Ask HN: A 19 year old, what should I do?
I'm feeling lost for a while and all the local people who I've tried getting in contact with, well, they all say the same thing over and over again. I want to drop college.
The big problem is that everyone is trying to make me feel bad about this, as if this would be the end of the world, as if there are only 2 choices in life: college or be a bum.
For me this feels wrong. I mean, I've started programming for fun at a really young age, and I've managed to get my first (full-time) job in the summer break after 10th grade and continued until I finished my high-school. Since then I've worked with a different company and in my spare time I've tried starting various projects of mine.
As I've said, I've started programming out of pure pleasure, and I consider that I've learned a lot like that, and now it feels like the only way to get by in life would be for me to merge back into some kind of slow-lane. I've tried going to college, and teachers either told me that I will be bored at their courses or that they will give me some extra course work (which the did only for the first time). The companies that I've worked for just treated me like some kind of valuable asset, and didn't even have a "career path/planning". I've stayed in a company for 1 year and carried out quite a lot of the work and was underpaid compared to the local standard. And when I left, they just told me they expected that to happen at some point.
It's really hard for me to believe that there is no place for people like me. All I'm trying to do is to keep learning at the same speed and with the same passion, bring my contribution to the world, but people just tell me that I'm too young, not experienced, etc.
Please HN people, tell me your opinion, help me understand what I should do!
*Sorry for my english, I may have slipped a couple of mistakes in.
102 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadtl;dr “the standard pace is for chumps” - that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you're more driven than “just anyone” - you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life - not just school.
It is hard for me to give you specific advice without knowing a lot more details, but staying in education is usually not a bad idea if there are things you can get out of it. If you are well ahead of your peers, what stops you working in your spare time on side projects that do interest you, or brings in money?
That said, if you can't find an engaging and challenging experience learning about software in your college, either A) you are at a bad college and need to change or B) you haven't actively tried to take full advantage of the resources available to you.
When I was an undergraduate I took graduate courses, TA'd intro courses, worked on research projects, got published, etc, and I wasn't some uber student. I just was really interested in things and spent a lot of time asking professors and graduate students stuff. I had the opposite problem, there was so much I wanted to learn about and so little time to do it.
If you want to study at a better college, look for professors in your field, find someone that does something interesting, and ask them if they will take you as a student. If you are good, some institutions will actually pay you for studying there.
This is easiest if you already have at least a bachelors degree, and want to go to grad school. At least in Europe, most grad schools pay PhD students (in science/engineering), and if you are smart, it's not that hard to get accepted.
At least in Austria it's quite common to receive a stipend for your masters' thesis (in science/engineering). It's not always enough to fully cover living expenses, but it sure helps a lot (eg. I got 400€ a month while working on my master's thesis).
After that, PhD positions are almost all paid normal wages.
"50 Things" - http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/50_things
As painful and stupid as it'll be you'll thank me. If you don't have a degree it'll be 1000x harder to get an employer to notice you. You'll either have to invest about 3-4 years of your life on a large software project that may work (and get you noticed), or a big rare certification with some company like IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, etc. that will take years of studying and several lower level certifications (and several thousand dollars to take the tests).
Otherwise your job prospects are meh.
In college just do what they tell you. You will learn things, but not as fast as from other sources. Some courses like OS theory, compiler theory, and data structures will introduce you to newer concepts, some you may have not know.
Don't stop coding, don't stop learning. But a degree is important in today's world.
http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/
The place for people like you is on your own...that forum will give you the support you need to learn, develop, and execute on what you really want to do.
There is so much stuff on there that I wish I would have known when I was 19.
Try to learn few more languages an/or paradigms...
You'll be able to find a programming job just fine even without college. It'll be harder, and you may have trouble in snooty environments that place a lot of emphasis on that, but .... they're assholes anyway and you're better off without them. There are certain jobs and things you probably won't be suited for without the necessary background and knowledge, some of which are actually cool things, so that might be something to consider. OTOH, if you're determined enough, you can probably go back and learn those things if you really want to.
I dropped out of college, and generally don't regret it, but there have been times when it has been a hindrance.
Why get the degree?
1) Because there is no circumstance where having an undergraduate degree makes you worse off than not having it.
2) Because now is the easiest and cheapest time in your life to check the degree box.
3) Because the opportunity to be a college student may, if you take advantage of it, give you the option to ease into parts of being an Honest to God Adult (TM) like, e.g., resolving conflicts with people who aren't family members or keeping a budget or juggling multiple priorities at once. It can be easier to get adjusted to this sort of stuff when you are not also getting adjusted to the wild world of working.
4) Many employers in our line of work do not strictly speaking require a degree. Unfortunately, you will occasionally in life be called to deal with people of good will who have irrational requirements. For example, governments and future mothers-in-law may have absolute requirements for college degrees. Check the box today, avoid a heck of a lot of stress in eight years.
You've got the rest of your life to work on the career thing. Trust me, it's plenty of time.
If you drop out, are you condemned to being a bum? Not in the least. Recommendations at this point would differ based on where you live, but they're probably going to sound like some variant of "Find a clueful company which has room for a young engineer to both learn from more experienced engineers and also meaningfully impact the organization. Work for them for 3-4 years then reassess."
You sound like the kind of person who probably sailed through high school and likely has great exam results from there. Combined with the fact that you've got tonnes of experience and have taught yourself, you'd have a great shot at studying somewhere abroad, if you think you'd like to do it. I learned a lot online and from working on open-source projects, but for me personally, formally studying computing has broadened my horizons massively and opened a huge number of doors.
Edinburgh University Computer Science: £1820 PA... now that is a steal
http://www.docs.sasg.ed.ac.uk/fees/undergraduate_2014-2015.c...
Also, just a few days ago I was thinking what I would change if I was 16 again - I would (1) start meditating - meditation has given me very good emotional control, which is one of the most useful things in life, (2) learn languages - Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, ... I had the most time in high school/college, and looking back, wasted most of it, when I could be learning at least one language a year (to a decent conversationalist level), and (3) get into computer security - it's a perfect job for a consultant, allows remote work, and seems to be becoming more and more relevant with each passing year (bonus: you know how to secure your own devices).
TL;DR: don't start working yet, after college you will be starved of free time, use it to better yourself.
While the college level is arguably lower than other parts of the world, you'll still get the chance to interact with smarter people and that can only help.
I've also had the chance to work with people without a CS degree (people around my age) and I think they are finding it harder to learn new concepts without a proper (academic) foundation.
Go for it, you will not regret the choice.
1) While you may be worried about the depth of the content in your field, be aware that college is also a great way to acquire breadth: this is the best way to be exposed to ideas you wouldn't have encountered before, and I'd encourage you to take courses outside of your field. Economics, philosophy, or political science come to mind as topics that may not be directly useful to you in your career but do help tremendously in understanding the world around you and being a more complete individual in general. This is also a great time to live and study abroad, which is a great life experience in general. This will also be very useful if you ever decide to branch out and work in a different field, where you may feel your lack of degree much more than in tech.
In addition there is nothing wrong with getting "extra coursework" in college. Unlike high school, the goal here is to learn for your own sake and there is always the possibility to dig further if you're interested in acquiring highly specialized knowledge.
2) A degree is not simply useful for convincing old-school employers. You work in tech, so I assume there is a probability that you may want at some point or the other want to check out the scene in the US. If this is something that interests you, be aware that it is tremendously harder to get a work visa to the US if you don't have a higher education degree. Most work visas will require a degree or equivalent work experience; for the US bureau of immigration, "equivalent work experience" generally means 3 years of work for each year of school, which means you won't be eligible for a H1B for another decade. I do not know how it is for other countries but I assume many have similar requirements.
tl;dr: a degree will allow you to hedge yourself against the future. If you're bored, there are always opportunities for you to diversify your interests, seek more specialized knowledge in your field, or work on your own side projects.
Now the not so cool part: just get that degree, one way or the other. Especially if it's related to the field you want to work in. The govt has some strategies to facilitate graduates into the work market: as a graduate, your employer pays 16% less taxes for IT graduates. You'd LOVE the faces of the HR people when they hear you're not a IT student/graduate.
The above is just one of the more "direct" implications of you having a degree. There are more. As employing goes, the "upper-class" languages (Java, C#, C++) tend to require it. PHP, HTML/CSS, Ruby - not so much.
Another advantage is that the employers here voraciously search for IT students and they grab them even from the second year. They invest in degrees, as those at the very least, guarantees them a basic knowledge, on which they can build, as the student is perceived as a long-term investment.
Then there's the human nuances - future prospects, getting employed outside the country (if you're into that), self-perception (if you're into that, too).
Do you want me to continue?
You are passionate, I can respect that. But college is not about passion or destroying it - it's about market placing (in Romania at least). Sooner or later, you'll think about that. Oh and I heard that IT college can be a blast when it comes to same-minded people. My bet is you'll find lots of passionate people in there.
I'm a Romanian ex-"bum" (wanna hang out?), philosophy and maths college drop-out, now a passionate programmer, having a hard time getting into a Java - mainly because of the degree. I should know.
Where do you study?
I suggest you finish your degree (nevermind the grades, just get a 5), and spend your free time learning what you're interested in. The good thing is that there are a lot of good internships available, especially in Bucharest (Adobe, Intel, Ubisoft etc.). You can find them on stagiipebune.ro (check out VMware in Bulgaria, too).
I dropped out from a university program (non-US citizen, we don't have colleges as you guys do), because I felt it didn't give me enough compared to paid work. However, I regularly wish I stayed for my degree - not because I have a hard time finding employers, but because I actually feel like I'm missing some education. There are many courses which I would love to have read to the end, from mathematics to algorithm theory and finite automata.
And if you are referring to me and my situation, I'm trying to learn as much as I can on my own. But it gets tougher the older one gets, and I have a hard time to find the time.
My colleagues think I have superpowers because I have this bizarre collection of things apparently immediately "to hand." But I don't. I remember seeing them in passing, ignored because I didn't care, but now I know what I'm looking for and can find it.
The auto-didact route rarely gives you that. JIT learning tends to leave you without overview and with areas of ignorance you don't even know you have. If you knew you had them you'd fix it.
But you don't. And don't.
Depending on where you live, one could make the argument that there is some opportunity cost associated with spending 4 years in school along with the debt that would possibly come with it.
I went the route of quitting school and becoming a developer full-time as I felt the experience was more valuable than sitting through pre-requisites I wouldn't ever use, the standard "Rocks for Jocks" geology courses for example, or sitting through a CS lecture and hearing things I learned as a young teenager.
At the end of the day, the OP has to weigh his options and determine what is best for him. However, as someone who took the option of not attaining a degree and instead went straight into my career: It is possible, it just isn't for everyone.
I might add that another option would be to study something totally unrelated in college, to broaden your horizons. Literature, arts, architecture will teach you how to understand and enjoy culture, at a level that is difficult to acquire as an amateur. The old "study Latin and Greek to better understand life and humanity" thing is still valid.
You alone are responsible for your career advancement. Don't expect a company to lay out a fulfilling career path for you. If you are unsatisfied, ask for more. If you can't get it at your current job, get a new one.
Dropping college won't automatically make you a bum, but finishing college will give you a way to prove to people that you aren't one.
Finally, some valuable reading:
http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html (Just don't assume that you have to be in a startup for it to work.)
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
And the Derek Siver's piece mentioned elsewhere: http://sivers.org/kimo
I'd say go to school anyway, because I have more traditional beliefs about how college helps with personal development (especially if its liberal arts). The perspective you gain by studying subjects that are completely unrelated to your field will be invaluable in giving you an understanding of the world, especially once you realize that those fields aren't completely unrelated.
Plus college is just too much damn fun. Don't skip it.
1) The certainty that you followed, at least, a 'formal' training (in a very loose sense, I know), which gives you a sense of accomplishment.
2) Education, education, education. The mere fact of studying something you do not fancy is such a boon to your education that you have to go through it to understand it.
3) Future career searching (this is somewhat silly but it is a fact).
On the other hand, IF (big if) you DO (big do) have a plan (big plan) for your life already, do pursue it. But I (big I) would make sure that plan includes family, a way to earn money and contingency plans.
So, each way has its pros/cons but just 'dropping' because you do not like it is not quite rational, to me.
But these are just ideas on the spot.
Unlike others, I didn't drop out of an engineering course. I dropped out of an accounts course, to work on my web startup.
On the face of it, it sounds like a major risk. I think it was a very calculated, and risk-free decision. I had started working while I was still studying, and was making decent money when I dropped out; multiple times more money than what I would make by completing college and getting a job like my peers. Also, I hated accounts, and loved tech. The thought of spending your only life doing something you hate was unbearable.
So, you see, the decision was unanimous.
When people think about dropping out, it is usually because they think college is boring, or they like working over studying. This is what makes dropping out very risky.
I'd actually love to see more push for little entrepreneurs to be creative and businessy (whereas it seems like they try to squash that out!) as I, personally, feel that having more entrepreneurs and more businesses is a big part of the ticket to fixing the economy. I remember when I was little, I thought I'd try to monetize one of my skills by selling my drawings on the playground -- harmless, right? Well, I got in trouble and was told not to do it anymore because selling things at school wasn't allowed.
It doesn't sound like college is keeping you back from more valuable projects, you're just struggling to follow through. Finish the degree.
- Travel for a semester/year around the world
- Side projects apart from school; use those to choose to new classes
- Transfer to another school and/or country stretching into new opportunities
- Pick up a hobby outside of anything you've ever done before
- Volunteer at a hospital or in a research lab, both desperately need technical people
- Pursue a thesis of original research with a professor you admire
- Challenge yourself with subjects you've never learned before: calligraphy, art history, statistics, horseback riding, etc.
You have your whole life to work. But you also have many, many other choices. Being an adult means choosing your own happiness, not what others expect. The challenge is constantly finding a new muse to keep your interests fresh and exciting. You can change who you are many times over in the next decade or two.
College just helps to show you the range of possibilities for who you can become. That openness to reinvent yourself becomes much harder as you get older. Use the time you have to find new fountains of inspiration. Those you keep coming back to will linger longest.
Consider it as a time to sharpen and shape your personality, not so much to gather lots of knowledge. You can do that, too, but it's not the only thing you'll learn in college.
Working for a company will be taking enough of your time later on.
I had a great time at university. I studied abroad for a year in the States (I'm German) and I started my business by accident. It was merely a side project, a hobby. Now, almost 8 years later, it's my main source of income and gives me all the freedom I want.
I didn't plan for it, it just happened, maybe because I was in an environment that allowed time to "play".
I did the traditional education - college, University. But I was a young 18 and the three years I spent at University were really good to 'grow up'. I'm sure I could have (eventually?!) managed in the real world, but I spent three years finding out a bit more about myself, growing up, playing in bands, drinking, meeting girls, learning to take care of myself - etc.
That said, the CS degree I have hasn't really helped my career since that point except to open early / initial doors. I'm sure some foundations have probably helped with my work since then, but for the most part, everything since has been self taught / work experience.
So at that point, for me, the formal education was worthwhile to 'get me in'.
Jump forward nearly 15 years - (and like me) lots of my friends work for companies that do stuff on or with the Internet. Most of these guys never went to University and just started working at 18. (I dread to think how irrelevant some of the stuff you'd learn in year one of a three year 'Internet' degree would be by the time you looked for a job, BUT I guess the qualification would probably still open some doors for you.)
For them it was a case of moving to where the action is, showing you're prepared to learn and/or hustle, or have some personal work/freelance work to show to someone. And being confident. Lots of smiles and lots of confidence (which is totally fake-able). Many smaller companies will happily take a chance on you if you're hungry and they can pay you a basic wage.
From that point, it's pretty easy - just work hard. Provided you've held down a job (which isn't too tough if you're not an unpleasant person), by your late 20s, nobody gives a monkeys as to your education - all they see is you're capable of remaining employed, can do a job and have experience. So much so, I know many people (in their late 20s and early 30s) who no longer even bother putting 'education' on their CV.
Long and short, don't take your education too seriously. Keep doing your stuff on the side - and when and if you're ready for 'real life' work, be nice, have some confidence and hustle like crazy. And to make it easier still, up sticks and move to where the action is.
Good luck, you'll be fine.
As for your professional life, in my opinion, don't rely on the company to find you a "career path". If a firm proposes you one, it's a path which is convenient to the company, no to you. Find your own path (that's also what college is useful for).
One issue that you alluded to, is that you've been somewhat taken advantage of (underpaid) for whatever reason (possibly youth and inexperience). This will continue to happen until you focus on the skills necessary to demand what you are worth (ie - strong verbal/written communication skills, research, negotiating, teamwork, etc). These are the kind of skills you learn indirectly in college.
Do you need college for all these things? Of course not. You can start a blog today and start working on your writing ability. Specifically focusing on teaching and conveying your ideas in a digestible way.
The cold hard truth of the working world is NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ADVANCEMENT BUT YOURSELF. Its true that there are some companies that will help you along but they are only training you so that they can get the most out of their investment in you.
You can then fast-track to a master's degree(your university may call it something different). This allows you to use grad level courses as courses for your BS. You will find the graduate level courses more challenging and they will test your ability to learn. If you are as smart as you say you are, you'll be able to graduate the program a year early, learn a lot and have an MS to boot.