[dataker]

As someone in my early 20s, I can say the young innovator myth also severely hurts the youth.

When you're told you need to achieve X by 30, you may end up destroying relationships, having health issues and depression.

[thewarrior]

Dave Cutler , legend and father of the NT kernel , who was on the front page of HN yesterday was born in 1942.

He joined Microsoft in 1988 , when he was 46 , to work on the NT kernel. No doubt he had a many brilliant achievements before that , but his greatest work came in his 40s. Something the youth obsessed programmers of today should remember.

[azazqadir]

Innovating at 20s or by 30 happens, but rarely. I believe, we should at least start working at innovating something at this age.

[jventura]

Agree! In my opinion your 20's should be for studying and exploring things on a higher level (university, etc.), your 30's for starting building your "systems" and master something so that in your 40's you should be well equipped to do real innovation.

Of course, some people may be faster and some slower..

[tamana]

Jeff Bezos agrees with you.

Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg do not.

Interestingly, of those, Bezos was the MBA manager, the rest were all programmers.

[jventura]

And of those who was a real inventor or innovator? I'm not talking about business innovation, but real and durable innovations.. After 100+ years of being invented, I still ride my bike every week, but I highly doubt that Amazon as shop, MSDOS, Google as search engine or Facebook will be used in 2200!

[shanehoban]

Great point, perhaps Elon Musk should chime in on this? #iwish

[alayne]

x

[jdale27]

You never went to grad school, did you?

[technopath]

My favorite is when other tech people (investors, etc.) stare at you blankly after comments like, "A PhD is like a startup in many ways."

[raverbashing]

But with less monetary potential and more pointless nitpicking.

Also you need to waste a lot of time writing a thesis (I'm talking about the nitty-gritty process of coming up with the words and fighting TeX or worse, MS Word) that essentially is worth the paper it's printed on.

(well at least Campus life is better than sharing a flat with 3 other people with questionable hygiene habits)

[alayne]

X

[jdale27]

I apologize for my snark. I would genuinely like to hear about your grad school experience. Maybe I'm the outlier.

[fidz]

But what if we can achieve X in early age without compromising anything?

[ben_jones]

Ten people believe if they go to college they will receive six-figure salaries upon graduation. Ten people take out six-figure student loans because hey it's a worthwhile investment. Upon graduating, four people receive six figure salaries.

There's a certain insanity to counting off risk because of something you think will happen. People seem to do it too much.

[maxxxxx]

Sure, it's great if you can pull that off. But for a lot of people expecting they have to be a great success in an early age puts a lot of pressure on them and I think it impedes learning.

[tonyedgecombe]

Which is why you should measure success based on what you put in rather than what you get out.