[iag]

CMU grad here, let me chime in a few words if I may...

As much as I am proud to hear that Carnegie Mellon SCS grads are making the top $, it saddens me a bit to realize that our graduates are playing it too safe.

I don't have the exact numbers, but my guess is that the percentage of CMU grads doing startups is probably at a much lower number rate than other top tier tech schools like MIT and Stanford. As a result, while these other school's immediate graduate salary is lower than CMU, their life time salary is probably going to be higher.

Yes, making $100K out of college is glorious, but that novelty is going to wear off and you'll be like everybody else slaving their life away. While you still can, while the market is still hot, why not aim for something better like creating the next instagram or dropbox? What's the absolute worst that can happen if you fail? Returning to that $100K/year job?

Life after college is like stepping into a casino for the first time and the casino offers you a free roll. It's silly not to give it a shot if you have practically nothing to lose.

[phxrsng]

I'm not sure I agree, for many reasons.

1 - a lot of grads have loans to pay off, and that $100k/yr job sure helps get it done quickly so you can focus on anything you want without that on your back.

2 - That $100k/yr job can help you meet a lot of great people to work on projects with at a later time. A lot of SCS grads come out having done nothing but stare at code for 4 years (I'm one, and I was saddened by the number of my classmates who made no connections on campus outside of SCS, connections that would be vitally useful in a startup). Working at a great company in the valley can help get you into the startup scene in a way that Pittsburgh might not.

3 - Nothing says you can't work on a startup outside of the 40-50hrs/wk you put in at your 100k/yr job. SCS grads are used to loooong work weeks; a normal work week seems short in comparison, especially right after graduation when you aren't (probably) supporting a family or anything else. That leaves time to make money AND try out some projects.

4 - Not being part of a startup =/= slaving your life away. There's a lot of great, rewarding work to be done in the valley and in the tech industry, it isn't an all or nothing thing with the all being becoming a startup founder. Being part of a company growing quickly and doing cool things can be just as rewarding as being a founder.

[sliverstorm]

You are spot on with most of that, but #3 is not exactly true. When you sign on for $100k/yr you are almost guaranteed to have signed a non-compete clause, as well as a clause generally surrendering rights to novel work.

It's somewhat of a blurry, contentious line I don't well understand, but if you are working for Google chances are you can't incubate a software startup by moonlight.

[phxrsng]

I agree - but I'd say Google is a bit of an outlier. Many software companies have non-competes with more limited scope by virtue of their product being related to one specific industry that you can't compete with.

So maybe its more of a "maybe you can" thing.

[holdenk]

I am not a lawyer, but it might be worth talking to one especially if you are in California and interested in moonlighting.

[nemothekid]

Number 1 is also a big one. Stanford is a much more finically generous school. I go to CMU currently, and I have a friend in the same income range as me that goes to stanford, and I pay almost double what he does.

[mendocino]

> While you still can, while the market is still hot, why not aim for something better like creating the next instagram or dropbox?

I guess not everyone wants to build yet another website/app. A lot of interesting/hard/capital-intensive R&D is done outside of the startup bubble and there are only so many job openings at SpaceX.

[jenntoda]

Another CMU grad here, and I can't agree more.

Attention all new CMU SCS grads: I envy you. You have the brains, the skills, and the YOUTH to do whatever you want! DO IT! It doesn't have to be a startup, but it should be something that you really really want to do and would do even for free. You literally have nothing to lose.

If you think you would work for someone else for free - then do it. The minute you take a job for the pay however, you're on the slippery slope of selling your soul for money.

You can always make money. Your youth is ticking away by the minute. You will never get it back.

I graduate from CMU 6 years ago. I took the safer route. Instead of searching for something I am passionate about, I settled for the paycheck. It took me 4 years to gather up enough courage to admit that I was miserable on the paycheck treadmill.

See, when you work for a paycheck, you sell yourself to the person in control of your pay - your manager. Your incentive is to please your manager so that you can get your raise. Often times, this means that you have to compromise your own judgement to be “in alignment with the management”. Each time you compromise your own judgement, you actually become more adversed to making your own judgement. And as you lose your sense of judgement, you lose your confidence in yourself to do any differently. This is when you are really in trouble. You become risk adverse: the more you compromise your soul to gain your material belongings, the more you become committed to holding on to your material goods for dear life.

I saw this happening to myself but I didn't have enough courage to just quit outright, so I took the only other socially (parentally) acceptable route: go back to school.

At my MBA program I found a whole collection of folks similar to me. Regardless of whatever we wrote on the application to get in, most of us were just soul searching. Searching for the meaning of our lives beyond our paychecks. There, I observed a phenomenon. The “I want to do something else BUT” disease. Usually, the BUT is a “but I have sustain my materialistic life”. So even as most of us were soul searching, by far the majority went right back onto the paycheck treadmill. And that is sad. Really sad.

Avoid the treadmill altogether and you will be happier for it. If you can’t, if you need the money to sustain yourself and your family, then at the very least keep your conciseness in check and remember that you’re just working for a paycheck. In your spare time, do what you truly want to be doing, challenge yourself and don’t listen to what the majority wants you to do. Be different. You only live once. Live it.

[babar]

I think your chances of succeeding in your startup increase tremendously if you've taken a couple of years to work at another startup, see what is required to make it work, and see what problems you want to avoid, before starting your own. I also think, for CMU in particular, students have less exposure to the Silicon Valley startup culture than Stanford students. Hopefully that is better now than when I went, but being naive about the business side of things can have some pretty negative consequences when you try to start your own thing.

Of course, if you really have an idea you are passionate about you should go out there and make it happen. But maybe find some other more experienced CMU folks to give you some advice while you do it :)

[khuey]

Well of course CMU students have less exposure to the Silicon Valley startup culture than Stanford students. One is right down the road, the other is on the opposite side of the country.

[anamax]

http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/

[jblock]

"...if you have practically nothing to lose."

My student loans say differently. :)

But honestly, so many factors go into post-undergrad job hunting these days that it's difficult to simplify the issue into "go to a startup" and "don't go to a startup."

I also wouldn't say that 100K is "slaving your life away" if you want to raise a family and live a comfortable life. I went to a small school in southwest Indiana (Rose-Hulman) and most graduates want nothing more than to work a 9-5 engineering job and find the love of their lives.

And frankly, I can't find the heart to advise them otherwise.

[mnutt]

I was on a panel at CMU, as part of a NYC startup tour designed to encourage students to move to NYC and/or join a startup. Of all the schools we went to, the CMU event had the best attendance and students I talked to afterwards seemed the most interested in entrepreneurship.

[tikhonj]

This could just be because CMU students have less exposure to startups and the like, so your tour was proportionally more interesting to them.

I'm a Berkeley student, and I bet that your tour would have been less well attended here, simply because we're inundated with startups as is. (And because anybody wanting to start a company is probably going to stay in the Bay Area, but that's another story.)

Maybe (very likely, even) I have a poor view of Pittsburgh, but my impression was that it is not particularly full of tech startups. This is also self-reinforcing to some degree--the sort of people who like startups are more likely to choose one of the other top CS schools because they're in significantly more startup-friendly areas (e.g. Boston or the Bay Area). That was actually one of my main criteria when considering CMU.

[frankdenbow]

SCS grad here, I echo your sentiments. There are lots of CMU grads in startups, though from companies like Dulingo, Homerun, Everlane, Gazehawk, etc. Seems that the school is doing more for the entrepreneurship program which is encouraging.

[jsprinkles]

"Other people in my class aren't doing what I want to do, and this saddens me."

Startups aren't the One True Path of computing, and some people appreciate clocking out at a consistent time every day (or have an eye on a family, or whatever); the Silicon Valley life is not for everyone, and being saddened by other people not choosing your lifestyle is just silly. Why does this matter to you?

[dasil003]

Maybe he wants to hire them for below market salaries ;)

[aswanson]

Because he looks at it as a waste of human potential. Most rational humans are disturbed by as much.

[smokinn]

That's very debatable.

While you may think that people working big companies are wasting their potential, those working there might think the same for people at startups.

Let's explore a counter-argument:

At a big company you get incredible leverage for the work you do. Most large companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) don't bother with a few thousand clients. Your work goes out to millions. That's quite an impact you can have.

Startups on the other hand usually fail. And they fail after having affected relatively few customers. Very few ever make it to even tens of thousands of customers.

So which is is the bigger waste of human potential? The person working 80+ hours a week whose company goes bust after a year after being used by barely anyone or the person working 40 hours a week on a product being used by 100 million people?

[aswanson]

Please read my response to jsprinkles.

[bartonfink]

Who is anyone on here to decide what grads should do with their potential, or whether they're wasting it? That's the height of arrogance, and I see no rationality whatsoever in such an attitude.

[Jach]

A more charitable interpretation of your parent's comment is the more general "X is a waste of your potential compared to Y, you should be doing Y." I would agree with you that startups are not automatically a better use of potential, but they might be for the particular person.

What ranks higher for me than "potential" (which is trickier for me to measure) is sanity. I can't see myself working at BigNonTechCo for 40 years doing more or less the same kind of activities, 40 hours each week. Other people can, that's for them, I'd go insane. Thus it's instrumentally rational for me to avoid such a place and rational for other people to seek it out.

[jsprinkles]

Not working at a startup is a waste of human potential? You're going to have to elaborate on that, as that's extraordinarily disrespectful to pretty much everybody else in computing.

[aswanson]

The statement was speculation on the op'viewpoint, not an assertion regarding human potential.

[jsprinkles]

That isn't how your comment reads, particularly taking into account the second sentence.