Dropping out is probably not for you

<i>The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't.</i><p>I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer?<p>Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard.<p>I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills. Check. Work well together. Check. Building cool stuff. Check. Have passion and in the groove. Check. Sell something. Oh shit.<p>Let's not overlook the single biggest common thread to all those successful startups founded by college dropouts: they already had huge demand, often accompanied by people with checkbooks.<p>Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own. By this point Micro-soft already had several $100K CDs in the bank and he said, "I don't think that'll be a problem."<p>That would be about the only way I would want to do it.

I dropped out of school last semester, so I think I can add some (unique) perspective. Maybe I will flesh these thoughts out into a blog post later.<p>When considering dropping out of college, you're the one who is ultimately responsible for that decision, you're the one who will live with the consequences, and you're the one who has the best information for making that decision. It's all on you. You have to ask yourself if you <i>really</i> believe that you can live with the consequences and, if so, take the plunge.<p>Now, I've only been a drop out for 3 months, so it's impossible for me to comment on the long term effects, but -- if there's one thing you need to realize before dropping out -- <i>being a drop out is hard.</i><p>For one thing, everyone thinks that kids between the ages of 18 and 22 should be attending college, and they'll be happy to tell you so. Lots of people attended college and, since it worked for them, they will believe that the system can work for you. Further, these people have a vested interest in telling you how important college is and what a worthwhile experience it is because, frankly, they are trying to justify spending however many years attending college and paying off their student loans<p>Basically, don't expect a whole lot of support.<p>In addition, being a drop out in today's climate is a little bit more difficult than it was in the past. Computer Science is now an established discipline and schools actually teach it, so being self-taught is less of a necessity and more of an oddity. Further, while the common wisdom seems to be that the current economic climate is not so bad for programmers, it's certainly harder to get a job now than it was during the dot-com boom.<p>The final, and hardest part of being a drop out, is that it's incredibly lonely and incredibly difficult to stay motivated when you're on your own. I imagine that it's similar to being a solo founder. There are days when it's hard to find the strength to get out of bed, when you'll be filled with self-doubt, when you'll wonder if dropping out was the right decision. Hacking on your own for four years and building a portfolio, instead of attending school, might sound great on paper, but without your peers to support and motivate you, it's very hard.

As a dropout, I can tell you this: if you do drop out, you are choosing the hard way. Later on, even if you're wildly successful, you will wonder how much more successful you could have been if you'd finished. You'll also suffer from the impostor syndrome, and it will likely haunt you for the rest of your life, regardless of the outcome.<p>Young smartasses have a way of becoming old maintenance programmers ;)

Notice that all the lauded examples of "well, X dropped out and made it big!" entail X starting the business during schools and being so wildly successful at it that school was just in the way. Michael Dell was spending all his waking hours building PCs in his dorm. Gates was well on his way to selling DOS to IBM. Each had already gotten to where college helps you go.<p>Remember Gladwell's "10,000 hours" rule of thumb for success? THAT is what college is. 50 hours per week for 50 weeks per year for 4 years is 10,000 hours. You graduate from high school, and realize you haven't mastered a marketable skill[1] - so you sign up for a four-year boot-camp that will drag you, kicking and screaming, through your obligatory 10,000 hours.<p>Thing is, most the successful dropouts were already "practicing" well before they started college. Gladwell notes that Gates was putting in hours a day, for years, of programming before getting to college (at a time that programming required connections and money, being a motivated kid he was allowed free use at 4am). By the time they dropped out (perhaps long before), they already had their 10,000 hours in. A grade-school kid has opportunity for about 5,000 hours of "practice" available...and most use that time throwing balls or acting, building unmarketable skills.

Why do most of the commenters seem to dislike college? Those were the best four years of my life, taught me real skills, programming and otherwise, that I use every day, and granted me that all-important degree which has come in handy for me and probably will for the vast majority of people who don't build the next Facebook or Apple.<p>Unless you're in situation #5 that the article talks about, spend a few years to get the degree (graduate early if you can because that saves time and money) while working on your projects on the side. And maybe have some college fun in the process.

I think there's definitely some value in taking time off to figure out where you're going (and where you want to be.)<p>Keeping your head down and finishing for the sake of finishing is probably not going to end well; you'll be in debt, you will have lost the opportunity cost of your time in school, and you still might not know what you want to do.<p>Don't be the guy who's in debt from a degree in a field he doesn't want to work in.

&#62; <i>4) You're in your last or next-to-last year and you're fed up with the system, you want your freedom and you want it now.<p>Don't do it. Why? Because dropping out is easy, getting back in later is hard. Sure, the system sucks, but you are this close to bagging that piece of paper, you might as well go all the way.</i><p>I fundamentally disagree with you on this one. Getting that piece of paper give you a quick escape plan for when things get tough. Lets say you graduate, and start your startup. In the back of your mind you'll be saying "If this doesn't work out, I'll just go get a regular, decent paying job". And then things start to head south. You can't raise money, or you have no traction, ect. That decent paying job starts to look more and more attractive.<p>If you drop out, you're burning your bridges and forcing yourself to stay committed when shit hits the fan. Graduating leaves open an easy retreat strategy; it makes it much easier to quit.

I don't think (2) is correct:<p><i>You don't like to learn, and you need more money...Don't do it. Why? Because that stuff you learn you will need later on, and you will need it badly.</i><p>Of all the stuff I learned in college, I needed very little of it. This includes many classes I enjoyed. Most of it I've forgotten already. Not only that, I didn't even take the traditional college -&#62; job route - I stayed in academia for 8 years after college.<p>Some of the many classes I took: medieval literature, women's studies, chemistry (3 semesters), population dynamics for environmental engineering, 2 semesters of economics, optics, and all of this is just the stuff I can think of. Most of my college experience was spent learning stuff I don't need to know and have now forgotten.<p>Stay in school for the sheepskin so that you can signal conscientiousness to the world. But focus on networking, not learning. Most of what you learn is a waste of time.

I'd just like to say that if you're too lazy for University, then you're fucked either way.

Lately a lot of people think they can earn a lot of money without working hard. I'm not sure why people think this way. Maybe TV told them you can get whatever you want whenever you want.

"Don't do it. Why? Because if that's your character you need every bit of structure that your school or university is providing you. Before you can even think of starting your own business you will have to learn self-discipline."<p>OR you can drop out and get a lousy, physical job - get the same structure you get from school, gain better appreciation for mental skills and abilities that university teaches you, and add to your bankroll (albeit, slowly) instead of your debt load.<p>This, instead of coasting through school with lousy character and no discipline and getting less out of it then if you appreciate it more.

The only reason the idea of dropping out is getting so much traction is because of the debt that's now required to get a degree. I haven't seen anyone defending college reconcile this fact.<p>The point is that a degree is now extremely expensive and is getting more so all the time. Id like to make the point that holding all that debt is a lot scarier than the successful people with decent jobs trying to persuade us to start or stay in school think it is.

There's a lot more positive benefit to staying in school than dropping out. For one thing, making money is something you'll do <i>for the rest of your life</i> (unless you're the kind of fiscally-responsible freak that can save enough to retire by 30).<p>You have all the time in the world to start a company or join one. But right now, while you're young and have the time and resources available, you're at the best possible position to acquire the experiences and knowledge you'll need for <i>the rest of your life</i>. Yes there's debt; you'll pay it off. Yes it's tiring; you'll get used to it.<p>Is it easy to drop out? Yes. Can you make money (assuming you're smart enough and have learned enough to get a job now)? Yes. Does it make sense to cripple yourself for the future just to get a couple years ahead of your peers? Hell no.<p>Do whatever you have to do to finish school and try hard to enjoy yourself while you're there. Life isn't going anywhere that you need to drop out to get there.

No one will read this because I'm posting so late, but I'll describe my experience:<p>I was a stats major, emphasis actuarial science. On paper, I was set to go work for some insurance company and make bank.<p>Except...I couldn't make myself care about it. Done purely for money, that stuff is pretty boring.<p>No, I didn't drop out. The university did that for me as my grades plummeted.<p>I'd learned a bit of java, so I applied for a job out of the student paper and ended up working on an application for...wait for it...insurance agents. Exactly what I couldn't make myself care about in school. In Visual Basic.<p>Having read enough of pg's essays to somehow acquire the impression that I was a Great Hacker destined for startup greatness because I had played around with CL, I quit the insurance software gig to build....video conferencing software! I even found a customer willing to pay me for it. I was clueless and so was he, so we ended up negotiating a fixed-price contract. Cue the tragic cycle of I-didn't-realize-it-would-take-this-long-and-I'm-not-getting-paid enough on the developer's part, and it became a nightmare project that dragged on four months longer than it should have.<p>Cue some more inexperienced-at-software-and-inexperienced-at-contracting horror stories, and I was kind of sick of being on my own. I found the one cool company in my area and bravado'd my way into an interview. They were everything awesome the insurance company hadn't been: smart people. Great conditions. Clojure and Ruby as main languages. Tufte's <i>Visual Display of Quantitative Information</i> on the coffee table in reception. An engineer cofounder (vs. an insurance agent founder).<p>And...I wasn't qualified. I'd plugged some libraries together for the videoconferencing thing, and the Rails stuff I'd done on contract was pretty basic. Any my stats knowledge was poor. I'd dropped out!<p>So I decided to go back to school. Part of the reason I failed so badly in school is because I had a really hard time getting motivated when I could see how sucky most of higher-education is for actual education---many things are quietly optimized toward extracting money from the student's parents, or measuring things for future employers, or compensating for a model with many students and few professors. This is all true, but I can get a loan to attend school, while I can't get a loan to grab a bunch of textbooks and start cranking.<p>So if someone were thinking of dropping out, I'd say---do it. Absolutely do it. If you're sick of school and can't get motivated, no inspirational talk will cure that, and you'll stumble through half-caring, graduating with either a useless degree (because you didn't learn anything) or failing out like I did.<p>The only thing that will cure you of that is experience outside of school. That will be what tells you how off-base (or on!) you are. Since I left school my opinions on some portions of it being B.S. have only strengthened. But I have also gained an appreciation for certain parts that I took for granted. So if you leave, be cold-blooded about it. You may hate the system (it deserves it), but it might be useful to you later, so don't burn that bridge if you can help it.

Agreed. But I'll just add one option that worked for me. I dropped out after the first semester. Then I found a job as a software engineer. In 4 years I'm a valuable senior java developer that everyone is trying to hire. Have I graduated? Yes, from the school of real-world software projects. I didn't have a startup business (well, I had one which failed, and I'm having one right now, on the side), but it was still a better option to drop out.<p>Btw, I signed up for a external program at the University of London so that I could still get a BSc without actually doing anything academic - so now I'm 24 with 4 years of real-life work experience and a BSc (not that I need it, but it's there)<p>So, perhaps it is better to summarize it that way: if you clearly see opportunities for yourself that are better than staying in university - drop out.

Surprised by the lack of support for dropping out.<p>Is a 4 year education and a degree valuable? Of course.<p>Is it worth $xx,000 in student debt and 4 year opportunity cost of doing something else? Rarely. Especially for this crowd.<p>If you are a 19 year old with some programming skills, and you are paying for your own college (via loans or with cash) dropping out is a GREAT idea. Spend the next three years working on your own projects, open source projects, crappy little free lance whatever.. you are going to be in a much better spot than if you spent the next three years going to classes and coming out with 50k in student loan debt.<p>If college is free, then yeah, you are crazy not to go. But if you are smart and willing to work hard anyway.. education is <i>FREE</i> these days. Save the cost of the house and the years.

I'm 20. I dropped out of high school, studied for a couple of years in community college and am taking classes and workshops at an art school right now (no accredited degree). For me this provides a solid compromise between the extremes of fascist discipline and anarchist chaos.<p>The first extreme relies completely on papers, degrees, and the value of adderalled-up memorization of facts and focusing your life on passing the tests. Life isn't about passing tests and I didn't want to go that route. So I dropped out of high school.<p>The second extreme is an anarchist, 'fuck the power' immature, spontaneous chaos. It disregards discipline, it ignores the beautiful life-rhythm of doing something everyday. It glorifies chaos and disorder, and ultimately for me it would probably lead to jail and homelessness. I decided to ignore that, since I realized the value of discipline and the value of education in a classroom (but not for a degree).<p>I have very little interest in the opiatish dream of a 'start-up that will make me filthy rich' too. Hence why I avoid startups. In fact I am skeptical of everything that alludes to 'becoming filthy rich'.<p>I am not a typical successful dropout like Bill Gates (yet) nor do I think I will be, and I'm not a stereotypical dumb lazy fry-flipping dropout (yet). As an experiment to test my discipline and knowledge, I decided to spend a year working in a full-time IT job, and I have spent exactly one year there.<p>So yeah, I'm that other guy :) Your mileage may vary.

All this talk of dropping out or not reminded me of a characteristic I've come to recognize in folks with Phds. There is an assumption that if you don't have a Phd like they do its because you could not get one, not that you chose not to get one.<p>I think some of that flings back on people who drop out of college. Work, regardless of company size, is, to put it simply, work. That sounds circular of course but really the key is that if you can't find the motivation to get you through college then where are you going to find the motivation to get you through the 'last 10%' of a project which is what takes 90% of the effort?<p>As pg pointed out, and Jacques does too, if you're wondering if you should drop out then you shouldn't. You've got bigger problems and you need to deal with those. If on the other hand getting school stuff done is hard because your business is growing in leaps and bounds and you don't have time for both, that is a completely different story.<p>Work can suck at times, that is why you don't see travel agents advertising "Bankok Work Vacations." But getting stuff done rocks. You have to see the goal, if only in your minds eye, to get past the stuff that is lame and irritating.

"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems."<p>Jacques appears to have a very shallow knowledge into the value of liberal arts. It has nothing to do with a marketable skill (if you want that, go to a vocational school), and everything to do with refining the quality if your thought and mind.

Going to keep most of my crazy opinions to myself on this one, but a few points:<p>1. If someone dropped several thousand dollars in seed money in my lap today and said "Hire some people, establish a profitable business," I would feel more enthusiastic about an interview with someone who'd dropped out of CalTech, MIT, OTIS, Art Center, RISD, or Parsons than one with a graduate from <i>anywhere</i>.<p>2. Not that it necessarily matters, but whenever I encounter the argument that a university education is or should be considered a required component of "success" or "learning" my opinion of the person making the argument drops significantly. Specifically, I find myself treating their judgment of what constitutes "success" or a "learned" person with complete disregard. These feelings are especially strong when they're directed toward someone older than me. (Is there a fake formula to measure how forgivable someone's stupidity is, given their age?)<p>3. If you're between the ages of 16 and 24 and have convinced yourself that you must be "successful" by the time you're 25, you'll probably feel like a failure whether you drop out or not. In the event that you matriculate/graduate, you'll just be more likely to have picked up a lot of debt, and maybe a nasty alcohol and/or adderall habit. Worse case scenario: you'll be 21-23 with a fancy piece of paper, the false impression that you "get it," and not much else.<p>(To be fair, I met my best friends in college—which is now a huge pain in the ass since everyone's scattered across the country—and the majority of my favorite memories are from that time. But after meeting those people my freshman year, I could have dropped out, done enough design work to cover food, gas, and rent in Pacific Beach—I went to school in San Diego–and had largely the same experience.)

Definitely not for me. I need a good project manager AND a good business manager on hand. Learned this after some lean, depression filled, years.<p>Once I admitted this to myself and acted accordingly my income shot up from poverty levels to middle class levels. Now that I have kids and all of the uncertainty and financial hardship that can impose, I'll take what I've got. I'll never be rich but I'll still be happy.

This is interesting. I just read four points and was completely like: "Not me, not me, not me, not me."<p>Then I read the fifth point and just thought: "This more likely me. Except for the savings and the acing of exams without learning."<p>I was a little confused about the "Do it" since all other points ended with "Don't do it" but it has been fun.<p>Thanks for this article.<p>PS. I am about to pause studying for half a year to one year and than continue to study. I am 19.

Here is my plan: in a year I'm finishing my army service. I'll be 21. Instead of going to the university I'll take three years off.<p>Right now I practice my software development skills. I practice BDD, pick up new mainstream languages, practice writing good and concise code, working with people, etc.<p>When I'll finish the army I'll have three years experience in software development. I've worked at a couple of start ups already, I'm lead dev in the army and we are pushing a new project every month or so, I have my own start up and hopefully by the time I'll finish I'll have the elusive paying customers.<p>And then I'll learn whatever I want for three years. All the math I want, all the algorithms I'm interested at. I'll design a language, I'll write my own compiler, I'll meditate on data structures and work on large open source projects.<p>That's far better than university. And it's gonna be fun.

I've been struggling in Uni for close to 5 years now. If I don't dropout then I'll just end up wasting more and more money. It looks like this semester my University may make the decision for me and kick me out for my low grades.<p>I know University is supposed to teach me dedication, perseverance, hard work etc but it seems all it does is make me doubt myself which makes me depressed and lazy.<p>I make reasonable money as a freelance web developer. I figure by dropping out of Uni completely, I can take on more jobs and focus on personal projects. This is what I want. This is what gives me excitement so why shouldn't I drop out if the only reason I'm in Uni is to finish a degree I don't even care for.

Why did you go in the first place? If you don't care about the 'system' why apply to college and waste a year or two on tuition? Or is it more about nurturing a chip? "yeah, I can get into your school, but here is what I think of it." Look, if you are trying to find an optimal policy in an unknown environment (w/drift) you are going to need to make the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. How you do it is your call, but if you think that the act of 'dropping out' is, in of itself, of positive value as signaling mechanism you are sadly mistaken.

"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems."<p>I could be mistaken, but I'm convinced that over 80% of people in college would not qualify.<p>If I'm mistaken, then I am saddened even more due to the existence of so many that could put forth so little effort for something they truly wanted to do. When I attended college I would not have qualified.

Peter Thiel doesn't seem to think dropping out is such a bad idea. He set up The Thiel Fellowship to give 20 students Under 20 $100,000 to get their business ideas off the ground and quit school.<p><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k-to-drop-out-of-college/" rel="nofollow">http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k...</a>

<i>the success rate of the average first-time start-up is so low that it makes playing the lottery look like a good investment</i><p>People love lines like this, but a 20% chance is a million times better than any kind of lottery. Even here in Brazil, where it sucks to be a business owner, recent data shows that +50% of small business survive for over 2 years.

My take on this is pretty much the same. Drop out if you have something else to do. Do not drop out to sit at home smoking, drinking and playing Xbox. or in more words: <a href="http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-business-startup/" rel="nofollow">http://nerdr.com/should-i-drop-out-of-college-and-start-a-bu...</a>

I psuedo-dropped out* a week ago. I think the thing that really stuck out in my case was that all of my family and friends responded with a sincere "congratulations!" when I told them about it.<p>* I've scraped enough credits together to collect my CS degree in May with my peers, though I do miss the english lit classes I was taking.

Let's not forget the happy medium: going on leave. Stanford lets students take 3 quarters off and many other universities offer a similar program. A few months may be enough time to decide if your side business is viable.

Much has been said about whether or not to drop out of school (or whether to go college at all.) How about those w/ limited technical skills going back to school to pick up a CS degree?<p>Regards, TDL

I don't think it really matters much either way. I dropped out and spent a few years doing a couple startup type things that didn't end up going anywhere. I ran out of money and got a job. The stuff I had put together + my various online profiles (Stack Overflow, Hacker News, etc.) seemed to be enough to get employers interested. No regrets here. I think Jacques' advice may be somewhat outdated. There are better ways to get educated and prove your competence these days.

"If those three conditions are not met . . ."<p>There are four conditions there, not three.

wow, amazing I wish I had a flow chart like this 2 years ago when my startup was making money..

Sage words.

Thank you. Excellent article that needs to be read by everyone who's considering dropping out for "a startup".<p>Let's ignore the complexities and focus on crude market value. A smart person with no college degree can probably earn $25,000 per year at 18. We're assuming a middle to upper-middle class background-- no special family connections-- and a reasonable work ethic. With a CS, math, or science degree from a good college, that jumps to about $80,000 at 22. That's a 34% annual growth rate in one's earning potential! (I'm ignoring the career prospects of Communications majors; a startup is much harder than getting 3.0+ in a CS program.) Typical income growth in the work world is 5-7% for average people and 10-20% (with ups and downs) for very ambitious people. I've been running at 17%/year since I left school, but that's likely to slow down as I trade off income acceleration for more interesting work and autonomy. My point is: being able to grow your earning potential at 34%/year, and probably have fun and learn a lot, while surrounded by intelligent people, over 4 years... is not something to walk away from.<p>Yes, everyone hates college sometimes. The lowest of the lows truly suck. Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Realizing that some idiots get in no matter how elite a college you attend. On the whole, though, if you struggle with college the problem is probably with you-- or more specifically, your level of maturity, and college is a great place to improve that.<p>Mark Zuckerberg could grow (in wealth and earning potential) much faster than 34%/year. College was slowing him down. Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. Most of us are not in that league-- not yet, anyway.<p>That's <i>just</i> discussing market value. Here's another factor. Forget about the startup dream and focus on the reality (for the middle 90%) of the work world. College is more fun, interesting, and educational than the first 5 years of the work world for most people. Don't throw that opportunity away lightly.

Neither John McCarthy nor Dennis Ritchie was college dropout. Steve Job sort-of was.<p>2 vs 1! Don't dropout!

frankly I think dropping out is retarded.<p>1. You get your food paid for, you get your housing paid for, you have 0 expenses.<p>2. Schoolwork doesn't take up a lot of effort...hell you can throw it to the wind, and coast by to get all Cs, and still graduate with a decent GPA...it might not be stellar, but at least you'll have something to fall back on<p>3. Dropping out is fine if you are profitable and the startup is paying for itself. But if you are still at the idea stage, or aren't making serious coin...then you are frankly an idiot for dropping out when you aren't ready.<p>4. Startups are a case of hurry up and wait, you can launch, and 99% of the chance, a month in, you'll be getting a few hundred hits a month. Don't throw away your backup plan for nothing.