You Are Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

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.

Comments

Re:Common sense

[Kethinov]

When I get into discussions about this topic with (young) people and they think they can play the "Bill Gates" trump card (For some odd reason, they think I should admire the man since I'm "into computers"), this is exactly what I tell them. It's just plain common sense.

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.

Trust fund baby

[AnonymousClown]

Gates had a million dollar trust fund - he's a trust fund baby.

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:Common sense

[Surt]

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?