Imagine a teen sitting in his room in India at around two in the morning. He has no textbooks open, no structured syllabus, just a laptop screen and whatever part of the internet he happened to be using that evening. No safety net, no IIT preparation course, no coaching facility. Just a tab in the browser and a restless, hazy feeling that there must be another way. This story starts with that image, which is unglamorous and a little lonely.
Like these things, the story recently went viral. A 20-year-old college dropout claimed on Reddit that he had secured a remote position at a startup in San Francisco that paid about ₹70 lakh a year. No IIM, no IIT. No conventional degree of any kind. At sixteen, he began working as a freelancer, took on low-paying jobs for challenging clients, and gradually improved his growth marketing and distribution skills. He worked as a freelancer for a big company’s growth team. He began making frequent posts on X, increasing his visibility in an area where visibility is frequently more important than credentials.
He described the turning point as being both somewhat exhausting and almost ridiculously simple. In San Francisco, he discovered a job posting at a well-funded startup that had raised nearly $50 million. He submitted an application. was turned down. reapplied. was disregarded. persisted, eventually managing to get in touch with the founder directly after sending over twenty follow-up emails. He eventually got an interview because of his directness and willingness to endure the silence. He claimed that rather than the institution that had given him a piece of paper, the discussion centered on execution and marketing psychology, or what he had actually done.
It’s difficult not to find something truly captivating in that. And yet. As was to be expected, opinions on the internet were divided. It was described as inspirational by some. Others questioned whether the salary amount was accurate, whether the position was structured in any traditional way, and whether “AI distribution funnels,” as he described the work, was a meaningful job category or simply growth marketing reworded. It’s not unfair to be skeptical. These stories spread quickly in part because they are emotionally fulfilling, and stories that are emotionally fulfilling don’t always endure contact with complete context.
It’s important to consider the larger issue that this story consistently raises. The overwhelming majority of individuals who excel in their fields attended college, and a sizable portion attended prestigious universities, according to research on educational outcomes. The mythology surrounding Gates and Zuckerberg is real, but it only covers a small portion of the results. Both of those men were accepted to Harvard. After years of already being exceptional, the dropout occurred following admission. It’s still unclear if their stories teach us that “college doesn’t matter” or something more along the lines of “exceptional people sometimes find their own routes regardless of the system.”
Nevertheless, the tech sector has been subtly changing its hiring practices for years, especially in the startup sector. Transcripts are becoming less valuable than portfolios. Sometimes early-stage team founders are more interested in a candidate’s work than in their educational background. The 20-year-old in this story realized this intuitively, developing his public portfolio, showcasing his work on social media, and learning to connect with people instead of waiting to be discovered. The tech community appears genuinely uncertain about whether that is a template or an anomaly.
Observing stories like this emerge every few months gives me the impression that the discourse surrounding education and careers is gradually evolving—not drastically or quickly, but in ways that are getting more difficult to ignore. The degree is still valuable. However, it’s becoming more difficult to defend the notion that it’s the only worthwhile course of action.
