Justin Mares

For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about school and careers lately. Reading this post by one of my favorite authors, Robert Greene, I was struck by what he says about allowing ourselves to be cornered. In his opinion, “what you want is to aim for something that increases your options for power and mobility.”  I don’t see many graduates aiming for this.

Right after school, many former students take the opposite approach. They are told that specializing in a field and receiving further education via graduate school is an intelligent career choice. In many cases, going to graduate school is not even presented as a choice (history majors go to law school, science majors go to medical school). If it were, there’s a chance more people would carefully weigh their options before doing something so limiting.

There are two major reasons why graduate school scares me, and why I think it should be examined more closely before individuals commit. The first is the crippling debt. There’s nothing new to say on this subject other than it severely limits one’s freedoms. With thousands of dollars of student loan payments due each month, such debt can severely limit your career options. Rather grow your skills at a small company for less pay, you are forced to fill a smaller role at a large corporation. In return for larger compensation, you lose out on the chance to improve your skills and advance your knowledge. Paul Graham nails this idea when he talks about “working upwind” on large problems.

Though limiting, debt isn’t what worries me most about graduate school. Technology is advancing more rapidly right now than at any point in human history. Advances in medicine, computation, communications… the list goes on. Just think, the iPhone is less than 6 years old. WordPress, a blogging platform that millions of individuals use to communicate on the internet, is less than 10 years old. Streaming internet video, Skype, and Gmail are all relatively new technologies. Now, more than any time in history, people are being trained for jobs that we aren’t sure will exist in 10 years. There are thousands of people going through school right now training to become a teacher. In 10 years, who knows how Khan Academy (or a similar service) will have changed how we learn? The same goes for those training to become professors. Higher education is most certainly about to undergo a radical change. Not only financially (see this post), but structurally. Given an age of limited attention spans and engaging ways we can learn, the model of a professor lecturing to a class of hundreds may shift drastically.

This is part of what make startups so appealing to me. There is an extremely rapid learning curve, you are exposed to brilliant people and innovative technologies, and you develop a skill set that will likely be valuable in the next 3-5 years. I know that I’ve been offered several jobs at this point that I never would have been offered simply because I graduated college.

Of course, it’s natural that I have this opinion given that I am involved in startups. If I wasn’t, I’d probably have a different take on careers.

A recent Forbes post by Venkat Rao touches on the “10x” effect in software. The 10x effect is the hotly debated idea that a fantastic developer can accomplish 10x more than an average one. Though I do believe that a good developer is several orders of magnitude better than an average one (especially since I’ve worked with both), I’m not sure that the 10x effect is accurate. My experience is more like 5-6x, which is still a substantial difference. The validity of this effect in software is the subject of other debates. I want to talk about an area where I have definitely seen this effect: mentorship.

Mentors are a touchy subject. Anyone who is somewhat involved in startups wants to give back and help out in some way, even if they aren’t particularly qualified. Regardless of how qualified someone may be, it’s amazing how so many people are willing to help and expect nothing in return. That type of generosity is hard to turn down sometimes. Most of the time, people like these give basic advice and are extremely enthusiastic about the idea. Conversations about how great the idea is are nice to have occasionally, but too often are not a good way to spend time. Advice from people who haven’t done it before, unless they are very successful in another arena, often isn’t very actionable or helpful.

Receiving advice from someone who has been successful is a completely different ballgame. In one of the best meetings I’ve ever had, the guy talking to us was challenging every. Single. Word we said. He pointed out flaws that many others had completely missed, and in one meeting helped us move forward faster than 10 others mentors had in much longer time periods. The best mentors are the one’s that make you think, and wonder if you’re completely wrong. I had lunch with one guy like this around Christmas. During lunch, he challenged me on almost every point of a plan I had mentally pieced together. After he poked holes in much of my thinking, we came up with an awesome new strategy that is now setting the direction for the next 2 years with something I’m working on.

Like seemingly everything, people who have experience in an industry end up doing well. If I were to go back two years, I would do my best to only take advice from people I liked and respected as people, or those who had been very successful in a similar field. The in-between doesn’t help much.

This is one of the best posts I’ve read in a while, especially this quote:

In the face of the overwhelming deluge, we spend more and more time reading and listening, leaving less and less space for action. Knowing about problems comes to replace doing something about them.

This happens all the time in school, startups, anything. You read about how hard it is for recent graduates to get jobs, think about what separates you from other graduates you know, and feel a sense of success. You have an idea and a friend likes it – success. I think about all the things I will do to market RoommateFit – success. Planning becomes a replacement for execution. It’s far harder to land a job in a tough economy, build a business, or execute on company strategy than it is to think about it. Envisioning success, enjoying the positive feedback for something you haven’t done provides a senese of success that isn’t real.

It’s even worse when you tell yourself stories about non-events, and allow it to affect your behavior. “This strategy will work, then I’ll become a millionaire” leads to an inflated sense of self. That’s certainly something I’m guilty of far more than I’d like.

More and more I’m understanding that this way of thinking is a crutch. Not only does it give you an inflated sense of self, but it creates echo chambers of individuals talking about their next big idea or what they are going to accomplish. This is a big reason why so many networking events I’ve been to suck – people want to talk about what they’re going to do, not what they are working on or what they’ve done. Unless you have an idea of next steps to take and when you will take them, most likely it’s just not going to happen. It’s far easier to give yourself credit for the great job you will have someday than it is to face the rejection and hard work that goes into getting such a job. All I know is that I don’t want the impermanent satisfaction that comes from talking a big game – I want the life and the results that come from working hard and shipping.