It hurts my brain when people use him as an example of successful drop outs.

For starters, this dude's a literal fucking genius. The average person that considers dropping out is far away from the level of intelligence that Bill had when he dropped out.

average_person != bill_gates

True but I gotta say 3 months on the job taught me more than my paid master's did... Also most the things I learned were outdated. Hell I taught half the damn class Android along with my professor (newly appointed and not given enough time to study the subject - I mean for real....)

So it really feels like a waste of time and money...

On the flip side there were people there that didn't have the programming bug (pun intended :P) and were slower to learn. And it feels like the whole thing was designed for them. But I don't think those people will make it as developers (not meant to be mean in any way).

Point being I'm in no way a genius but because I love programming I find it far easier to learn doing crap rather than studying a course (online or offline). My master's is basically just a bullet in my CV now...

@Rick-C137 Not everyone learns the same way. And for some reason people have a hard time grasping that concept that there's more than one way for a person to learn. (Not you specifically, just some people on this app... Actually lots of people on this app.)

And of course you're going to learn more by "doing" than you are studying. It's like that in literally every single degree program that exists.

While it may not work for you, it might work for someone else.

General, I think is stupid to compare yourself to very successful people for a lot of reasons...especially bill...he was the right man at the right time and also a very good business-man...

This post became more like a meme rather than a quote or whatever was intended...

@ThatDevGuy26 It's a rant about idiots trying to justify dropping out of college because on billionaire, who was a genius, got it right.

Don't see how it's a joke...

And he had Steve Ballmer, ruthless with competition and getting tons of high value contracts
Gates could be Chief Architect (and I hear he was really challenging to work with) while other would run the business
It’s not just being smart and “dropping out”, it’s getting the right people around you early on

University is to guarantee a minimum skill/knowledge to the masses.

What went wrong is that companies think the paper you get validated how much you are worth.

Experience will always be better than raw knowledge, but to get certain experience you also need certain knowledge.

Bill did nit just dropped out, he was doing shit that was worth dropping out.

It's a phenomenon called "Survivor bias". Veritasium has a nice video about it.

Basically, 99.99% of dropouts fail miserably or don't accomplish anything spectacular, so we only hear about the handful of successful ones and get a very skewed perception, leading to a false correlation

Also, don’t forget he was born into a well connected family, which helped him start the business.

@Rick-C137 hi, just wanted to know. Has your masters opened up opportunities you think you wouldn't have gotten if you didn't have it?...(from a college student looking for motivation)

@Zen0422 I did my masters to land my first job which was at the same University at a lab as RnD.

Reality of the situation: They got to add a line at the end of every doc/ppt saying x master's students, Y PhDs.

People have asked me in interviews what I did in the masters but only in passing. It always feels like they're checking off a box.

So... Yes I guess it matters for your CV but it shouldn't.
I do believe that if you can sell your abilities you don't need it but your CV might be thrown away because that box wasn't checked ;)

In the end it's your decision and as in everything in life there are trade offs.

@Zen0422

The problem with universities in general (and again in my opinion) is that they keep teaching language/technology/stack x,y,z while these go out of date quicker than you can say 'I got fired'.

You know what doesn't get out of date? Design patterns and architectures.

Curiously those aren't taught and you are left to figure it out for yourself after ~5 years on the job which means you have created a lot of crap code that your future self has to deal with! Neat ha?!

Rant over :P

My advice (which should be twisted to fit your specific situation) is do the masters but don't devote all your time to it. Do what needs to be done to pass the exams and devote the rest of your time to working with and getting accustomed to different design patterns and how they are used as well as clean architecture (Robert c Martin check out his stuff).

Hope I helped :)

@Rick-C137 thank you very much. I have a new view of things. Tertiary education used to be a straight route to a good job. But after my first internship. I felt like college was just for the paper, but then again that paper opens door. I will start focusing on growing my portfolio. Thanks again, really appreciate it.

The guy also has a hell of a work ethic. He dropped out because he had shit to do lol

while the fact that my manz bill dropped out of harvard is a key detail, i think the better fact would be the ratio of successful dropouts to total dropouts, although i don't know what that is

He dropped out because he was already making money at Microsoft, don't think the average dropout has that excuse...