

Ask YC: Do entrepreneurs have business or compsci degrees? - kajecounterhack

As a high schooler nearing that college level, my question is whether people who create startups (generally I'm talking about web startups) should go for business or for programming in college? Perhaps a mix of both?
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nostrademons
Go for programming. Hard skills are much more valuable than soft ones in the
early days of your company. You'll need the soft skills eventually, if you get
big & political, but in order to get to that stage you need to do the work
yourself.

Also, business skills are often very context-dependent. What works for
McKinsey probably doesn't work for Coca-Cola, which doesn't work for SAP,
which doesn't work for Microsoft, which doesn't work for Apple, which doesn't
work for Google. Ignoring this fact led to disasters like John Sculley and
AOL/Time Warner. While if you learn to hack, you know that there's at least
one path that's guaranteed to get you to working software, and then you can
assess the context from there.

Stay alert to business issues though, and try to learn all you can about
business on your own time. If there's an entrepreneurs' club, join it; the
club itself is probably useless, but they often do practical projects that
give you some real experience. If you can, start a side business like web
design or software contracting or tutoring in college (I didn't, but I wish I
had).

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xirium
Study hard science. However, if you like computers then don't study computing.
The people who will judge you by your qualifications can barely find their way
around their own desktop. Therefore, they are unqualified to judge your skill
with or without a qualification. Some people think that people computing
doesn't extend much beyond Microsoft Office. To such ignorant people you may
as well have a degree in Excel and, well, anyone can do that, heh?

Instead, study something like astrophysics or Electrical Engineering. You'll
get access to great hardware in addition to computing facilities. You'll learn
overlapping topics. You won't restrict your options. You'll also get more
respect when you've finished.

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nostrademons
Caveat: if you really _love_ computers, don't shy away from them.

I started as a physics major, for exactly the reasons above. Problem was, I
couldn't keep my mind off programming, which made my performance in physics
courses somewhat lackluster. Most of the hard sciences are not stuff you can
just blow off and mostly-understand, like, say, sociology. You need to have
some dedication to do well in them. It's hard to have that kind of dedication
to _both_ CS and physics (I know some people that have pulled it off, but
they're often very narrow in other respects of their life).

People qualified to judge you won't judge you by _what_ degree you have - but
they will judge you by how well you know your strengths and can make decisions
to emphasize those strengths. If you're really passionate about computers,
they'd rather see you pursue that passion rather than dick around with
something you don't really care about.

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nkohari
I have a B.S. in computer science, with a minor in business administration. My
university offered courses in entrepreneurship, so I took advantage of those
for my minor electives.

Definitely go for a technical degree over business. You'll be able to learn
more about business through experience than you will about software
development. Just my opinion.

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danielha
Paraphrasing pg, it's easier for a hacker to learn business than a business
guy to learn hacking.

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falsestprophet
You don't need to major in computer science to learn to program properly. You
definitely don't need a degree in business to be an entrepreneur.

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NoBSWebDesign
Study what you think you will enjoy the most. The vast majority of what you
learn in college comes not from classes, but from your friends, networking,
and extra-curricular activities. Education is nice, but developing as a person
is the real value of going to college.

If you love to read and are naturally interested, any subject is easy to
pickup and learn. I went to school for engineering, and I found business,
programming, and web design all relatively easy to pick up (though easy
doesn't necessarily imply that there was little time-investment involved,
quite the contrary).

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rokhayakebe
neither

