same time. You should have plenty of time?

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phaedrus
Geometric shielding. I stayed away from class except on test days.

Don't drop out though. I got pressured by a company to drop out and go work
for them; I didn't do it and it turned out they went out of business anyway.
Moreover, they _knew_ they were headed to going out of business, but they
still tried to convince me dropping out to work for them was a good idea. It's
not.

------
markbao
I'm a high school student -- and I feel exactly the same way (I haven't
learned many useful things.)

Work, network, and work more are what keeps me going.

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thinkcomp
In order to escape the pressures of high school, I started a company. It was
something I had control over. In order to escape the pressures of college, I
graduated a year early. Then I wrote a book about the pressures of school!

~~~
yangyang42
> Then I wrote a book about the pressures of school!

I thought you write about how you got screwed by Zuckerberg.

~~~
thinkcomp
I wrote some about Facebook, too, but the majority of the book is actually
about school. The topics are related.

------
trekker7
Are you allowed to take a leave of absence, without any penalty?

~~~
streblo
Depends on what kind of penalty you mean. I know at my university you can take
a leave of absence for a semester with no academic penalty, but most people
wouldn't do it because they're afraid of how it would look on a
transcript/resume.

~~~
phaedrus
Have to watch out though if you have scholarships. Some of them have the
equivalent of a self-destruct clause that can be triggered by taking just one
semester off. In order to take a NASA internship for one semester, I had to
get approval all the way to the top of the chain (president of the university)
or I would have permanently lost my tuition scholarship. As it was, although I
had administrative approval, when I came back the _computer_ system
automatically marked me as a "dropout" and I was blocked out of most log-ins.
Took a year to get me reinstated in some of the systems.

