| Reminds me of Shopify's Tobias Lutke– also German, also took an off-beaten path. I transcribed a Keynote that tobi once did.[1] Let me dig up the relevant bit: > Within my little world, within this school, the most obvious/profound thought I had was that I needed Air Jordan sneakers to be part of the popular kids. > That seems really silly from the perspective of adults. I was lucky- I got out of school (you can leave school after 10th grade in Germany- you can choose to do an apprenticeship with a company for a couple of years and then join University- really good system.) > Middle of the 90s, Germany realises computers are getting more important, and we have no clue how to educate computer programmers. Science faculties of universities? Or address in a more traditional, hands-on craftsman kinda route? Lucky- one of the first class of kids to join this kind of thing, then I joined Siemens, and met a really great mentor there. [1] http://www.visakanv.com/marketing/tobi UPDATE: I remembered something else [2]: "I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any effort into it. They diagnosed me with all sorts of learning disabilities and started to medicate me. I wanted to leave it all behind." "I decided the best thing to do was to drop out and start an apprenticeship as a Fachinformatiker - computer programmer. This might sound like a stupid decision to people in North America, who often go to College or University to get a degree in something like computer science, but in Germany leaving high-school for an apprenticeship is not out of the ordinary. It is called the dual education system, and it is likely one of the main reasons for Germany’s success." [2] http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-pro... |
Added as a read, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9020335 great post.