Ask HN: Should I drop out of college to go work at a startup?

[MPetitt]

I am a sophomore cs major that has been programming since high school, and working full time as a front-end dev and designer for two years while doing other stuff like node.js, rails, and python for a year or so in my free time. I have recently been talking to a few startups reps for about jobs and have been thinking about dropping out and moving to SF. Am I less hirable without a degree? Will my experience make up for the education? Anyone been in this situation?

[adultSwim]

No.

You can actually learn useful things at college. Take advantage of that. Over the long term, knowing technology X or Y matters way less than knowing the fundamentals.

I didn't realize I had a great CS education until I started working. I see a lot of my peers (both who went to college and who didn't) who can program but don't know enough.

Truly learn how a computer works. There shouldn't be any magic.

Write a compiler.

[marcomassaro]

I think it depends on the school you go to. If you're going to a school like MIT, Harvard, a good business school, good CS program etc...stay. Its all about the environment.

I went to an average business school in NY. Not up there with the Harvards of the world, but definitely not a low end community college. Somewhere in the middle.

Nothing at all that I learned has advanced my career or helped me in any way, shape or form. My professors were often 60+ years old, outdated and flat out boring. The student body was average - I was probably the most entrepreneurial there amongst a few others... But that's basically it.

Had I not gone to college, I probably would be much further along in my career - building my business and products. Also I would have more savings and no student loans.

So my point here is if you are at a top school that has a good program, faculty, interesting student body, programs, clubs etc. then stay - network, meet people, develop yourself and your career with those people around you. When you graduate you'll have amazing people and experience to tap into.

However, if you are at a average school like I was, maybe taking a leap and joining a startup isn't a bad idea. You can always go back to school if it wasn't what you expected.

It depends on how you learn as well. I wasn't a great student...I learned by doing and in my opinion that beats any classroom lecture.

[brianbarker]

Be cool, stay in school.

I've seen some great devs make it without a degree. However, they have to work twice as hard to be considered equal. As others have noted, they never picked up some math or algorithmic concepts. It hurts in interviews as well as on-the-job moments if they're already hired.

I know parts of CS are boring and seem like most real-world jobs would never use the concepts, but once and awhile it comes up and when you don't get it, you fail.

[ecspike → brianbarker]

I've also heard anecdotes on HN of people being pushed out when some higher-up learned they didn't have a degree, despite said higher-up singing their praises just weeks before.

Remember that NYC and Boston are burgeoning areas for startups. Rock that Acela.

[RogerL]

College is not votech. This is your last chance to learn, soak things in like a sponge. Write a compiler, write an assembler, build a robot. Learn physics, take biology, master linear algebra. Go to a professor that intrigues you and offer to work on a project with them. Take some boring business classes and learn valuation techniques, and how to do DCFs. Build a robot. Go to the free evening concerts and learn you some Bach. Join the school TV studio and learn about that. Write a program for them to put interesting information on the screen during sporting events. TA an algebra class and learn to teach. Build a robot. Wander the library stacks, pull out a book that intrigues you, and find yourself reading about fossils, or signal processing, or 20th century ballet. Read a literary journal. Write some poems. Go sit in on Astronomy 101. Take some EE courses. Build a robot. Join ACM and set up some campus hackathons. Build a robot!

Strive. Excel. Learn what you are made of.

Or, you know, quit and go get you some cash.

IOW, college was friggin' awesome. I'd hate to go back, I'm done with assignments and directed learning, but wow did I drink deep when I was there. Plus, so much of what I've done in my career was only possible from college.

As an aside, you mentioned DC. If you stay there, you know how much work there is from the federal government there. Don't scoff, I did most of my stuff for the Government, and that included cancer statistics, flight computers, robots (have I mentioned robots yet?!), and more. Everything required a college degree. Both just in the job requirements (contracts required the workers have a degree), and then also in the nature of the work.

[makerops → RogerL]

"This is your last chance to learn, soak things in like a sponge."

I think this is a terrible way to look at college v post-college.

[ecspike]

I would stay. Outside the networking opportunities, you can try and score some internships which are competitive but are an easier path to get into some companies.

Also, many of the bigs (Facebook, Netflix, Google, etc) have candidate interviews that are full of algorithms questions. Not having a degree can be a mark against you at a big company.

[MPetitt → ecspike]

The downside is that to even get an internship, I would still have to move somewhere else, not many startups in DC.

[hardwaresofton]

IMO: If you're not too bad off on money, finish college and work on startups as you finish it.

The amount of free time you have in college is ridiculous, and the gathering of minds is a real thing, if you have smart faculty, and you have smart students, use them (a lot of startup stories seem to start with "I got together with a friend of mine from college"). Also, a lot of the stuff in computer science that doesn't change over the years is what a good curriculum will teach.

As in, learn spanning tree algorithms, computer architecture (and why things are built how they are), graph theory, whereas you might be learning topics like "how dependency injection works in AngularJS" outside of school (which isn't BAD, but it's not timeless, graph theory is pretty timeless).

[MPetitt → hardwaresofton]

Im not doing too bad(about 45k/per year) and still living at home (only 20yo). But how hard would it be to try and go to school while working at a startup style company after moving from out of state? I heard they are a lot more time consuming than normal companies (50-60 hours per week vs 40).

[hardwaresofton → MPetitt]

Well I actually meant if tuition wasn't too bad (unless that's what you were talking about) -- and you don't have to make excuses for living at home, cost benefits are super huge ;)

So I recently just graduated, and I worked (at internships during school AND summers, pretty much ~30 hrs a week), and I had plenty of free time, I just used it unwisely (generally).

I haven't worked in a startup, so I can't really give you the most accurate of time measurements, but if you're working on something you like, I'm pretty sure you won't even feel 50 hrs a week go by. Also, in a company that is fully aware that you are still in school shouldn't really be expecting 60 hours. And if they do, you can use that as leverage for more flexible working locations (like the ability to do most of your work from home/on-the-go). But generally it doesn't seem like any reasonable person would expect you to work 60 hours (as a new hire) while going to school. Doesn't seem healthy

[ondiekijunior]

needing college is a calculation of your planned life trajectory. I am finishing two degrees this year, law and economics with statistics and I can tell you 80% of the time you are wasting your time. however depending on your life plan that 20% may be the edge you need. but seriously if you dream of a startup career a degree is pretty much useless. I started learning code, from fundamentals, html intact, don't laugh, two months ago and I can say for a person with your experience you need not go to college, instead strive to create a new language within the next two years and chalk it off as college.

[dotcoma]

no. I'm 40 and I'm working at yet another (my 8th) start-up. Take it easy.

[fiatjaf]

Yes, college does nothing to anybody. It's a scam. Even without the startup you should drop out.

[majurg → fiatjaf]

I like your style

[benched]

I've been a working software developer for 15 years. Professionally, I've done everything I would have hoped to do if I'd had a degree. I've worked at Prestigious BigCo, Tiny Startup, Game Studio, and a couple others. I have zero college education. It has almost never come up. Hardly anyone has ever asked, and when they did, it was never a big deal. I once had one manager who kind of sneered at me a little bit over it - a little odd (?) considering he didn't have a degree either.

My advice is absolutely to stay on and finish your C.S. degree. Making the (safer) assumption that you're going to live to a ripe old age, the time you'll spend is really nothing much. The tech industry will not go anywhere without you (and it sounds like you're already working anyway). If you finish, you won't have the regret that I sometimes do. You won't feel like you have something extra to prove to your peers, that I sometimes do. You'll have a lot of extra academic options, like going to grad school, or teaching. You'll probably have a little extra self-confidence, and yes, after all, you'll learn something that you might not otherwise.

You're already enrolled, you're already going - why not finish? If I had it to do again, I'd get a degree in C.S.

[MPetitt → benched]

Thanks, for a while there I thought it was going towards the drop out route, but your second paragraph really made sense. I guess I'm in such a rush to jump in seeing all these young guys working at startups, i'm afraid i'll miss the boat and next thing I know I'm too old and washed up for the hip young startup guys.

[ronyeh → MPetitt]

Aside from learning academically, you should also make good friends in college. Much of business and life is about who you know, and right now you are in a place where everyone is interested in meeting new people and learning. Make good use of that time.

I started my startup when I was 31, and I'm doing fine, so really there is no rush... (unless you are working on the next big thing with your roommates and all of you decide to drop out.)

[gremlinsinc → benched]

I'm slowly (3 years) getting my associates in CS -- and eventually bachelors-- BUT I'm just doing it a 1-2 classes at a time, my major focus is REALLY learning to code, which sadly most colleges don't really cover--to code you need to be building all day everyday -that's the only way to become a good coder.

Will I get my degree? Absolutely? Will it matter? Maybe -- more so when I get my Masters in Business(Looking to go into project management) -- or even better is you majored in Business but became an awesome coder in your spare time -- you could be an instant CIO for a company. -- Knowing business processes AND coding is a HUGE asset.

[tachibana → benched]

Agreed.

I've also found that the longer you are away from school, the harder it is to go back for a variety of reasons (motivation, money, family, etc.). I guess in a world where there are statistically millions of people like me (C'mon -- there are 6 billion+ people in the world!), it would cost less political and social capital to hire or invest in somebody with a degree than somebody without.

[zxcvvcxz]

Another perspective: this need not be a binary 1/0 decision. At my school it's common to take a year off school to work and gain some real-world experience. I did after my third year of engineering and I'm very glad for having done so.

Why don't you view it that way? Then you can return to school if/when it doesn't work out, and still get the awesome experience and hopefully some $$$.