Within the first 3 months she is going to learn everything there is to learn about Quora. By her own admission she will then move on to the next learning experience until one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens.
I've dealt with very little politics, credit stealing, and jealousy as a % of my time since joining the workforce. They definitely exist, but to say they're so bad that they prevent you from learning is laughable.
I still find opportunities to grow and learn on a weekly basis. I don't work at one of the worlds top research divisions, but that's never stopped me from improving/developing myself.
You can learn in both academia and industry, but you learn completely different things. In industry, you typically learn more about business and current "trends" in technology, whereas in school you improve your fundamentals and have the opportunity to learn more hard skills, like machine learning, programming languages, etc.
I'd argue there is a lot more opportunity to learn in school than industry though, if only because you can go at your own rate in school so if you wanted to learn about current technology in school you could easily do so on your own. Still, I think a lot of it really boils down to having responsibilities that you are getting paid for vs not being paid but having the freedom to do what you want.
I certainly have learned a lot since leaving school, but the majority of it has not been due to being in industry but learned on my own time.
Most engineering jobs require a lot of horizontal learning: develop enough knowledge of a topic to do something useful for the company then move on. While academic learning revolves around developing depth in a particular subject.
If you'd like to learn enough about a topic to contribute something truly new to the field, 99.9% of engineering jobs will not satisfy you.
So-called "programming" jobs can be science, engineering, a trade, or a completely different job masquerading as "programming."
Science is what tends to happen in research divisions and academia. These jobs revolve around the invention of novel algorithms, research into theory, and so on, sometimes without even having a practical application in mind. The work product is often papers, but is also sometimes new languages or proofs of concept.
Software engineering jobs tend to be what you see in "senior developer" positions in industry. They're about applying known concepts (i.e., existing languages, implementations of approaches from the literature, and so on) to build a defined system in sometimes-novel ways. The work output is usually a product or service that you have some degree of responsibility for.
Software as a trade is what most junior programmers and general employees at larger companies do. This is the application of very specific learned skills to implement pre-solved problems (i.e., a ticket to "make X work like Y using Z method"). The final product is closed tickets / implemented features.
And still another large group of "programming" jobs are actually more about knowing the problem than the solution. These are really jobs about using programming to do something else. Process and product optimization as well as a lot of engineering support jobs fall into this category. The work product is an improved process or system that happens to use a computer.
You can learn in any of these jobs. In the science job, you learn the fundamentals and then think of advancements to the field. In the engineering job, you study the fundamentals to apply them to solving a problem. In the trade job, you build the biggest possible toolbox of code to apply to each solution you're given to implement. And in the non-programming job you learn a whole new field and then apply code to it.
All of these jobs can be lucrative, fulfilling, educational, and fun, but you need to know which one you're getting into ahead of time. "Programming" and "industry setting" are awfully vague and useless terms.
I trade my "pure learning" opportunities to be able to still grow and develop while earning an income that empowers me to live my life as I desire. I get to solve real world problems and challenges, rather than open ended ones.
I'm not trying to take anything from academics, but the most useful result will always come from a combination of academia and business. Neither would exist without the other, and there's and endless amount to learn from either side.
I'd love to hear you defend that statement.
All you did was give a justification that academia is a place that learning happens. In fact all that is needed to prove you incorrect is ONE counterexample.
Ummm.... Academics spend a lot of time in non-learning activities. As do students. Learning is a state of mind. You can learn wherever you are if you want.
Based on personal experience, I gave up the idea of a Phd when I saw how much time the professors spent begging for grants. And I've learned the most within the first 6 months of a new position. (This is also why jobs that offer a lot of variety are nice)
[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-show...
Tell me what exactly are you going to learn by being under business pressures and goal posts.
Learning is a lot like exercise in that regard (not surprisingly for similar physiological reasons). Just as walking to and from your cubical to the bus is "exercise", and you do derive a cardie-vascular benefit from it, deconstructing a broken application deployment process and recreating it without the obvious defects is "learning."
Can you elaborate? I am an undergrad and this sounds incredibly interesting. What are those skills? How do you pick up them?
Opportunities can become what you make them if you go all in, hopefully she is doing that at Quora, there are only so many opportunities in life.
The real benefit of a good education should be giving you the initial knowledge and desire to become an outstanding contributor to your area of interest whether you end up in academia or industry. I know a lot of folks who missed this and viewed the specialized classes they had to take as one more roadblock before being handed a pretty piece of paper and going off to work at fb/google/etc.
what a ridiculous meme. I guess if it works out we should praise her and if it doesn't we should lambast her. you know, for being a genius or squandering opportunity, respectively.
Good luck to her but that kind of people make me sick to my stomach.
Thiel Fellowship is all about startup-for-startup's-sake. The premise is you get more out of startup than school, or joining a company. Now this person decided Nope, I followed a lame idea with no huge biz potential, and it's time to get out. Kudos for NOT sticking to the startup for its own sake!
Maybe Thiel, with his experience, could have seen that food delivery is an insanely hard operations challenge?
If she made it to the fellowship she must have lied on her intentions to be an Entrepreneur. Don't be naive.
She gamed the system, fair enough. Let's just not pretend that all of this happened by chance and that she did not know what was going on.
a) I have never actually introduced myself as a Thiel Fellow because I didn't want to immediately be associated with the stereotypes that come along with the title. It's not on my resume nor my LinkedIn.
b) I completed my application the night it was due. I told the foundation & mentors it was rushed. They noticed this too because my responses were pretty incomplete.
c) I had full intentions, and still do, of becoming an entrepreneur and working on my own startup. However, I don't think now is the time. I thought I had all the skills I needed, but I realize that I have a lot more to learn. In a few years, I'll be much better equipped. I also need time to come up with something I'm really passionate about. There are lots of successful startups that solve first world problems, but I don't think I can dedicate the rest of my life to one.
> she must have lied
jak0bbbb,
These kinds of comments are not permitted on Hacker News. Since your other comment in the thread indicates that you're an undergrad who is eager to learn, we're going to assume that you posted them from an excess of passion, combined with ignorance of how this site works.
Please read the rules at the links below, and you'll understand why attacking someone else personally is not tolerated here. We hope you'll stick around HN as long as you are nice to your fellow users, give others the benefit of the doubt, and treat them as you would want to be treated.
I tried convincing myself that "changing people’s behavior and making delivery the default way to get food" was a mission important to me. That revelation along with the fact that my learning had slowed meant that it was time to quit.
If that's really your feeling, you should be in college. Any job is like this.
I'm unconvinced Quora is much better.
Five months in, grinding is pretty much the job. Everybody’s passion wanes when faced with (potentially) years of hard work. It’s legit to decide you don’t want that for yourself, but it’s sad to see someone abandon a viable funded business.
As an aside, I dislike the criticism “doing a startup for the sake of a startup.” It implies that someone needs a special calling, and provides an easy out in the absence of one. “Starting a business thinking it looks easy,” might be closer to the truth.
If you've never heard the phrase "from charybde to scylla", now is the time to look it up.
