[chatmasta]

I've had my own business since I was 15 and also multiple internships. You can do both, and if possible, you should. Never underestimate what you can learn as an employee. This is especially true as a software engineer. Once you work with a talented team of engineers at an established company, you realize that you don't actually know anything. You will learn more in a summer internship than you will in any CS class or teaching yourself.

[jholman]

I agree, especially about "you can do both, and if possible, you should".

I think you're right, chatmasta, about the benefits of being an employee, especially in the context of a given craft. This is exactly what I was thinking between reading the title of the article, and reading the article. Just yesterday on HN there was a very moving confessional about hacking on a production DB without transactional safety, and everyone agreed: in a sane world, junior staff learn not to do this from senior staff, rather than just trying crap and getting burned. How many things are there left to get burned on? Oh my FSM, so many. Please, please, let me learn from experienced hands, and reinvent as few wheels as possible.

But, that said, I found this article really convincing. I think all of TFA's points about the benefits of early -- crappy -- entrepreneurship are very compelling. Far more compelling than I expected. When I look around at people who're doing better (at their careers and their contributions to the world in general) than me, and people who're doing worse than me, my feeling is this: the strengths mentioned in the article (selling, managing, and focus on creating value ) are really big differentiators in determining success and impact.

I've never had my own business, so maybe I dunno what's up.

[hipsters_unite]

> "You can do both, and if possible, you should." I've also had my own business for about three years. I'd agree that you can learn a lot, but it's very different from what you can learn in an internship.

For instance, running a record label I've learned how to do things on literally zero budget, network like crazy and the stubbornness and determination involved is probably the only reason I've ultimately been able to learn how to program.

That said, I did a non-technical internship at Mixcloud a couple of years ago and the exposure to the environment as well as pieces of advice and experience have repeatedly been useful to me since... plus it was probably the first step on the road to learning to code as well.

All that considered, I have no idea why you'd see it as an 'all or nothing' thing - I once released two EPs while I was interning at NME... that's what evenings are for.