You Are Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School 438
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa offers some don't-be-a-fool-stay-in-school advice to students that sounds a bit like an old-school Mr. T PSA. TechCrunch CEO Michael Arrington's questioning of whether students need to get any degree or go to college at all may sound appealing — dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did do alright for themselves — but Wadhwa gives some good reasons why you should probably take the school-is-for-chumps argument with a grain of salt. 'The harsh reality,' warns Wadhwa, is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail,' and many big companies won't even consider hiring you for that fallback job without a degree. And, believe it or not, you can still become a tech billionaire later in life even if you're cursed with a PhD." Tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson approaches this question slightly differently; here's an analysis he made a few years ago, with the conclusion that the college investment pays off only about half the time.
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to be a beat-the-odds tech celebrity to do well without a college education. When I interview people, their academic degrees play little to no role in my hiring decision. My primary considerations are their portfolio of work (professional or otherwise), how well they can demonstrate their skills during the interview, and how well I believe they would integrate with the team.
No (Score:2, Interesting)
If by "stay in school" they mean "stay in public school," then I'm going to have to decline their offer. Public schools are absolute trash. Too many useless classes (as in, something that some people may use, but others won't, due to their career choices) are mandatory, and they put far too much emphasis on worthless grades. It wouldn't be so bad if public schools merely granted you the resources needed to memorize information that will be important to you, provided a good teacher to help you when needed, and provide a useful curriculum. Right now, they're highly inefficient, and you run the risk of failing an entire year simply because you did poorly in a class you won't even need! Education is, of course, important. But until public schooling gets its act together and goes through total reform, I'm going to recommend that people find other means of educating themselves (self teaching, homeschooling).
Statistical anomalie? (Score:2, Interesting)
So from this limited sampling of two, we can conclude that dropouts do alright for themselves, but only by screwing everyone else over?
Maximize cost/benefit ratio. (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I want to see *some* sort of check and balance on college expenses. Every examination of college prices over the past 30 years has shown horribly high growth relative to earning. Most things I read agree the problem was good intentions, making loans for education extremely safe, but has lead to colleges taking the blank checks, running up expenses through the roof, and the payback protections to lenders turning graduates practically into indentured servants, unable to escape that creditor no matter how little they have and even bankruptcy not being a way out. The answer is not insanely easy loans, there has got to be a better way.
In terms of going with what's there, start with a community college. It's a total waste to piss away more money on the basics in the first two years of college. After a couple of years, go to a state college with a good co-op/intern program. Use the co-op program, do not simply take the classes and get out, get some professional experience on your resume and subsidize the extra cost of state college with your pay.
Do *not* get too hung up on the prestige of one school versus another. At least when I look at resumes, professional experience matters most, low GPA can give me concerns, and which school figures prominently in the don't care area. One exception being I laugh at people with 'bachelor's' degrees from ripoff places like devry, phoenix, etc. I'd personally rather have someone without a degree than a sucker who fell for those places. However, I'm not allowed to entertain people without 4 year degrees by company policy, so unfortunately your chances of dropping out and making it within the rules of established company is nearly zero. All the examples of rich dropouts are those who were never 'hired' by anyone, but sold product and services directly to people who only look at the quality of the product and promise, not at their resume.
Trust fund baby (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore, he could take obscene amounts of risk and never have to worry about ending up in the gutter or having bill collectors after him. And if you add in that his Dad is a high powered attorney ...
Gates was a perfect storm of trust fund, brains, timing, and ambition.
Re:Ideals and reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheer up.
Re:Put in the time (Score:2, Interesting)
a degree or professional qualification is necessary, either because it is required in the field (eg accountancy, engineering)
Right now accountants, especially new graduates, are also having a really hard time. A LOT of folks saw that as a safe way to make a decent living and jumped on the bandwagon - now there's a glut. It may not last because everything runs in cycles, but don't forget, accounting can be offshored just as easily as programming.
It's the same for engineering.
Nursing: with this economy, many folks are jumping in because it's a "safe" job now BUT there will be a glut and employment will get bad - I don't care what the predictions say about population aging and whatnot. Talk to a nurse who's been in the field for at least 25 years and ask her about the late 80s - layoffs of nurses. Granted, if you were a laid off nurse, you weren't out of work for too long but....
There is also a trend to bring nurses from overseas. I know a nurse who works with many many foreign nurses. Add in the nurses that the military is training and I see employment problems down the road. Nurses don't have an organization like the AMA that's great at "discouraging" foreigners from coming over here.
My point, don't jump into a field because it looks like a shoe in for employment now - things change.
Just ask everyone who got CS degrees in the 90s or those of us who've hit 40 hoping to have their lifetime employment at 6 figures.
Bill Gates is a poor example... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bill Gates is not a good example of the typical young person who drops out of college and strikes it rich. His family was upper middle class and had enough money to send him to a prestigious college prep school. You can bet that before he earned any money on his own, his computer interests were heavily subsidized by his family. He certainly got a head start in life that few of his generation never had. I'll bet that parental support was worth quite a few years of college.
Re:Ideals and reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay then, let's make a short list of counter-examples. What modern-day success exists today did so without screwing over a bunch of people in the process?
What you are talking about in terms of running a small business is risky. It is risky because when Best Buy's Geek Squad, or any local large operator sees you as a threat, it won't be long before you are eliminated one way or another. Sometimes it's possible to operate "under the radar" but the fact that anyone would need to do so is clear indication that one already knows that there are risks of being destroyed by larger, predatory businesses.
It is possible to live and operate righteously. But it is quite possible that you will get destroyed in the process as had happened time and time again.
Anyway, that short list?
Zoho Don't Need No Stinking Ph.D. Programmers (Score:3, Interesting)
Zoho also does not need any bachelor degree programmers. Zoho prefers to hire right out of high school.
I think college degrees are only worthwhile for jobs that actually require the degree: doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc.
I consider my own degrees (math, business, and comp. sci.) to be a complete waste of time, money, and effort.
Here's the Zoho stroy:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/01/208222/Zoho-Dont-Need-No-Stinking-PhD-Programmers?from=rss [slashdot.org]
Harshest Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
The harshest reality is that the jobs are leaving.
The jobs of the CEO and his/her pals will be staying, of course.
A university degree won't make you less expendable to a corpocracy that wants the cheapest workers. Unless you are willing to cost the same to the employer at 35 as you did at 25 (and use your benefits as little), your days are numbered.
Code Poet, Rockstar Programmer, Unit-Test Guru, Meme Zealot, Jedi Knight of the Latest Methodology, or (what is likeliest) red-tunicked member of the Roddenberry Landing Crew or Storm Trooper cannon-fodder, the real masters of this game are the Bean Counters.
The corpocracy has docile subjects. It has seen that it can lay people off without having to report it (IBM -- for years), take huge local tax breaks (which your family and community paid for) and then ship jobs overseas, and claim to be "a good citizen" while loudly claiming there are "insufficient numbers of skilled workers".
Of course, you can take the Blue Pill and go back to your pasting your face into pictures of Gates and Zuckerberg. (o:
No college degree here (Score:3, Interesting)
Since then, I've risen to the highest ranks of IT (including CTO of a mid-sized publicly traded company).
In my experience, smarts coupled with people skills and a strong work ethic will open just about any door for you regardless of degree or lack thereof. One of the biggest problems I see though are people generally overestimating their "smarts". Generally I think if you are not widely considered very intelligent by everyone you regularly interact with, including those people that don't necessarily care for you, then you are probably better off getting a degree.
Re:Oversaturated degree market (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, getting a college degree to get a specific job is not necessarily the best thing to do. This is why half of an undergraduate education s often in general courses, there just to make students more educated. Other than a pre-med program, college is not typically low level job training. Hopefully a college degree is a general education that provides a background for a number of different careers. A corollary to this is that is not wise for all students to build up large debts in hopes of gaining future employment. Reputable universities do not push the idea of building huge debt.
Third, as the world becomes more educated, it will be more important to have a higher education. Sure maybe all one can get is a tech support job, but in the US, where we are approaching 30% of the adults with a college degree, perhaps such a job would not be attainable without a college degree. It is almost the prisoners dilema. if no one has a college degree, then the employers are forced to hire and train high school screw ups. If enough people capitulate and go to college, this save firms money with a higher skilled labor force.
And lastly, not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Even if Zuckerberg did steal the idea or some of the code, even if was one of a thousand who had the idea and wrote code, he is the one who brought it to market. It is like Edison and Marconi. Who invented what is lost to the fact of who was able to sell what. Not everyone can start and run a business. If they could we would not be at 10%+ unemployment in the US. People would not be looking for jobs. People would be hustling. Within a mile of me is a huge amount of affordable retail space with high traffic flow. One would think that with more than 1 out of 10 people unemployed, some would go to the SBA and get a loan. A few are. There are some kids who did so and are installing speakers in cars. I am told that another is planning on selling cards. At the very least one would think that some of these 10% would try to compete with the immigrants that everyone is complaining about by getting a truck and doing some manual labor. Instead they just stay a home and collect unemployment, which is their entitlement as US citizens who previously did some work.
This is all just to say that a college degree is often useful as most people do not have the motivation to take a risk or put into the effort to start a business, or, for that matter, capitalize on a good idea when they hear it. For the people who are motivated and have some ability, they will succeed no matter what. One can anecdotally give a case of a high school drop out who is now a millionaire, or the son of millionaire who dropped out college and is now a billionaire, but it is just anecdotal, if not apocryphal.
Dropping out ... and getting back in. (Score:3, Interesting)
I dropped out of college. Then after a short job, I found it quite getting a job that I thought that I was qualified for. Then a few years later, I went back to college to finish my degree in Computer Science.
However, I did find that retaking courses at college was more difficult than the first time. Because the course schedule had changed, some courses I needed to take were at the same time as others, or changed to another semester. Therefore, I could not not complete my degree in the same amount of time than I would otherwise have done.
After college, I found that the time gap was a big mark on my resume. I was dismissed as many times in the first iteration as when before I had gone back to college.
There is also a lot of ageism. At least over here in Sweden, most recruiters want people who are ideally no older than 25, with a completed degree and exactly three years of experience, so that the company can put the guy to work directly, make work long hours, easily mold in the company's way of doing things ... and pay a lower wage.
If you are over 30 and do not have much commercial work experience in the field, then you are practically no longer wanted. Even people over 40 with 15 years of work experience in IT are having problems finding work.
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Plumbers and electricians struggle to find 40 hours of work per week where I live. I was curious about how their incomes compared to mine, and the last couple guys I worked with said they typically had about 25 billable hours of work in 50 hours on the job. The rest was driving from place to place and other forms of non-billable time. So $100/hr for actual work doesn't translate into the same salary as someone who is paid that rate for a 40/hr job.
I used to get paid 65/hr as a software contractor. But I billed 60 hours a week. Care to guess who made more that year, me or the $100/hr plumber?
Re:Cause and Effect (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to write a parser once, because a regular expression would not have been enough for what I was doing. I dealt with cryptography all the time, and was expected to understand block chaining and CCA security at a minimum
These were all topics that I covered in my first or second year of university, so they don't directly contradict the original poster's point. The parser stuff was all taught in a second-year compilers module. The cryptography stuff in the first year, as one of the filter modules that they use to make sure you can cope with the mathematics that you'll need for the rest of the course.
The stated aim of the second year was to cover everything that all computer scientists should know. After that, it was all optional stuff in various specialist areas, including advanced versions of modules from the first and second years (e.g. Functional Programming II, Graphics II, and so on) and modules based on lecturers' research topics (e.g. Constraint Satisfiability Problem), and a final-year project which could be in any area you wanted.
Re:Maximize cost/benefit ratio. (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I want to see *some* sort of check and balance on college expenses.
I think this will be the next bubble to burst. A friend of mine is on the administrative staff at a local (smaller) college, and knows of the situation at others in the area, and she reports that they are out of money and they are living semester to semester on tuition checks. You don't usually see a college or university go bankrupt, but I think this will start happening more and more until tuition gets in line.
Do *not* get too hung up on the prestige of one school versus another.
There is something to be said for school brand. Some alumni are very clicky. I've met hiring manages who say "When I see someone from X school come across my desk, they go to the top of the stack." Where x is either their alma mater or brand name school.
I recently asked the CEO of a company acquired by Cisco (for $800m) about they value of his Harvard MBA in acquiring seed funding (they raised over 90m from investors). I think the word he used was "invaluable." He put it to me this way "Two similar business plans come across your desk. One from a team of Harvard MBAs, and the other from a team of Little Known State University. LKSU might have some quality grads, but if your job is all about hedging bets, the Harvard team might be the better choice. Yeah, I know it may not be fair, but it's the reality of the VC mindset.
Re:Cause and Effect (Score:4, Interesting)
Amen. I dropped out of comp. sci. in 1989 because a side business I had modifying and making electronics for the handicapped started taking up enough of my time that I couldn't do both. Two years later, I was still barely scraping by, so I wound up the business and went back to university. 20 years later (ouch), I consider that two year stint running my own business to have been a crucial and valuable part of my education (even though I went on to get a PhD and now do completely unrelated research). If I'd burned my bridges in any way when I 'dropped out' of school, I would have been screwed. If you feel your business/idea are good enough, go for it, but always make a plan for what happens when the business doesn't pan out - statistically most first businesses don't.
Re:Common sense (Score:3, Interesting)
It only seems common in famous rich people because it's common in everybody. A lot of homeless people will steal a dollar from their mate, too.
But statistically, higher IQ (we're talking better than Mensa level, not dime-a-dozen IQs of 120 or so) tends to correlate with higher ethical standards, more sense of "fair play". To become a Gates you need to be an anomaly that has both a high IQ and low ethical standards.
Re:Common sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Correlation does not equal causation. It takes determination to find a high paying job. Virtually all college graduates are determined people. That does not mean that all determined people are college graduates.
The numbers you submitted are skewed because they account for everyone, no matter what their personality type. If you eliminate the people who are not passionate about what they do, I think you will find that the degree has no real bearing on income.