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22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#121

Post by kortex »

balsam wrote: post #64

Anybody has a good estimate of how much this kind of home fab can cost? I am trying to do this in my own apartment (its going very slowly heh) and I estimate it would be USD100000. USD10000 would be barely believable if I can get that broken electron microscope for the same price he did. ($1000). Seems like the vacuum system would be the most expensive part. Another one would be random consumables (vacuum grease, oil…

Depends tremendously on how good you are at scrounging. Assuming you have more time than money and know how to find fruitful sources (ebay is meh, local universities, local industry, electronics recylers, equipment auctions, and knowing a guy are the best ways to get cheap/free gear), you could probably do something like the z1 for a few grand.

Sam's lab looks like it cost somewhere north of $10k, but south of $50k. But I mean that's like from empty garage with nary a multimeter to your name.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#122

Post by Fissionary »

nicoburns wrote: post #96
TrackerFF wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compete with FAANG, Finance, and Consulting. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of people end up.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

The idea of imposing punitive taxes on some companies, to level the playing field for everyone else, reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". It wouldn't have the desired effect anyway, since employee salaries are tax-deductible.

A better way to promote innovation might be through cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship in young people, supporting startup accelerators, and handing out grants to promising candidates like the one in the article.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#123

Post by wowokay »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #114
yarky wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the logic here? Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? Anybody can compete, but apparently most of us choose not to. Who forces a young talent to settle for a job instead of taking the risk to innovate ? Maybe risk-taking for innovation is what could be the encouraged through taxation.

>Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? That's what some EU members think. Ask us how that's going :) That's why most of the big and wealthy companies hare are around 100 years old or more, vs about 30 years old in the US. Here in Austria you can get various government and EU grants for your startup and tax waivers on social security, and if by some miracle, you don't crash and burn like 95% of s…

I must be misunderstanding your comment. You are saying that younger companies in the US are becoming more wealthy and innovating more or at the same level as a few entrench EU companies that have successfully stifled the EU market ensuring they never lose there market share or have a need to innovate to complete in a free market, is that correct?

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#124

Post by sokoloff »

fortran77 wrote: post #107
zulban wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of "those that can't do, teach". This is just a jaded insult. You know nothing about who you're replying to.

> You know nothing about who you're replying to. And you do?

They’re not the one “translating” (read: re-writing) a comment’s content.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#125

Post by wowokay »

ipaddr wrote: post #100
halpert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe “it’s not fair to have subordinates earn more” was the justification given to you, but businesses rarely make decisions based on what’s fair. Engineers are valuable, but individual engineers are largely replaceable. Being able to coordinate a large group successfully also has a lot of value.

Let's be honest. Engineer managers are largely replacable and more easily than individual engineers. The pool is larger and can accept more manager unrelated experience. There is more to this. As the person senior leadership communicates with this person is seen as more important than they are. Senior leadership wants to maintain a leveling system to separate groups of people. It's a hedge a flat organization which m…

Ironically they see engineers as replaceable and view every member of leadership as a Jeff Bezos level unique business edge. I’m all honesty I have just always viewed managements role as a different skill set, one that has successfully thrived longer then the IT industry has even existed. Even while we as engineers tend to feel they are replaceable I think we don’t see the value in the work they do to ensure we get funding, resources, and leadership support.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#126

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

neogodless wrote: post #32

I think one of the great takeaways is his quote: > Maybe it’s overconfidence, but I have a mentality that another human figured it out, so I can too, even if maybe it takes me longer Sometimes I explain what I do in software. "There is no magic. I don't like when there is magic. Some people do but it leaves me feeling unsure about what my code will do. Instead I tend to work very slowly at first, seeing what each lit…

What one fool can do, another can.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#127

Post by hiptobecubic »

fartcannon wrote: post #120
yarky wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the logic here? Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? Anybody can compete, but apparently most of us choose not to. Who forces a young talent to settle for a job instead of taking the risk to innovate ? Maybe risk-taking for innovation is what could be the encouraged through taxation.

The money being required to live a normal life is the problem. A Star Trek style cashless society would allow people to live their life as they see fit, and would undoubtedly unlock a huge jump in human ingenuity. But I don't think we are evolved enough to deal yet. We'd just end up in a communist prison life or something as people selfishly try to get more for themselves. Roddenberry thought an event like finding ex…

One thing I never understood is that star fleet and the federation are somehow post-scarcity utopias, but you still have "gold-plated latinum" driving a huge underground criminal counter-culture. What's the point? The ferenghi should be having a cultural existential crisis, but instead they are happy just charging people for drinks that can be replicated freely.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#128

Post by batty_alex »

fortran77 wrote: post #107
zulban wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of "those that can't do, teach". This is just a jaded insult. You know nothing about who you're replying to.

> You know nothing about who you're replying to. And you do?

They may not but we’re supposed to reply in good faith, not assume OP is some sort of envious asshole

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#130

Post by hiptobecubic »

halpert wrote: post #105
ipaddr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest. Engineer managers are largely replacable and more easily than individual engineers. The pool is larger and can accept more manager unrelated experience. There is more to this. As the person senior leadership communicates with this person is seen as more important than they are. Senior leadership wants to maintain a leveling system to separate groups of people. It's a hedge a flat organization which m…

Then why don’t companies adopt a flatter structure with higher compensated engineers? The goal of a company is to make money after all. If management could be removed and top engineers retained with higher salaries, then a company would surely have an advantage in the marketplace. Since this doesn’t happen, there must be more to the picture than people in upper management simply clinging to their jobs. If removing mi…

I would be careful with the "if they do it it must be sensible" reasoning. There are a lot of reasons that modeling firms using homo-economicus and perfect markets doesn't pan out.
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