For anybody that's been paying attention in the last 20 years, the collegiate funnel to success is broken in the technology/startup sector.
I'm not dismissing the role of education, however. Education is vastly important. A formal education with an expensive stamp on it? Not so much.
Continuing my discussion of the startup/technology sector, there was a time when a great degree would get you into places where you worked with awesome folks doing hugely important jobs. Over time, more awesome folks and hugely important jobs existed separate from that great degree. We've now reached a point where having that great degree many times is counter-indicative of performance ability, so it becomes kind of a social club.
I hate to say it, but for run-of-the-mill high technology jobs where you interact heavily with a business customer and make some magic happen? I view deep dives in college as a warning sign that you might be validating yourself against a model that has little practical impact in the larger world.
I really hated to admit that, because I deeply love education. But dang it, I believe the tables are flipped. You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from some 20-year-old who knows everything about technology from his personal passions than you are from a 25-year-old with a Master's degree from an Ivy League institution. And in terms of organizations, it's a big red flag as far as productivity goes for those places with tight controls over collegiate applicant. Unless you're building the next LHC. Whenever I see some job that's a straight technology job that has "and a masters degree in CS" without the following "or equivalent experience"? I'm thinking this isn't a place I want to be associated with. They have no idea what they are doing.
Disclaimer: I earned my BCompSci with 1st Class Honours -- ie, a miniature research degree -- last year and I am damn proud of the work I did to get it.
> You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from some 20-year-old who knows everything about technology from his personal passions than you are from a 25-year-old with a Master's degree from an Ivy League institution.
This is a false dichotomy with a side order of strawman.
Here, let me play:
"You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from some 25-year-old who pursued their passion for websites and earned a Masters from a dissertation on HTTP than you are from a 20-year-old with a who reads two dozen blogs and keeps up with the tweets".
See how that works?
Whether a person has a degree or not is orthogonal to their passion for a subject. But it so happens that you don't get a top score in a research degree by just ticking the boxes or colouring between the lines. You need to be passionate about the topic.
And it so happens that this is true of mastery of any subject. Those who are passionate about a subject will obsessively read about it, study it, tinker with it and spend the time to deeply grok a topic because that's what they love doing.
Sometimes this happens in academia. Sometimes in industry.
Great job of picking apart the logic flaws in my argument. Thank you.
But I think you missed my goal. I was making a sweeping generalization about my personal preferences. Much as "I've found I like ice cream with chocolate in it more than others" Such statements are by necessity overly broad and full of false dichotomies.
I do appreciate your comment, however. It helps clarify further discussion. Just wanted to point out that my goal wasn't a deep dive on all things graduate-degree related. It was to announce (mostly to myself) a heuristic that I have been carrying for a while without recognizing it.
Congrats on your degree. It's great to achieve a goal. Now go make a difference in the world. Getting a degree wasn't it.
Funnily enough, the dissertation grew out of a startup idea I had a few years ago. And now I've come full circle; I've been steadily working on the products of the research to launch the business (2 days ago I filed my first patent).
The key all along was a passionate interest in the subject.
I agree, but there's one difference I see here. The general public still has a greater expectation that a 25 year old with a Master's degree from an Ivy League institution will be knowledgeable than a 20 year old who reads two dozen blogs and keeps up with the tweets.
So yes, you can create any favorable/unfavorable comparison you want with the words by adding "passion" before the comma. But there are some instances where people still need this reminder.
Just recently, a recruiter wrote that a CS degree from Brown would count for a lot more than one from UIUC or U Tex. I was personally sort of shocked by this, because I thought that it was widely understood that the rigor and quality of CS programs at these universities was very high (absolutely nothing against Brown, which has great students, I was just sort of amazed that a recruiter would discount degrees from two "top 10" programs simply because, as large state schools, they're easier to "get into"... yeah, and anyone can "get into" basic training in the marines, it's getting through that's the tough part). So I'd say "a student who has excelled in a highly rigorous CS program is better prepared than an indifferent student from an elite college."
See, I just did it. But is this as vacuous as any statement you can construct using this trick/tactic?
I will say one thing - you've added something to my "alert phrases." You're entirely right that people do abuse this rhetorical trick, so I'll be on the lookout for it. However, I wouldn't dismiss these sorts of comparisons outright, they can be meaningful.
So you would expect similar [technology startup] success rates between a YC participant and a BCompSci with 1st Class Honours?
It's not a question of passion, it's a question of goal orientation. My experience is that results-oriented environments (like YC) have better outcomes than status-oriented environments (anyplace that confers come thing called a "BCompSci with 1st Class Honours").
> It's not a question of passion, it's a question of goal orientation.
Could you elaborate?
> My experience is that results-oriented environments (like YC) have better outcomes than status-oriented environments (anyplace that confers come thing called a "BCompSci with 1st Class Honours").
My experience is that successful people are successful. Name a traditional predictor of success and lots of success people don't have it in the background. YC just goes on the same pile.
Personally, I wouldn't participate in YC. To me it seems that the principal advantage of YC isn't that you get $x thousand dollars. It's that you will belong to a somewhat influential old boys network.
Define "success rate," because there's successful people out there from all walks of life. Larry and Sergey are clear examples of the academic route. Steve Jobs is not.
I think you're trying to put things in nice little buckets when the truth is that the world's a messy place. Also, it feels like you'll suffer from confirmation bias, as well. Maybe you're just thinking about the latest single-page-web-app startup. What about places like Bose, which came out of MIT? Or really any of the myriad companies that have been born out of academia.
Rate would be tech startup successes per student. Of course I agree that the rate for academic environments would be greater than zero, and some great companies too.
You're already comparing unlike samples. The base rate for startup success is constrained by ... starting a startup. Folk who rock up to the YC offices are already self-selecting into that group.
I think a better measure would be wealth net wealth at particular intervals -- 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years.
Worth noting that the "1st Class Honours" thing is just the level of a degree in some places (e.g. the UK). I can appreciate it sounds funny to some people, but then grade point averages and summa cum laude sound odd to me! :-)
In the Australian academic system, most degrees are taught as a 3-year program.
Some students are then invited to take an honours year, during which they will take postgraduate courses and undertake a research project.
That I earned "first class" means I earned a distinction for my project and maintained a distinction average for my coursework.
The difference with the US system is that the honours year is meant to prepare you to move directly into a PhD without needing further coursework. In the US system, when you take a PhD you do some coursework first and can terminate early with a Masters.
Basically you're just arbitrarily attaching "status" and "results" labels to things.
It's an argument I can't win, because by raising my own achievements by way of disclaimer[1], I am "bragging", which is a "status orientation" on my part.
But the fact that I worked towards a measurable goal in a structured way according to a plan of my own design -- that somehow isn't results-seeking behaviour?
[1] because usually, these discussions boil down to an argument between people with a degree and people without a degree -- and there's a strong correlation between the pro-degree/contra-degree camp and who has a degree.
I find it strange that you would bring up the (possibly mythical) "20-year-old who knows everything about technology" in the same statement as "deep dives in college as a warning sign". In my, admittedly limited, experience, the big difference between someone with "a formal education with an expensive stamp" and someone without is breadth.
There are, as far as I've seen, very few "20-year-olds who know everything about technology", but there are plenty of 20-year-olds who know a great deal about some specific technology or technologies. And if that technology is what you need (note, not what you want), they're golden. And if by "startup/technology sector", you mean the "web startup sector", that's fairly likely. On the other hand, if it isn't, you may not be. If all you have is a hammer and a screwdriver, everything is going to look like a threaded nail.
I've been looking through sysadmin and programming job ads, and I've been wondering what "equivalent experience" means. Would you mind shedding some light?
I'm not dismissing the role of education, however. Education is vastly important. A formal education with an expensive stamp on it? Not so much.
Continuing my discussion of the startup/technology sector, there was a time when a great degree would get you into places where you worked with awesome folks doing hugely important jobs. Over time, more awesome folks and hugely important jobs existed separate from that great degree. We've now reached a point where having that great degree many times is counter-indicative of performance ability, so it becomes kind of a social club.
I hate to say it, but for run-of-the-mill high technology jobs where you interact heavily with a business customer and make some magic happen? I view deep dives in college as a warning sign that you might be validating yourself against a model that has little practical impact in the larger world.
I really hated to admit that, because I deeply love education. But dang it, I believe the tables are flipped. You are more likely to get great help in the startup/technology sector from some 20-year-old who knows everything about technology from his personal passions than you are from a 25-year-old with a Master's degree from an Ivy League institution. And in terms of organizations, it's a big red flag as far as productivity goes for those places with tight controls over collegiate applicant. Unless you're building the next LHC. Whenever I see some job that's a straight technology job that has "and a masters degree in CS" without the following "or equivalent experience"? I'm thinking this isn't a place I want to be associated with. They have no idea what they are doing.