
If Only I Knew This Shit in College - DanielRibeiro
http://zachholman.com/talk/if-only-i-knew-this-shit-in-college/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+holman+%28zachholman.com%29
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rgbrenner
I think this can be summed up as: The startup I work at was successful,
therefore starts ups are great.

Where is the speech from the burnt out entrepreneur who lost all their
savings... They might have a little bit different perspective.

~~~
ryderm
Working as a programmer at a startup is different than starting one. I don't
think that he is saying to start your own.

~~~
rgbrenner
Fair enough. Then I would like to see the speech from the employee who jumped
ship from their stable job at BigCorp to a startup that went bust 6 months
later. Or the person who works at the slow-growth startup where little
exciting happens because the company never really goes viral (or whatever),
but he's still expected to work 60 hours a week.

The chances that the startup you go to work for is the next GitHub is
incredibly small.

~~~
aeontech
I think your viewpoint is unduly pessimistic. Yes, if you're a Java programmer
at a BigCorp, you can be making considerably more than a programmer at a
startup. But a programmer at a startup is still making considerably more than
average income in this country. Yes, some startups are badly managed and burn
out their employees. But I've seen plenty of death marches at BigCorps -
witness the tales of terror from the game industry especially.

In the end it's up to you to judge the company for both human and career
aspects, and to choose wisely who you work for. In ten years of working in the
bay area, I have not regretted working for startups once. In short - mileage
will vary.

~~~
rgbrenner
I'm merely balancing out the unduly optimistic powerpoint slides.

~~~
achompas
He actually devotes a few slides to picking the right company (the part about
the company being a burning money pit or whatever). I think you're reading a
whole lot of optimism that isn't there.

------
ChuckMcM
This is a really interesting discussion.

We've seen a number of times people who are completely clueless about work
when they get out of college. And we've seen people who are so engaged that
they don't even finish college because the stuff they are working on takes
over.

Between those two extremes are a whole bunch of people with questions, and I
read the presentation as something Zach would have liked to have known when he
was in that 'I'm in college but soon won't be, now what' phase. Clearly his
advice isn't for everyone. I heard a talk at "career expo" from some guy in
the enterprise consulting business and I immediately knew that "enterprise
consulting" was not a career path I wanted to pursue.

Zach clearly works at a startup because it is _fun_. For him. For others it
may not be. I personally like the shorter decision cycles that a smaller
company offers, but see the appeal that a more established company can offer.
Some of my best jobs have been where the company was small when I joined and
then got big enough that I didn't have to worry about it going away without
some notice.

Working 60, 70, 80 hrs a week on something you don't like is not fun. I would
strongly recommend you not do it. Working 40 hrs a week at BigCo that you
don't enjoy at least frees up 20, 30, or 40 hrs a week to work on stuff you do
like.

It seemed like Zach was saying do startups because you enjoy doing them, not
because you want to get rich. You can get plenty wealthy working at BigCorp
and participating in the employee stock program and socking away your 15% into
your 401k. The warning though is that if you're doing this to get rich, you
might want to re-check that. There is a lot of luck with getting rich, there
is a lot of fun by following your passions.

The last bit is the 'unsuccessful startup' thing. Since a lot of startups fail
at one time or another, it helps to think about that ahead of time. Since
startups you weren't even at fail all the time you should re-assure yourself
that it isn't your fault. The only personal failure you can have with a
startup is that you don't learn anything. If you're not learning _something_
you are doing it wrong. Lots of ways things can go right, lots of ways they
can go wrong, and sometimes both on the same day.

Think of your career as a 25 - 50 year journey and realize that you the prize
is learning a lot. At some point you drop dead and just before that, its nice
to be able to look back fondly of the previous years.

~~~
justinlilly
There's less luck with getting rich than you might expect, assuming "rich"
means "don't need to work anymore". Check into the early retirement scene for
examples. earlyretirementextreme.com or mrmoneymustache.com are great
examples.

~~~
Swizec
Rich is a sucker's game. What you want to be is wealthy.

 _that_ takes a lot of luck. Rich is a result of hard work, wealth is a result
of hard work plus luck.

Where rich means "I can afford practically anything I want" and wealthy means
"My money makes so much money I could stop actively working and have more
money when I die than I do now. Possibly enough for several generations."

------
ruswick
I find his hyper-self-deprecating tone at the beginning of the talk to be a
little off-putting. He's obviously fairly qualified considering that he
managed to secure a job at Github (which is a very well respected company that
is, at least anecdotally, incredibly selective with their employees) and was
invited to speak at a school. He obviously must have inordinate tallent or we
wouldn't be reading these slides.

In addition, the slides were pretty unsubstantive. He took ~70 slides to
convey 1) startups are fun; and 2) don't be a sociopath and/or a recluse.

~~~
jarjoura
Harsh! To be fair, it's meant for students at the university to see a real-
life success story from their program. My school had these all the time and
used them as a way to keep people engaged.

~~~
dalke
How often do students learn about real-life failure stories? For famous
historical examples with books about them: GO Corp (1990-era pen computing)
and the Chandler project (personal information manager, mid 2000).

I've personally found some stories about failures to be quite informative,
because they help show failure modes I had never suspected. But I had to learn
about most of these post-school.

------
unimpressive
This whole: "Publish the slides without the talk" trend is starting to piss me
off.

I'd rather have a 30 minute long mp3 of the talk.

~~~
holman
Me too. That was the plan for this one, but it didn't work out.

Sorry you're pissed.

~~~
knowledgesale
hey, thanks for the slides and the talk, they are stunning.

What tools did you use to create the presentation slides? What fonts are
these? How did you decide upon this color scheme?

~~~
thetabyte
Check out this post he wrote:

<http://zachholman.com/posts/slide-design-for-developers/>

~~~
shurcooL
That's neat. It still leaves one related question unaswered for me. How would
one go about making something like this [1] (but with arbitrary similar
changes)?

[1] <http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/6721/imagehy.png>

------
dvt
Even though I'm sure just about everyone here on HN will somewhat agree with
the gist of the slides (startups are fun!), I'm not sure if this is good
advice for students. I'm 27 and just now finishing up my undergraduate degree
(at a top 10 US university) as I took several years doing various startup
stuff and working. Most of my friends have already been done with their
degrees for a while -- a very small minority work in start-ups. The start-up
world is NOT for most people. To be successful (which I am not, don't get me
wrong) you have to be very smart and technical, but you also need luck, good
timing, and (most importantly) persistence.

In many ways, the start-up world is like professional body-building. Sure
genes can help (genius prodigy 16 year old goes to MIT), but what really makes
you a winner is persistence. Also, steroids can't hurt (connections in the
Valley).

Most college students are NOT fit for the start-up world. At all. Especially
considering CS departments have taken a dive since the late 90s.

~~~
eric-hu
> To be successful (which I am not, don't get me wrong) you have to be very
> smart and technical, but you also need luck, good timing, and (most
> importantly) persistence.

Do you mean that you need these things be a cofounder in a successful startup?
If so, I'd agree.

If you mean to define everyone's personal success on these terms, though, then
I beg to differ. Zach's slides clearly state that the startup world is for
him. Slide 27 ("You'll be filthy rich"--crossed out) even sets the tone that
it's not something you do for the money.

There's a world of difference between various types of startups. Each will
deliver different employee experiences. Consider whether the company is
bootstrapped or VC-funded (even within VC-funded startups, is it Series A, B,
or C?). Being employee (developer) #1, #5, #10 or #25 are all likely to be
very different as well. Oh and of course, is the company already profitable or
not?

> you have to be very smart and technical

This talk was given at Carnegie Mellon--I'm willing to bet the people
graduating are both smart and technical.

> but you also need luck, good timing, and (most importantly) persistence.

I'm not sure why someone following his advice would need luck, timing and
persistence. My interpretation of this talk is that he's encouraging people to
work for startups, not found them. Github launched in 2008 and Holman joined
in 2010. Github was operated profitably since the founders started the company
[1]. As far as salary goes, Zach was probably looking at a comfortable--not
handsome--but consistent salary.

[1] [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-
profitable-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-
proud-github)

~~~
dvt
I think you make fair points and I don't have any strong disagreements. And
it's true that I may have extrapolated "working for a start-up" to "founding a
start-up."

However, I really do think that places like Github aren't dime a dozen and
even calling Github a _start-up_ (at this point, or even in 2010) would be
somewhat of a misnomer. Working for a start-up seems to be defined by "wearing
many hats" as the presentation states. The "wearing many hats" phase generally
only occurs in the early phases of a start-up. That's where my extrapolation
stems from.

And don't forget that many start-ups go under (again, we're talking about
actual start-ups here, not Github in 2013). This was briefly mentioned in the
presentation. But again, I don't think most college grads are resilient enough
to handle that. I guess I just have a very serious problem with the
romanticization of start-up culture -- it's a jungle out there.

~~~
eric-hu
Those concerns are valid, but I disagree with you about college grads lacking
that resilience. By your own admission you've been through some start ups.
Could you handle it? What does it mean to not be able to handle it?

I think this touches on the core of the talk--people are afraid to jump into
the startup world because they don't think they can handle it. It sounds like
he's saying it's not that bad. Your company may fail, yes...but then you just
get out there and find a new company to work for.

Zach Holman was Github employee number 9 [1]. I'd say they were a startup at
that time. His perspective is obviously colored by their success, but they
only sought funding 2 years later. Still, the definition of 'startup' is
indeed vague, and PG wrote an essay on it [2]. I interpret PG's definition--a
company designed to scale fast--to mean that so long as a company is growing
by a multiplicative factor, it's still a startup.

[1] <http://zachholman.com/posts/scaling-github-employees/>

[2] <http://paulgraham.com/growth.html>

------
alainbryden
"Github got me kicked out of the bar"

These headline is super intriguing. Too bad this is only a set of topic title
slides with no context or elaboration.

Nice slideshow I guess?

~~~
rhizome
Check out all the utm junk in the URL, the purpose of its presence here lies
elsewhere.

~~~
danpalmer
What do you mean? It's Feedburner, isn't that all normal stuff that Feedburner
adds to the URL?

~~~
rhizome
The question is why to post a Feedburner URL rather than the destination.

~~~
danpalmer
The thread creator was not the author, I assume he copied out of his RSS
client after reading the article.

------
ryanSrich
I'd actually disagree with working for a startup when first graduating. The
thing to do is get the highest paying job and kill off all your debt, then be
picky.

------
jordn
_"You won't regret positive feedback."_

This was the standout quote from this pack for me, because I think positivity
opens up a lot more doors than the realistic skeptical viewpoint which is (at
least my) default. Would others agree? Or is there some time when you've given
positive feedback and caused unrectifiable damage?

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
My main hesitation is if someone only gives positive feedback, especially
without varying the intensity, that person's feedback can become just noise.
If you are relying on a signal in that type of feedback, it certainly can be
damaging due to omission or overstating.

------
InclinedPlane
There is almost no content here. "Go work at a startup, concentrate on working
on the product more and less on bullshit." Yeah, that's great advice. It's
like telling someone to get rich by making more money.

There is literally no hard or interesting question that has even the vaguest
outline of an answer here.

------
faro1975
Not sure somebody who worked in only two companies for short periods should be
giving such "life experience" talks, making some broad generalizations and
giving advice.

How about a PoV from somebody with 30 years of experience, 6 countries, 14
companies which includes 5 startups (3 very profitable exits and 2 failures)
as well as big corporates?

Sure, working for a Global 2000 sometimes sucks. In 9 out of 10 times your
impact on a product might be lower, you might be spending too much time in
meetings and you might have a PHB.

But you know what? 9 out of 10 times your startup work will suck too. You
might still end up with a PHB. Your amazing product ideas might be rejected.
You might end up working 100h weeks and not get paid at all for weeks.

Even after all my startup experience I prefer working for large corporations.
Number of times I was able to build and justify a business case for using
latest and coolest technology. I got to envision and develop products which
were backed by up to 100M in funding. I got to wear more hats than in a
startup. I get paid 400K+ per year + an occasional nice surprise of a full
year bonus.

There's many more people you have to deal with in a large corporation and many
times those people will be close minded, selfish and not interested in your
ideas. It did frustrate me for a while, but then I started approaching it like
any other technology problem, learned more about applied psychology,
negotiations, facilitation and now I enjoy the combination of dealing with
people problems, policies and technology problems at the same time.

------
chrishenn
As a Senior in high school who already works in a startup, I have another
question: what shit should I being trying to learn in college?

There's a prominent attitude here that a degree in CS isn't all that
practical—work experience matters more. What _should_ I try to get from
college? Just wondering if anyone can chime in.

~~~
thedufer
I graduated pretty recently, but I can tell you what I thought was most
helpful.

-Lots of language exposure. Take classes in different languages (classes comparing languages are even better). I find it difficult to learn new languages, particularly new paradigms, without the help of someone who knows them.

-Low-level stuff. Assembly, basic electronics, C. These are the topics I found classes covered the best (compared to learning on my own). It's not directly relevant to my job, but I just have a generally better sense of how computers work.

-Work in groups. I didn't do enough of this, and I think it handicapped me a bit. This is less applicable to you than to most people entering college, since you are presumably doing that at your startup.

~~~
chrishenn
Thanks. The low level stuff certainly seems like a good thing to learn—I made
an effort to read Code[0] a while back and most of it went over my head. The
high level programming languages most people work in today are abstracted to a
point where it's extremely hard to see their relation to the low level stuff.
It would be nice to understand that link better.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-
Softwa...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-
Software/dp/0735611319/)

------
achompas
Many of the comments in here are of the form "hey well of COURSE you love
startups you work at one of the most successful startups in existence."

I think that's a poor representation of the talk's main points. He actually
provides a level comparison of the pros (freedom of technology, ability to
impact the product directly) with the cons (wake up, kid--you're not working
at Luckygram, and the company might fail) of working at a startup. He doesn't
characterize startup life as money tree horticulture at all!

More importantly, he spends more than a few slides discussing the human side
of development. This is something I've run into recently too, and it's nice to
remember that problems aren't always solved with code.

------
head-chef
I'd work at a startup if the amount of work expected was reasonable.

------
jarjoura
It's quite common to leave school/university and enter a big corporation that
provides more than financial benefits. As someone without any experience,
surrounding yourself with brilliant people is humbling for one.

Also I found myself learning far more than school ever taught me.

After a tour of duty at a big company then startups make the most sense,
bringing your experience and connections into a world where you can learn to
think outside your specialities and have a far larger direct impact on a
company.

~~~
bicx
This is exactly what I did. I think to be really beneficial to a startup, you
need to have at least a little experience in the industry. Big corporations
are a good place to learn the ropes, since they usually have lots people to
cover for you while you learn. Once you've become a productive part of a team,
it's also a great place to discover that the corporate model can kill your
spirit. :)

------
ggreer
I'm sure there's an interesting story behind "the GitHub interview got me
kicked out of a bar."

That's actually a pretty good heuristic. If you go to an interview and end up
getting kicked out of a bar or waking up with your head shaved, you are pretty
much guaranteed an offer. And you should totally accept it.

~~~
svnhub
I love bid-week! Wait...

------
websitescenes
I felt like I could here the talk just from reading the bullet points. I know
some of these things and some things I knew and forgot or hadn't considered.
It is good to have a check against other professionals guiding compasses. Thx
for sharing.

------
kmfrk
I know this accompanied an in-person presentation, but I still feel that it
should be repurposed in a way that summarizes all the main points - of which
it makes a lot, albeit spread over way too many slides.

------
riffic
Slide 24 is a joke right? if not, I'd love to know how you've implemented
Brainfuck in production code.

*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>

------
kayoone
sounds so easy but those kind of jobs are rare. I currently work for a web
startup in the enterprise business and they really like meetings and planning
milestones to be able to show investors were we are and how we are doing. I
dont like it but given that its a pretty massive project, i dont really know
how to improve it.

Cool slides, but does 5 years of work experience already make someone under 30
a senior programmer? i know titles dont mean much and all, but in that case it
doesnt really add any value anymore.

------
5vforest
It's easy to hate on this presentation as "unsubstantive" and biased, but if I
could had heard this talk when I was in c̶o̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶ high school, it would
have inspired me in a big way.

------
sliverstorm
This seems like an excessive number of slides considering the content of each
slide. I gave up around slide 70.

~~~
victorhn
They are 71.

------
jameshsi
these are awesome slides and a great embodiment of presentation zen. thanks
for sharing

------
adamnemecek
TL;DR: Startups=good

Thanks, good to know.

------
watermel0n
As student. Thank you.

------
igz
It should be "if I had only known". Grammar is important.

------
softbuilder
I want to know the Github kicked-out-of-bar story.

------
sjtgraham
Holman makes good looking slide decks.

------
theltrj
love the target audience

------
michaelochurch
I'm sure Zach is a brilliant guy but it's not a very good slide deck.

He lists "nosql" as a technology that it's easier to use outside of the big-
company matrix. There is no such thing as "nosql". There are various
databases. There is the relational database which solves its problem
excellently and whose limitations are well-known and sometimes very painful,
especially when dealing with huge amounts (multi-node) of data. There are
other data models with different trade-offs. There is no such thing as
"nosql". It is not a technology or skill or anything else. There's Cassandra
and MongoDB and Redis and various others, but there isn't a "NoSQL". I can't
type "nosql start" at the command line and get anything useful to happen.

Sorry, I had to do that.

Also, Zach works at Github and I've heard that it's an amazing place. Great!
I'm glad he works for the rare good company and hasn't lost his passion. I
hope he never does. Still, I don't think he knows what VC-istan startups are
like for most engineers. He works in a company that (from what I'm hearing) is
successful enough that it can stay in Real Technology and keep the work
interesting.

For most, VC-istan is not "a great industry, even without the millions". The
millions are the goddamn fucking point. The millions determine who gets to be
CEO and CTO and call the shots, and what shots are called. The millions
determine which projects the company can afford and which are nice-to-haves
and which are ignored. The millions are why people will sacrifice their 20s to
implement the lame idea of some well-connected guy who went to boarding school
with the VCs.

If you're Working For Money, which most people are, and you're not making
some... you're doing things wrong. This is not a judgment; I think most of us
will make a bad call at least once.

He's in Real Technology, and bless him, but that makes him biased. He works in
_a good company_ and so he gets interesting work, so he's happy even if he's
not a millionaire. That's a different thing. If you work in social media
startups and answer to non-technical managers and don't make "fuck-you money"
within 10 years then, guess what, you lost.

If Only I Knew That Shit Before I Was Almost 30.

~~~
markov_twain
Even worse, he lists "brainfuck" as a technology that's easier to use outside
of the big-company matrix. There is no such thing as "brainfuck". There are
various dialects and derivative languages. There is the object-oriented
programming language which solves its problem excellently and whose
limitations are well-known and sometimes very painful, especially when dealing
with huge amounts (multi-node) of data. There are other models of computation
with different trade-offs. There is no such thing as "brainfuck". It is not a
technology or skill or anything else. There's Toadskin and Smallfuck and
Doublefuck and various others, but there isn't a "BrainFuck". I can't type
"brainfuck start" at the command line and get anything useful to happen.

Sorry, I had to do that.

~~~
Haasy
Brainfuck does exist. It's an esoteric programming language.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>

~~~
duggieawesome
Pretty sure markov_twain was being sarcastic.

~~~
Haasy
Ah. Didn't quite catch that. My apologies.

------
OGinparadise
"If Only I Knew This Shit in College"

You should give this type of talk after 20 years and 5-10 jobs or at least
students should hear the other side...you know, the 'I spent 4 years at a
start-up hoping to strike it rich, worked 80 hour days, depression kicked in,
stock options are valued at negative considering taxes and my last two
paychecks bounced.'

~~~
kevando
Lots of hate in this thread. It's just a cool _personal_ tale of lessons
learned after college. Just because he works at giyhub doesn't make his word
golden.

------
svnhub
Wait what does Zach Holman actually do besides blog and make funny faces?
Honestly...

~~~
blakeshall
Not sure if you're joking or didn't make it to the "Don't be an Asshole"
slide...

