Who doesn't like butt steak?Ninja hearts.Attempting toad in the hole, and cooking the holes tooEggs with cashews and bruschetta #leftovers #lunchathomePiledriver #carDodge Challenger Concept #carIce cream piggiesCrazy hat headGoInstant whiteboard using whiteboard paint


Schoolwork, Dating or Hacking Side Projects: Pick Two out of Three

My history with hiring university students and recent graduates for technical positions has not been a good one.

In my first company (~15 years ago) we tried hiring recent university and technical college graduates for junior developer positions. I was struck by the near carbon copy similarities between most of the resumes. Very few of the tech students / graduates had any meaningful experience, and even fewer had done any hacking on the side to develop their skills. Their resumes consisted primarily of the projects they had done in school and non-related jobs. I remember getting a bunch of resumes from one university where they all described the exact same project – an elevator simulation done in Java. It was impossible to differentiate between the people.

Fast forward to a couple years ago when I was recruiting founders for Year One Labs. We were looking for people – even if they didn’t have a specific idea – to pair with other founders, get started on an idea, etc. and I met a young and super smart guy who was still in university. He had been hacking since he was a kid, but had stopped because of school. He was trying to get back into it (because I asked him about what he’d been doing lately hacking-wise), and this was his response (paraphrasing):

“I’d love to, but the schoolwork is so heavy, I don’t have any time. In my program [Computer Science] you have to pick two out of three: schoolwork, dating or hacking. I have to do the schoolwork, and dating … well … I am human …”

Far be it from me to deny anyone the pleasures of dating. But being overloaded with schoolwork is asinine.

The university had taken a promising hacker and turned him into another clone. (Side note: In this particular case, I’m confident the guy I’m speaking about will figure it out and pursue his dreams, university-contraints or otherwise. I’m not trying to insult him personally.)

I asked a few other students if they felt the same way, and they did. I didn’t do a statistically relevant survey of a large student population, but it was enough evidence for me to remain frustrated with the university system.

Today, we’re hiring co-op students at GoInstant. And lo and behold I’m seeing some of the exact same issues. Every resume is almost identical. The cover letters are the worst: either they’re all working together to write the same thing, using the same template, or being coached by the university on how to write a proper cover letter. Maybe all three. But it’s impossible to get through even a handful without giving up. A minuscule percentage of the applicants have done any side projects using newer technologies. I don’t think a single applicant had a github account. But they’re all learning Java! Yay! 15 years from when I started recruiting students, and they’re still doing a lot of the same things. And good portion of applicants are including completely non-relevant work experience (I really don’t care if you worked at a fast food restaurant), presumably to fill up the “pre-requisite” 1-2 page resume. If I hadn’t seen this sort of thing before it might be easy to assume that the fault lies only with this one university, but that’s not the case. I’ve seen these issues before.

Universities (and technical colleges) need to come up with a way to lower the “old school” coursework and allow students to hack. Students need to be hacking on side projects that use newer technologies. It’s not just about new technologies, it’s about genuinely learning by doing. If they need to get credit for it as part of the university program, figure it out. But if students aren’t coming out of university with more “real-world” and practical experience building stuff we’re doomed. Even Walmart uses Node.js. If you think new technology and experimentation are the exclusive domains of startups and “Silicon Valley” tech companies, you’re sorely mistaken. I would propose that universities cut a class per semester and replace that with a semester-long side project. Put some constraints of some kind, some guidelines, but then let the students at it. If the professors aren’t capable of grading the work because they’re not familiar with new technology, bring in industry folks that can help.

Bottom line: Universities have to find a way to provide students with the time and space to do more hacking. I know some of this is going on already, but we need more of it.

And students: While I feel for your situation and the fact that your coursework is ridiculous (and probably, for the most part, extremely dull), and I appreciate that it’d be nice to meet someone from the opposite sex occasionally and “mingle” … you need to find a way to stand out from everyone else and do something for yourself and your career. You might think of university as an investment in yourself – and it is – but you can be doing a lot more to invest in yourself by hacking away on side projects. Try Codecadamy for example. Life’s hard, you can’t wait around for the school system to change, so figure it out.

Take out non-relevant work experience from your resumes. I don’t care if you were a salesperson at The Gap. I don’t care if you flipped burgers at Burger King. And I don’t care about your grades. They’re not a real reflection of your ability to hack like crazy in a startup. And if you’re going to write an insanely generic cover letter that makes you look like everyone else, you might reconsider writing one at all. Your goal is to be memorable – in everything you do. Creative writing may not be your strength as geeks, so tackle the problem in another way. I remember once getting a cover letter in code. The guy’s cover letter told me to go to a website and input a command. It spat out the cover letter in a cool format from there. Smart. Creative. Different.

Some say “two out of three ain’t bad,” but in this case it’s not enough. I don’t want kids flunking out of school (although I have tried on occasion to convince students to quit … I mean … defer their studies for awhile), and I certainly don’t want to stop people from dating, but if more university students don’t start working on side projects, hacking, learning new technologies and differentiating themselves, we’re losing out on the opportunity to develop great new talent that could do so much more.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

Check out these posts:

January 25, 2012 Posted in Personal Development by

  • http://www.techentrepreneurship.com Helge Seetzen

    Spot on Ben! I hired 100+ interns over the years into various ventures and your experiences matches mine. The problem actually boils down to two parts:
    1. The utter failure of the university system to provide meaningful value to its attendees (meaningful = critical thinking, hacking, ownership, leadership – not “memorized information”).
    2. The inability of an entire generation to get their act together. There is no way that homework+dating (or hacking) actually fills your entire day. What actually happens is that we have culturally adjusted our perception of TV, gaming, social media, etc. from “leisure” to “necessity”. So it doesn’t get counted. The average 25 year old spends 3 hours a day on Facebook or 4 hours in front of a TV. That’s not just enough time to do some incredible hacking, it’s even to even build a company.

    I don’t even think that this is the fault of the kids doing it. Nobody, neither the university nor society, has simply explained that this isn’t a viable path to success. The “average effort + average leisure” path leads to “average life” (by definition). Average life in Canada means $40k family income when you are 45 (and that’s going to be trending towards the global average of about $10k over time). If you want anything more, and most university students have an unfortunate sense of entitlement for much more, then you better find a way to do more than average. A lot more.

    cheers
    Helge

  • http://www.instigatorblog.com Benjamin Yoskovitz

    As always a fantastic comment, thanks Helge.

  • http://twitter.com/johnbeales John Beales

    Nice rant ;)

    The sad thing is that ther are most likely actually some good applicants in the pool, it’s just incredibly difficult to tell who they are during the hiring process. A couple of years ago I experimented with hiring summer interns and ended up taking a group of 10, the ones that seemed the most communicative, many from the same classes. The internship wasn’t set up super well and everyone was working remotely, and most of them dropped out of site, but two of them, and one in particular were stellar and  have gone on to great careers.

  • JonA

    I didn’t do side projects/hacking when I went to university. I did schoolwork, dated, and played video games. The result is I got a decent job at a decent company a couple years out.

    I got bored. It then took me a while to figure out I was bored. Once I figured it out, I started doing hacking/side projects. I practically stopped wasting time on video games and TV shows.

    Once I was hacking together web apps and iphone apps, all of a sudden I felt 10x more valuable. I didn’t immediately go looking for another job, I instead chose the entrepreneurship path, a path that would not have been open to me without my change in focus.

    Now if I were to look for another job, I’m confident I could get a more interesting one and a better paying one.

  • http://www.instigatorblog.com/ Benjamin Yoskovitz

    John – I’d say there’s non-relevant and relevant work experience. Non-relevant = flipping burgers, relevant (potentially) = doing something else interesting/different/unique.

  • http://www.techentrepreneurship.com/ Helge Seetzen

    The volume approach actually works. At TandemLaunch (as well all my past ventures), we hire 3-4x more interns than we would actually need full employees. We then challenge the entire pool and “re-educate” them on the realities of entrepreneurship (challenges and benefits). The stars crystalize out of the group very quickly and we then throw all our weight behind them (further training, rapid promotion, higher responsibilities, etc.). Out of 100+ interns in my career about 10 turned out to be stars, 20 “pretty good”, 20 cancers that had to be removed quickly, and the rest where decent (enough to have a valuable internship but not enough to become a permanent member of the organisation. Statistical recruiting…

  • Tavish Armstrong

    The situation is more nuanced than that. First, the “average 25 year old” is not the average CS/SOEN student. Your statistics are probably false, or at least irrelevant. Not only that, but not all 24-hour days are created equally: some people have to work to pay for school. Some people are trying to network. Some people need to learn to speak English. None of this is generational. People spend time in different ways, and not everyone is putting all of their effort towards becoming the ultimate startup hacker. And it’s pretty easy to find a job these days even if you do spend a lot of your time watching TV.

    That said, I do all three titular activities, and *I* think they’re fun. If only I had time to read more books, work on my novel, and hang out with my friends more often…

  • http://www.techentrepreneurship.com/ Helge Seetzen

    Tavish, I understand there is variation between individuals. But I also understand statistics. Look at the data:http://www.frankwbaker.com/mediause.htm
    274mins/day of TV & 167mins/day of internet (most of which is social media time). That’s ~4.5 hours of TV and ~2.5 hours of internet socializing. I can’t judge how CS students fall in this range, but I doubt that, as a group, they are so far of the average that these numbers aren’t still incredibly impactful on their life. TV has zero productivity. Social media browsing arguably very little (if any). It might be fun but that’s not the point of Ben’s post.

    Regarding your “inequalities”: You can pay for school just as well by doing something challening as by flipping burgers. It just takes more effort and determination. Similarly, the best way to learn English is to do worthwhile work in an English environment. And “networking” is either professional (thus leading to relevant resume entries for Ben) or “hanging out with friends” which puts it into the “dating” category.

    I absolutely grant you that not everybody aspires to be a hacker or entrepreneur. That’s absolutely fine. But presumably the students that apply to Ben for a software job *do* want to be an entrepreneurial hacker – they just haven’t demonstrated their ability to do so yet.

    cheers
    Helge

    PS: For the record, during the last decade I paid my way through school (at $20k/year international rates), learned English (I am from Germany and French was my first foreign language), “dated” (with a wife of 13-years and three kids to prove it :) ), and built successul start-ups. And for 9 out of those 10 years I was a full time student (BSc to PhD). I probably worked harder than the average and definitely had some luck – but it’s not like I had Martian allies or some weird genetic mutation (nor am I anywhere remotely near the top of what dedicated people achieve in 10 years). These are replicable results.  

  • Tavish Armstrong

    I googled your LinkedIn profile before writing that post, so I’m aware that you are a example of how someone can apply themselves and achieve great things.

    I’ll definitely cede the point that yes, many students are wasting a lot of time watching TV. I know certain arts majors who spend a few hours a day watching TV, that’s for sure. But I really don’t think wasting time is a generational thing. Some things are constant (barring significant economic factors), such as previous generations thinking these punk kids are such slackers these days. When I was a wee lad, we had to walk uphill both ways, etc.

  • http://twitter.com/johnbeales John Beales

    I guess the real test should be to not include non-relevant work experience, and to know what’s relevant and what’s not.

  • http://www.koesmayadi.com/ Yadi

    It’s hard to choose Ben. I’d like to have school and dating.Thank you for article

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/SRVSBRVNO4X2W36EXRH4JCUTVA Daniel

    security audit of your website(s) HACKING OF WEBSITES & Hacking Accounts which include facebook,twitter this is pretty easy,myspace,skype,and email ids.I require either a Name, Friend ID, or E-mail address of the targets account(s). I have the help of a current 0-Day Exploit that allows me to gain remote access to the website servers and from there I find the password which is usually in an MD5 hash, from that I must decrypt to get the real password. The entire process takes about 30 minutes-1 hour to complete. All passwords are tested out 3 times before they get issued to any clients.I also rip Standards from websites.I accept payment through LR (Liberty Reserve) Only.I hardly ever USE WESTERN UNION!
    YOU CAN REACH ME ON :kross303@yahoo.com (SEND ME AN IM THROUGH Y! MESSENGER OR MAIL)i also sell bank logins and credit cards

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/SRVSBRVNO4X2W36EXRH4JCUTVA Daniel

    for daily hacking up to coperate hacking contact kross303@yahoo.com

  • http://www.startupdispatch.com/ Puranjay

    I’ve been on the fence about higher education for quite a while now, despite my Master’s degree. I’m not sure if a University education hurts or helps your creativity or your career. I studied English and outside of a couple of professors, in my 6 years of literature instruction, I never felt I was learning something I couldn’t do outside of the classroom (the fact that tuition was $150/year made the experience worthwhile, however).

    We need an overhaul of the system. We’re basically functioning on the same model as our grandparents did. Somehow, that seems to be inadequate for the demands of a globalized world.

    I would like to see a greater stress on learning foreign languages and cultures in universities today. I’m always a little shocked to see the kind of cultural ignorance so many highly educated graduates show. We’re only going to become more integrated as a world, and it’ll help a lot if you knew something about Chinese or Middle-Eastern history and culture. In 20 years, you might very well be working online for companies based out of these countries.

  • http://www.instigatorblog.com/ Benjamin Yoskovitz

    I definitely agree re: teaching more cultures and exposing students to the fact that the world is big and there’s lots going on in it. But more than “current affairs” students need to really understand and appreciate the rest of the world.

  • Karthik

    Visit our site Start Up Mentor for any Startup Help

  • Pingback: Suli, párkapcsolat, kódolás: kett?t választhatsz? | Farkas Máté

About Ben Yoskovitz
I recently joined GoInstant as VP Product. GoInstant changes how we use the web, making it shareable like never before.

I'm also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously I founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). I'm a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach me at byosko at gmail dot com.

Follow Ben on TwitterFollow this blog via email
Startup Tools
Recent Posts
Find Stuff
Startup Resources
Please Check Out:
NextMontreal.com I Spy Montreal
Key Categories
Topics
Disclaimer
The opinions and commentary on this site are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of my employer, GoInstant.

Instigator Blog runs WordPress and uses the Minimal theme by Curt Ziegler.