The article focuses on kids who drop out of college to start businesses. That's great but there are ways to succeed in tech without trying to build the next InstaBookSpaceGram. I'm a college dropout who I guess you could say is thriving in tech but I didn't start a business and don't have much of an entrepreneurial spirit.
A little about me: I wrote my first line of code when i was 12 (perl) and went on to dabble in a few other languages. After high school I went to Penn (Wharton) to study finance. I dropped out in my second year (long story there). I bounced around doing a few random but fun things before I decided to give programming a go as a career.
My first "tech job" was as a freelance VBA programmer and Excel expert. Pretty much the only class at Penn that came easily to me was called Operations and Information Management 101. It was basically an intro to advanced Excel techniques. I took what I learned there, and a few things from elsewhere, and contracted out to anyone in New York (where I'm from) that needed Excel work. It was shockingly lucrative. After that I moved to Austin and taught Ruby and database technologies at a coding bootcamp. Now I work at a company that does managed WordPress hosting (I write Ruby for them).
With the exception of a couple of my first contracts no one ever really thought much of the fact that I dropped out of college after three semesters. I carried a lot of guilt over the years regarding my degree-less state but am now pretty much over it. I guess the point I wanted to make here is that you don't have to be an entrepreneur to make it in tech. You just have to be smart, work hard, and get a little lucky.
> The article focuses on kids who drop out of college to start businesses. That's great but there are ways to succeed in tech without trying to build the next InstaBookSpaceGram. I'm a college dropout who I guess you could say is thriving in tech but I didn't start a business and don't have much of an entrepreneurial spirit.
I think that's interesting. Probably the hardest time I've ever had getting a job (seriously, I went to like five or ten interviews. It was terrifying) was actually fairly recently, in a bubbly time, when I was trying to get a job after running my own company for a few years. I mean, granted, I was also really, really depressed and I was applying for 'devops' jobs with a lot of sysadmin experience, but still, I've never had a hard time getting jobs I wasn't qualified for before.
One of the jobs even cited something about how I wasn't a good cultural fit because I was used to running my own business.
I thought that last part was really funny, because I always thought of "cultural fit" as a codeword for "white" - I mean, it could also have been "he seemed really depressed" at that point, but eh, whatever.
I did end up getting the first actual sysadmin position I interviewed for, so the whole lesson could just be that "devops does not mean sysadmin with programming chops" - but like I said, never in my life have I had a hard time getting tech jobs I wasn't qualified for.
Still, I think that if you run a business and fail, you are much worse off, in the eyes of your next employer, than if you are a tech monkey for a large company and you get laid off or whatever.
I have a similar experience. I also started out with perl in high school. When I started going to University, I sought out a tech job to provide myself with some supplemental income. Started out as an intern (this is where the luck came in) at a local tech company where I picked up valuable experience and was promoted to part-time. This provided the supplemental income I wanted.
After doing that for a couple of years, I realized this is what I love to do, so dropped out and went full-time. I didn't start a business or have an entrepreneurial spirit either, but I love problem solving and love getting good at it, which really helps in tech. Since I can demonstrate my value, no one thinks much about the lack of degree either.
>My first "tech job" was as a freelance VBA programmer and Excel expert. Pretty much the only class at Penn that came easily to me was called Operations and Information Management 101. It was basically an intro to advanced Excel techniques. I took what I learned there, and a few things from elsewhere, and contracted out to anyone in New York (where I'm from) that needed Excel work.
I'm a pretty advanced Excel user and enjoy writing VBA. How did you find these freelance opportunities?
I was pretty lucky. By time I was ready to try out coding for a living everyone I knew in college had graduated and was working on the street. I leveraged my connections there and it worked out pretty well. It happened mostly accidentally really. I had contracts with several banks and hedge funds and it call came through word of mouth.
A little about me: I wrote my first line of code when i was 12 (perl) and went on to dabble in a few other languages. After high school I went to Penn (Wharton) to study finance. I dropped out in my second year (long story there). I bounced around doing a few random but fun things before I decided to give programming a go as a career.
My first "tech job" was as a freelance VBA programmer and Excel expert. Pretty much the only class at Penn that came easily to me was called Operations and Information Management 101. It was basically an intro to advanced Excel techniques. I took what I learned there, and a few things from elsewhere, and contracted out to anyone in New York (where I'm from) that needed Excel work. It was shockingly lucrative. After that I moved to Austin and taught Ruby and database technologies at a coding bootcamp. Now I work at a company that does managed WordPress hosting (I write Ruby for them).
With the exception of a couple of my first contracts no one ever really thought much of the fact that I dropped out of college after three semesters. I carried a lot of guilt over the years regarding my degree-less state but am now pretty much over it. I guess the point I wanted to make here is that you don't have to be an entrepreneur to make it in tech. You just have to be smart, work hard, and get a little lucky.