Pretty interesting, and good for making you feel like you've been wasting your life https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/mrbeast

Jacob, this taps into a theme I'm planning to write about this year, pretty precisely. Thanks so much for posting this here.

looking forward to reading it!

I will gladly attend your ted talk

Seconding the curiosity, since I suspect it might line up with my own regrets around going to college for CS

There are a few factors. probably the biggest one is just my personality/career path--I like working+learning independently. I've learned far faster from working on my own projects and reading books than I ever have in a classroom setting. (aside, I was also homeschooled, so that's how I was used to doing it until I got to college.) all the fake projects + homework + artificial deadlines + exams were just an impediment to learning imo. and since the workload is so high where was never any time for exploratory learning. it's like combining the worst of both worlds from work and school: you're basically in a production setting, doing mostly work, not learning, but the stuff you're producing is meaningless and you don't even get paid (the opposite in fact!) and the credential doesn't matter since I prefer to work as a founder/freelancer anyway. I spent more time getting my degree than I even spent working a job as a software engineer 🤦 I have sometimes wondered if part of my problem is that I went to a cheap school (byu) instead of a good school (university of Washington, since I'm from Washington, also it's like #4 for computer science apparently). I was trying to be frugal and stuff, but I wish someone had explained that software engineer interns get paid a lot and the internships you can get in Seattle (vs provo, lol) are probably more than enough to make up for the extra cost of tuition. though tbh my gut feeling is that I would've had the same beefs even if I went to UW. (to be continued, not done yet haha)

Wow, wasn’t aware that BYU had a “cheap” reputation for CS. I went to Weber (another Utah one), which is 1000% a cheap commuter school that teaches the bare minimum to ship you off for Defense work, but had heard nothing but good things about BYU CS (other than the requisite trash-talking from all my University of Utah friends)

heh, it's relative I guess

The whole idea that one needs a CS degree has only come up in maybe the last 15 years or so? When I wrote about ageism, one of the people I talked to was an old boss who told me that the CS degree requirement was ageist, because back in the day there were very very few schools offering CS degrees.

based on my rough survey I’m pretty sure the only CS degree I might’ve liked was MIT circa 1980 (but my HS performance would’ve stopped me far short of Ivy League anyway)

(Or companies that bought IBM boxes also were trained by IBM)

I buy the ageism argument somewhat. A lot of the legends within CS are EEs or something else anyway (60% sure Rich Hickey is an EE or Music something-or-other)

Jacob, you probably would have loved college if you were my age -- it was before college was a sort of vocational track, right? You could kind of explore around. The vocational stuff was expected to happen at work. Sigh. I'm sorry.

Fascinating! I’ve wondered if the relationship between Programmers / Musicians was a coincidence or suggesting something à la Graham’s “Hackers and Painters”. Although maybe I’m just looking for some company with my Sound Production Minor 🥲

We used to talk about it at the bank, I think programming is writing in another language; music is also code; instruments are machines lol. We're a musical family, and have had a number of programmers in the family...

I do want to throw out something based on the OP, though—I can tacitly agree that for the most part, reading/consuming/studying only the final product of successful examples and then relentlessly experimenting with mimicry is a fine way to learn something, and probably one of the shortest paths to success (where (= success money)). But something about that advice tastes funny. My example that might resonate with this crowd is that I don’t think anybody utilizing the MrBeastian (lol) approach would find Clojure or Vim or anything that deviates from the mainstream, and I guess I derive enough joy from using tools that I like that mainstream, billionaire success by doing the same things everyone else is doing seems sorta… unsatisfying. Even if you’re rich.

I played clarinet in orchestra 😂 haven't had much time for it since having kids unfortunately (finishing up original comment) I did go to a community college during high school and get an AS degree, which I think was a pretty good experience. Washington has a program where you can do that in high school and the state will pay tuition, and then if you get the associates degree it comes with a high school diploma too. so were I to go back in time and give myself advice, I would've still done that, but instead of transferring to a 4-year college, immediately enter the workforce and try to start freelancing or something. maybe just get a plane ticket to SF and bum around till I found someone who'd hire me haha, and then go from there. I did enjoy the social aspects of college (I mean, I did meet my wife there), so maybe try to rent an apartment in a college town at least at the end of the day, at least I didn't spend a full 4 years at byu, and I didn't get a masters + take a bunch of student debt, so I try to not feel too bad for myself haha. and at least now that I've done the standard software engineer thing at least for a little bit I know it's not what I'm looking for [end rant]

My pet theory being that hiring fresh grads at insane salaries vs candidates with a proven work record is a major component of the twice-decade massive layoffs at Big Tech Companies

idk, mrbeast seems to have taken a pretty non-mainstream career path the approach resonates with me thinking of it mainly in the sense of "learn by doing + taking in lots of raw inputs" rather than "learn by seeking out people's advice". I think there's been a fair amount of stuff written about tacit knowledge that's relevant. The other half of it is "if you're completely obsessed with something you'll probably get good at it" -- my hot take is that if you find that your obsessed with something, go for it; but probably a bad idea to try to mimic someone else's obsessiveness just for the sake of trying to be ambitious or whatever (I'm trying to make myself feel better about not having time to work more than 40 hours a week haha)

Ah, I can see it from that angle. The “mimicking obsessiveness” reminds me of my maybe-all-time-favorite Substack article https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/if-you-have-writers-block-maybe-you

I'll give that a read! once I get out of surgery today (getting a cyst removed)

don’t scare us like that 💀

Feel better soon Jacob!

this was a good article, thanks for sharing

that sort of feeling is basically why all the 37Signals books/writings resonate with me—the idea that software shops (and knowledge-work companies in general) should be built around profit at a sustainable pace, rather than the explosive high-income/high-debt crazy work schedules of startup founders like you’re saying

Fantastic article, thanks for sharing! Bookmarking for easy access when I’m feeling unmotivated to write

#1081327074549174272 is a good post in that genre I read recently. I emailed the author and he said he's currently working on raising a fund and hoping to start doing investments sometime in Q2

Oh, good.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it!