This book was amazing. Yang weaves personal experiences in business and then with starting a nonprofit, insights into the school-to-work pipeline, and fascinating thoughts about careers in general. I loved it. I also loved his appendix about what kinds of questions people should ask about jobs/careers to help find what suits them. That said, there are two main parts to the book: the problem and the solution. Yang sold me on the problem (though I had some quibbles with his framing), but I thought his solution was slightly off the mark.
The problem: a majority of the smartest, most ambitious university students in the US get sucked into paper-pushing jobs that don’t add value to the world. I think this is such an important, overlooked point and Yang points to all the data to show this. The fact is that the number one driver of economic growth (which lifts people out of poverty, enlarges the tax base, and increases living standards and life expectancy for everyone) is entrepreneurship.
The fact that Airbnb exists isn’t just great because it provides great value for millions of people- it’s that it creates many new jobs (not to mention lucrative hosting opportunities) that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Bonus points that most of the jobs created by Airbnb are large annual salaries. If Brian Chesky (co-founder and CEO of Airbnb) had become a well-compensated partner at a large law firm, helping large corporations fight other large corporations about who gets a big pot of money, that would be a huge loss to the world because Airbnb wouldn’t exist. If Steve Jobs or Elon Musk had become a consultant at one of the big-three consulting firms, advising State Farm how to save billions of dollars a year (hint: fewer payouts), that would be a tragedy that no one would ever know about. Here’s the thing: tragedies like this happen every day. Because the people as smart, talented, and ambitious as Elon or Jobs are largely going to consultancies, law school, or another grad school. Teach for America, to their credit, recognized the ridiculousness of this and created a new track for talented people to become teachers. This is great! But not every genius is cut out to teach. What we need is a track for entrepreneurship.
This is my summation of Yang’s basic argument about the problem, and I agree with it. That said, he says a few things that rub me the wrong way. First, he seems to see the world in black and white; you’re either a builder or you’re “rent seeking” (his words). Are firefighters and doctors really rent-seekers because they’re building nothing new? Second, he seems to believe that middle managers and executives at large corporations are paper-pushers (probably true) that add no value (probably false). I’m pretty sure the executives at Google who decided to acquire Nest, Youtube, and Android added much value to the economy (because Nest and Android couldn’t have grown as large without Google’s resources, and because entrepreneurship as a whole benefits when there’s a “market” for buying startups, as it raises valuations and causes more people to enter the fray). Blockbuster executives made some decisions (like refusing to buy Netflix for $50 million) that turned out pretty consequential - they weren’t just pushing paper. So while I am convinced that the most brilliant people add more value by starting startups, I don’t think all is lost if they contribute elsewhere. Also, Yang doesn’t address in this book (though he wrote another book on the topic) the idea that some startups create new jobs while destroying other jobs. While I think there’s a net gain for the economy and the world, and while there’s a reasonable argument that startups create many more jobs (and better-paying ones) than they destroy, he should at least acknowledge the counterargument to address those in the audience who aren’t already fans.
On to the solution: Yang started a nonprofit called Venture for America. Kind of like Teach for America, VFA recruits talented college grads to “serve” at young startups and hopefully end up in entrepreneurship. I think this is good, but VFA only recruits people to join startups (rather than start them) and only in relatively small or failed cities like Baltimore, Detroit, or Cleveland, and they only have around 200 fellows a year. This doesn’t make a dent in the statistics that Yang cites about how most ivy league grads go into consulting or grad school. And if you’re smart, ambitious, and talented and can do anything you want, chances are you’re only willing to live in NYC, SF, LA, Boston, or Chicago. You are not moving to Detroit to work at someone else’s unproven startup when you can get a huge starting salary at McKinsey, which you know will open all sorts of doors for you and have you work with the brightest minds. Anyway, I think Yang’s solution is a lot better than nothing, but it doesn’t quite address the problem.
I think addressing the problem would involve actually funding college grads if they have an idea for a startup and actively recruiting them to come up with ideas and build solutions. I have more thoughts on this for another time.