How is today’s job market among teens and twenty-somethings? Many people and statistics say that it isn’t good. Many college graduates go into the real world, only to find few career opportunities. ?But apparently in Silicon Valley, ?some young adults succeed like it’s 1999.
According to this article called The Real Teens and Silicon Valley, some teens and early twenty-somethings are thriving in this tech paradise. And they’re risking everything to strike it big. There’s the 17-year-old high school dropout who is a lead engineer of message app Yo. There’s Ari Weinstein, the co-founder of DeskConnect. Pay Pal founder Peter Theil offers $100,000 to 20 people who skip or drop out of college. He does this annually because, “Some ideas can’t wait.”In 2014, 3,100 people applied. This is to shape young, entrepreneurial minds and maybe, even find the next Silicon Valley superstar. In fact, Conrad Kramer, 18, co-founder of DeskConnect, is one of Theil’s recipients. There’s the story of 18-year-old Ashu Desai. While still in high school, Desai made and sold an iPhone game that sold 50,000 copies. To appease his parents, he went to UCLA, but dropped out soon afterwards because of lack of interest in college. He moved to the San Francisco area. And they’re many teens coming to Silicon Valley with some experience in hopes of making it big in the tech industry, like many go to New York, LA or Las Vegas in hopes of making it big in the entertainment industry.
I am impressed and proud of these young adults who took the great risk. And now it’s paying off. Life is often about risk. And in an uncertain world, there’s no guarantee of anything. They took matters in their own hands, started their own businesses, and created jobs. That’s awesome. But for every Silicon Valley success story, I wonder how many failures and shattered dreams there are. I’m not being a pessimist, just a realist. It’s always good to have an impossible dream and do what it takes to make the dream a reality. Isn’t it even better to have a backup plan?