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Ask HN: Can a 21 year old college dropout get a non-technical job at startup?

4 points by MarkPNeyer ↗ HN
My brother is 21, and after hearing me talk about how awesome my job is, he is debating whether to drop out of college to move to San Francisco and work at a startup. I told him he should just apply to as many places as he can to see what happens.

He's studying accounting and philosophy now, at University of Cincinnati. I told him if he gets a job, he can always go back to finish the degree later if he really wants to. Am I being a bad older brother?

11 comments

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tgrass
Yes. A good brother would advise him to drop philosophy and finish the degree as quickly as possible while taking some CS classes.
vitovito
Philosophy teaches critical thinking and, to varying degrees, rhetoric and sales. I know plenty of CS folk who cannot think critically, nor articulate their thoughts or convince me of their ideas.

Drop accounting.

mikerhoads
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? That depends mostly on how capable he is. If he's not energetic, intelligent and has a great attitude then it is probably not a good idea.

I was able to get an entry level job at a startup as a dropout and have made it pretty far since then. I have zero intention of finishing my degree.

_b8r0
Keep the accounting, drop the philosophy. The accounting is something that will always be useful and he can always fall back on.
rpbertp13
What's with the philosophy hating here. Let the kid study something for his its sake.
tgrass
No hate for philosophy; my view is that college is not about learning. I have a BA in History and a BS in Engineering. The BA merely taught me to b.s. (I learned more about historiography reading on my own). The BS taught me discipline. I learned engineering on the job. At $10K a year a student needs to get in, get out and get employed. Navel gazing and novel writing is for the summer.
maxbrown
I would really think about what sort of position he would be able to get. My guess is that most start-ups are (especially at first) going to avoid hiring anyone that isn't essential to what they do. If you can't pinpoint value-adding skills that your brother brings, he may not have a good shot. When does he graduate? Really just need to do a cost/benefit analysis, but I might weigh finishing the degree heavier than you would... pays off in the next jobs as well, not just the first one.
noahc
What type of skills does he have? If your brother can do design + marketing/sales + manage everything else, he can get hired. If he can't do that then it is going to be tough. You'll need to find the right start up in a position to take advantage of the skill set combo.

This skill set combo is what I used to get hired, and it's also what Alexis of Reddit fame brought to the table as well.

It seems to be a winning combo!

HelgeSeetzen
Going against the trend here, but I would suggest finishing the degree. Yes, some drop-outs are successful (and we love to focus on those - American Dream and all that nonsense). But stastically speaking you are much much better off with a degree. Being a drop-out will put a damper on his whole life unless he just happens to be one of that tiny percentange of geniuses that we love to read out.

Maybe an internship in the summer can cure the "start-up experience" itch.

eengstrom
Tell your brother to finish college, enjoy life and and don't worry about what you're doing. Any good luck he may experience now will not serve him later on like a college degree. If you were older, you would understand what I mean by the phenom $90,000 for a year "burger flipper" doing web development in the last tech boom. These things are cyclical.

Help him finish his degree, help him get his own good job and plan a career with good prospects that will serve him in this boom, or any other. I dropped out of high school to program for a living in 1988, so I'm not suggesting he does what I did.

It isn't a competition and since history repeats itself, just like economic cycles, he'll have a chance again. We had a good boom then, in the nineties and again the last couple of years. But at 21, I wouldn't listen to sage advice either.