Ah, Paul Graham, the tech world’s favorite sentient beard, has done it again! The Y Combinator co-founder and self-anointed startup sage dropped a new essay last week. The Internet’s reaction? Let’s say people aren’t exactly printing it out to hang on their vision boards.
Graham’s essay, titled “Why You Should Drop Out of School, But Only if You’re Me,” is his latest attempt to disrupt your life decisions. It’s the artisanal, small-batch, non-GMO thought leadership we didn’t ask for but got anyway.
“Listen, I’ve read Paul Graham essays that were enlightening,” said Sarah Jenkins, a software engineer and occasional reader of self-help books disguised as LinkedIn posts. “But this one feels like he’s just throwing darts at a wall of controversial topics and hoping something sticks. It’s like Deepak Chopra met a Silicon Valley buzzword generator.“
Let’s dissect the meat of this essay, shall we? In a staggering 10,000 words—that’s a Tolstoy novel in the world of blog posts—Graham argues that formal education is outdated. But wait, there’s a twist! Only if you’re as brilliant as he is, which is about as likely as Elon Musk admitting he’s wrong. Ever.
The essay reads like a choose-your-own-adventure book where every path leads to you feeling inadequate. “If you aren’t starting a startup by 20, you’re already a failure,” Graham pontificates, presumably while sipping on a cocktail of Soylent and hubris.
Dr Emily Goldstein, a professor of Computer Science at MIT, retorted, “If Paul Graham is the barometer for success, then I guess we’re all just glorified meat bags floating in a sea of irrelevance.“
To be fair, Graham isn’t all wrong. Sure, college isn’t for everyone. But neither is taking advice from a guy who once compared startups to “raising a child.” Yeah, because keeping a company afloat and raising a human being are as comparable as apples and—oh, I don’t know—a SpaceX rocket?
So, what’s the public verdict? Well, Twitter became a circus of memes faster than you can say, “Did he really write that?” The hashtag #GrahamGoneWrong trended for days, featuring gems like Paul Graham’s face superimposed on a Magic 8-Ball with phrases like “Outlook not so good” and “Ask again later.”
Jim O’Connell, an angel investor who claims to have a framed poster of Graham in his office, sighed, “This one’s a head-scratcher. I mean, I’m all for contrarian ideas, but this is like saying water is dry or the Earth is flat. Even for Graham, it’s a stretch.“
So, should you drop out of school to pursue your not-yet-existent startup? Probably not unless you have a safety net the size of Google’s market cap. But hey, if you’re looking for controversial fireside reading this weekend, Paul Graham’s got you covered. Just don’t forget the marshmallows and the grain of salt.
