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Steve Jobs In Praise of Dropping Out
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jun 13, 2005 09:06 PM
from the also-please-start-cool-companies dept.
from the also-please-start-cool-companies dept.
atlacatl writes "Wired reports on Steve Jobs giving a graduation speech: 'Jobs, 50, said he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after only eight months because it was too expensive for his working-class family. He said his real education started when he "dropped in" on whatever classes interested him -- including calligraphy.' The irony: that most students were graduating. I wouldn't invite him for a high school graduation. Imagine all the 'hard' work teachers, parents and guidance counselors put into brainwashing every kid that he/she must go to University." (Jobs was speaking to the graduates at Stanford University.)
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Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ug... Job's touting dropping out will undoubtedly start a flurry of "ask.slashdot" questions similar to: Thanks, Steve.
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, think that many people are just resentful of the fact that intelligent people do not need to go to school to get ahead.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
I must've hit the nail on the head.
Anyway, I'll probably finish my college degree, but I won't be resentful of you. Envious of you for finding a path to success that avoids college, though.
I get really irritated when people talk about how valuable college is, because: I'm here, and I'm not seeing it. I guess you could say that "College is what you make of it," but I know that I could be making a lot more of my education if it wasn't for those pesky classes sapping my energy and desire to learn.
Even for the average Joe, I really don't think college is that valuable. Most people learn things when they can find the information personally revelant, and the material in college is usually taught in such a dry, abstracted way that it's very difficult to find an immediate application in your own life. Also, what you don't use, you forget... and 4 years gives you plenty of time to forget.
There are so many people that disagree with me about my views that it's hard not to think that I may be mistaken somewhere... but I really haven't heard any good reasons for why college is worth the cost, other than the fact that employers assume that a degree is a prerequisite to a position in their company (And that also may just be a rumor... I think studies have shown experience is more important than education for increasing your chance of getting hired).
Parent
In Defense of College (Score:5, Interesting)
People who might benefit by going to a university:
1) Anyone who doesn't know what they want to do:
Before I started college I had never heard of Linguistics. Because there were no other courses available, I took a Linguistics course my first quarter, and immediately loved it. I'll be graduating with bachelors in both Linguistics and Computer Science soon. Without going to a university (one large enough to offer Linguistics, at that), it would have been very difficult to stumble upon that passion. This broader background will help me to do the natural language processing research I am (now) interested in. Similarly, backgrounds in many fields (e.g. Biology, Physics, Geology,
2) People who like variety:
Depending on who you work for, the variety of the type of work you do will vary. By design, the courseload in a undergraduate CS program is varied, including architecture, ethics, algorithms, automata theory, and of course, programming. I've programmed in Scheme, Prolog, C, C++, C# over the past four years on projects including a networked filesystem, a unix shell, a raytracer, a scheme interpreter, and device device drivers in NetBSD and WinXP. All of these projects were great fun.
3) People who like to challenge themselves:
Anywhere you go, smart people will be able to find ways to challenge themselves. At a university, you have the advantage of a knowledgeable faculty who have plenty of pet projects they'd love to let you loose on. I've also found it very easy to get faculty to supervise research projects of my choosing. It's a great environment for getting a lot done, if you are self-motivated and hardworking. And there is something "pure" and refreshing about doing work without commercial motives - many great projects were birthed and/or nurtured in an academic environment.
I was reluctant to go to college, under the same opinion that if you are smart enough, you don't need it (plus I was just lazy). However, I've found that the university environment is ideal for smart people: lots of challenges, lots of variety. Anyone with the intelligence, curiousity and passion to succeed on ther own would thrive in a good program. Sure, college is expensive. But, again, if you are that intelligent and motivated, you can get scholarships, assistantships, and grants.
I am extremely grateful that I decided to go to college, it has been a great experience and worth every cent.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
A while back I was looking for salaried work (instead of the usual freelance - which I've gone back to BTW), and all the ads were for looking for someone "imaginative and independant" but with at least a college degree. I couldn't help but thinking that what they were looking for was a perfect contradiction.
Some time later I was speaking with a client who was looking for someone in his design department, and he was commenting on the schools his candidates were attending and judging them on that. I said to him: "do you want ideas, or conformism"? He looked at me and said "Ideas, of course." To tell you the truth I don't know who he hired but you get the picture.
The whole educational system needs a workover, but this won't happen until the job market changes. If everyone is looking for independant, free-thinking people who really care about what others want, instead of the usual conformist self-interested self-preserving lemming we are trained to be, schools of course will follow suit and teach us WHY we're learning instead of just promising us that we'll have the world if we follow their orders. Today's educational system is very confusing and discouraging to anyone with ideas of his own.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem, of course, is finding that magical first job that will hire you without either experience *or* education. Good luck with that. The most useful thing about college is the internships - the best way ever around the first job Catch-22.
I will say that the code written by people who worked in tech support for years, then QA for years before finally making it into programming tends to be damn good. Nothing like living with the consequences of bad code for many years to build the proper values. A degree does tend to be faster than that path, however.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of the speech is to encourage students to "ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING". Graduating isn't the top of the mountain, it's base camp. It's not an accomplishment unless they use it to propel themselves. blah blah blah. Potential is for losers.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
The disconnect between professional requirements and competence is a serious social problem. There are certainly incompetents without qualifications, but there are plenty of amply competent (potential) workers without them -- what do you say to those?
Steve Jobs hardly offers a solution. He entered the business at a time when hundreds of new businesses testified to the potential for entry. Today, the barriers to entry are far too high for the mere ability to produce a superior product to suffice, and it is plain to observe that there are no new entries to speak of. Of course, this is the fate of every market; any serious economy of scale means coalescence to oligopy sooner or later. So, what do you say to today's young Steve Jobs who cannot find his way to a job interview?
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Steve applied for a job at his own company he probably would not even get interviewed.
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Avoid ask.slashdot for a few days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment was funny, and well put. However, I am a Linux Sysadmin, with many tattoos (no piercings or long hair however). I can say that Job's had many of the right ideas. I dropped in on many college classes, because I didn't have the money either.
The result, is a very well rounded education. Also the ability to teach myself skills that are relevant to the work place. The key is really self-drive. If you REALLY want to learn, there is little stopping you. College is great from some. Myself, I honestly prefer a self-teaching method. It really comes down to your choice of learning.
So yes, there are many people out there that think they can avoid the work of college by dropping out and landing a "leet job", and there are at least a few that care enough to work even harder to teach themselves.
Parent
Re:Steve Jobs' experience was unique.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fair question. And here are some answers.
A college degree is not a commodity (yet); it is not like 87 octane gasoline dispensed at the pump. The college degree represents a period of time in which you study a lot of useless things in the hope that some of them will surprise you by being interesting; that the depressing or boring things will at least teach you how to wade through depressing or boring material for the rest of your life. It is a period of time when people stop being te
Parent
Sure, a few people drop out because they are smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:5, Funny)
"Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude.
In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers. You're upset. That's understandable.
After all, how can I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not. Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet-for now anyway-is a college dropout, and you are not. Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not. And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.
Hmm
You will need that therapy. You will need them because you didn't drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to #10 or #11, like Steve Ballmer. But then,I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I?
And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer.
Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you,are wondering, "Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?" Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortarboards on your heads.
Hmm
So perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. Not for you, Class of '00. You are a write-off, so I'll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000-a-year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago.
Instead, I want to give hope to any underclassmen here today. I say to you, and I can't stress this enough:
LEAVE. Pack your things and your ideas and don't come back. Drop out. Start up. For I can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you down just as surely as these security guards dragging me off this stage are keeping me dow..."
(At this point The Oracle CEO was ushered off stage.)
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:5, Informative)
Nice, but it's an urban legend [snopes.com].
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has gotten so fixated on sending kids to college that we've lost sight of the reasons why we wanted them there in the first place. As a result, the quality of education has been declining, while the amount of debt our kids pile up before ever starting a job has been rising. And how many of those kids use their college degrees to do amazing things like sell real estate or become plumbers. i.e. What did that degree buy them other than a wad of debt?
That's not to say that education is a bad thing. But people always get the best bang out of an education when they know they want it. Sending them to school before they know what they want to know only devalues it for everyone. Teach your kids to wait until they're ready. Then they can be sure that they really want to take on a college education.
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:5, Insightful)
We live in a different world today than 100 years ago when the elite sent their sons and daughters off to college. Back then, those going to college didn't have to make a living. They already had all the money they needed. They went for pure academic reasons. Your argument is that these circumstances still apply today. They don't.
Today you have a wide middle class instead of just the poor and the rich. Today regular people can go to college. Today regular people can gain successful careers from an otherwise poor upbringing. But today most people must go to college to obtain the standard of living desired.
Sure kids should also want to learn new things and expand their mind. It is still an academic institution, after all. But you cannot discount the fact that the reason parents push their children into going to college is that they need it to survive. And, perhaps, to make sure they don't live in their basement for the rest of their natural born lives. Of yesteryear it may have been normal for children to live their whole lives in the ye ole log cabin.
Things change.
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:4, Insightful)
(/me went to college three years after high school. You'd be suprised how motivating a shit job at minimum wage is.)
Parent
Re:Sure, a few people drop out because they are sm (Score:4, Insightful)
The part about this that I find so frustrating is that it's such an expensive lesson for kids. I was a home schooler myself, and my mother constantly emphasized that what we learned was less important than learning *how* to learn. While I'm sure that many would take that to mean that she didn't teach us, nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I *wanted* to learn many subjects because I had practical uses for them outside of the classroom.
Do you have any idea how cool it is to look at a Trig book and think, "Oh, the raycasting engines I can make with this baby..."
Parent
Here's the basic flaw in his speech. (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking back on his life, there will be certain items that he deems to be "important".
Looking back on anyone's life will also yield certain "important" choices or events or whatever. Those are items that shaped your life.
But that does not mean that someone else can imitate those choices and get a similar life. As you noted, some drop out because they're smart, but more drop out because they aren't. It isn't the dropping out.
And I don't believe that Steve's "experience" with cheap college life and calligraphy would mean much if not for a certain Steve Wozniak.
Parent
Arrogance of Good Looks (Score:4, Insightful)
I am referring to physical good looks. The "Economist", a while back, reported on a study which indicated that height is important and seems to be correlated with financial success. So, too is good looks.
A good example is Pamela Anderson. She has little acting talent, but she managed to latch onto television role after television role.
Contrast her with Meryl Streep. Streep is less attractive but worked very hard to achieve what she accomplished.
Jobs, like Pamela Anderson, is blessed with good looks and a winning personality. Most of us have probably worked with people with such physical endowments. People with them have a much easier time in life than people without them.
Not surprisingly, the average height of a CEO is above the average American height. So is Jobs' height. Before he tells people how they should mimic him, he should first ask the people around him to forgive him for his arrogance.
Parent
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
He also dropped acid in his younger days. That a good thing too??
Re:Bah (Score:4, Funny)
Worked For Me.
Parent
Re:Bah (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Bah (Score:5, Funny)
He is different from you and I am different from him and you are different from me.
Oh wow man I get it! I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
goo goo gj00b :-}
Parent
Re:Bah (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I'm suprised Mac OSX doesn't ship with a sheet of the stuff.
(* do not try this at home)
Parent
Re:Bah (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that explains the original iMac.
Parent
Re:Bah (Score:4, Funny)
Original? Bondi Blue? Try the Flower Power, man!
DO NOT EAT THE BROWN iMAC! DO NOT EAT THE BROWN iMAC!
Parent
Not Feynman. (Score:5, Interesting)
up the machine," electing to go with sensory deprivation instead of drugs to get a hallucinogenic experience going.
--grendel drago
Parent
Looks like sound advice.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like good advice to me!
Just because Jobs dropped out... (Score:5, Insightful)
In general University/College is a GOOD thing. However, some people's paths take them elsewhere.
--Mike
Re:Just because Jobs dropped out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Just because Jobs dropped out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Good For Him (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the point of his speech was that dropping out is cool. It was that hard work and determination are what you need to be successful.
Say what you want about Jobs, he's a gifted businessman who knows how to sell. He had the right product in the 70's at the absolute best time.
Your mileage, of course, will vary :).
I wouldn't follow Steve Jobs advice. (Score:5, Informative)
And when Wozniak set up his own company in 1986, Jobs threatened Wozniak's suppliers against doing business with Wozniak.
Just because Jobs did something in his past doesn't mean that is a good path to follow.
Re:I wouldn't follow Steve Jobs advice. (Score:5, Informative)
Many years later, Woz (then rich and famous) was flying on a plane when he picked up a magazine and read the story for the first time; he reportedly wept when he read it.
Parent
I'll agree with what Steve says (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're talented, smart, and *most importantly* not lazy, not having a degree doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. With those assets you're more than capable of working around and moving beyond the confines of the traditional 'system' most people end up dealing in (IMO, because they aren't talented enough, smart enough or lack the work ethic to do anything to change things).
Degrees are nice and they do make joining the higher class system (white collar?) easier, but IMO, a lot of people also use degrees as a crutch for rationalizing avoiding the need to do anything meaningful.
If you're talented, smart and actually enjoy hardwork, the world is your oyster. Persuing a degree may even be a distraction from you obtaining your purpose and potential.
$.02
Re:I'll agree with what Steve says (Score:5, Insightful)
Try doing real, novel science without a Ph.D. Sure, you can go into IT or even software engineering without a degree, but there's tons of interesting stuff that you simply won't be able to comprehend without years of school.
I mean, have you seen the cool toys physicists get to play with these days?! ;-)
Parent
Re:I'll agree with what Steve says (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.. the same could be said if you are good-looking, born with rich parents and get along with everyone.
The point I think is that most people are not talented enough, smart enough, enjoy hardword enough, good-looking enough, have parents who are rich enough or get along with enough people and so need all the help they can get, including that university degree.
Parent
OP Misinterprets the Speech (Score:5, Informative)
This is not an anti-education message. In fact, it is a message strongly in favor of a liberal-arts education. In Steve's original college career, he was going through the motions -- going to college because that was the thing to do. When he started learning again, he was doing it out of a personal desire to learn, and with more genuine motivations. And he was taking classes to improve himself and his outlook, not just to get nuts-and-bolts information that would advance his career. Steve's saying that you have to invest yourself in learning and appreciate its value where you might not expect it.
Those of you who are oversimplifying this into a "street smarts" vs. "book smarts" thing have watched too much of The Apprentice. This was a speech about the personal value of learning and the importance of an open mind and broad perspective.
I dropped out... (Score:4, Interesting)
Two years later, I was driving a cab. I did that until I saved enough money to build a small recording studio, which I ran while playing in another band and doing live sound on the side. By the mid-'90s, I had a gig as a 3D animator and graphic artist, skills that had previously been hobbies for me. That led to a partnership in a media services company that also did software development. We sold out before the bubble burst.
Right now, I'm vice president of a company that does system administration on a contract basis. Small company in a small market, but profitable nonetheless.
Not having a degree pretty much precludes working for a large corporation, but I've never wanted to work for a big company. I do regret not getting a liberal arts education, and it's something I'd like to pursue soon, even though I'm in my forties. I'm looking to retire in about five years anyway, so I'll have the time.
To make it without a degree, it helps to be in a field that doesn't require one (like the arts), to be willing to do menial jobs now and then (like driving and dispatching taxis), and to be able to teach yourself the skills you need (technical, entrepreneurial, etc.). I can't stress the last one enough: without the support of a company behind you, sending you to training seminars and paying your way, you have to be your own teacher.
k.
proportional fonts: not-so-subtle revisionism? (Score:5, Informative)
If the late Jef Raskin had anything to do with it, they would; he recalls lobbying for versatile bitmapped displays and not hard-wired fixed width character generators, against Jobs and Wozniak.
Sadly Jef is no longer with us to defend the account, but he left a detailed history, The Mac and Me [chac.org]:
Later in the essay, Raskin notes that Jobs was eventually persuaded to green-light the Apple II's "high res" mode. Only Steve himself knows if an enthusiasm for calligraphy influenced the decision... but even had he not, proportional fonts were already being designed into the expensive research workstations of the day, where the hardware budget was orders of magnitude greater than an Apple II's.This is the problem with success stories (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words (Score:5, Informative)
Transcript of Jobs' commencement speech (Score:5, Informative)
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect th
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Insightful)
College can provide a wonderful education, if the student is ready for it. I started college when I was 16, but I was too immature even though the "test scores" said otherwise. I needed to grow up, get life experiences. I did these things (though I didn't realize it at the time), and graduated when I was 24.
Had I gotten through school by the time I was 19, which was the pace I was heading, I would have had a college degree and a job I would have hated. Probably would have been found hanging by a rope by now. Instead, I love what I do, and life only gets better by the day.
Summary: College is education for those ready to receive it. Same goes for life in general.
Parent
Speak for yourself. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there were a few fools and charlatans teaching, but I dealt with it; I got to work with some of the cleverest, brightest folks I know.
For me---who'd never known there were other geeks out there---it was a transformative experience.
Clearly, your mileage may vary. But what you get out of school is, at the very least, proportional to what you put into it. Blaming The Man for not hacking it in school is pretty damn weak.
--grendel drago
Parent
Re:school sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll get out as much as you put in. If all you ever do is take engineering classes and do the required minimum work, you'll have wasted a great opportunity.
Parent
Re:school sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Get into stuff that interests you?
Seriously, you can't pick up a book and read? You can't do things on your own? Does the only thing that interests you at age 12 involve pressing buttons on multi-million dollar toys and then reading the a series of numbers on a print out?
Who exactly are you waiting for to give you permission to do what you want to do?
Stop waiting to be spoon-fed.
Parent