Whatever the geek card equivalent of Amex Black is, this kid deserves it. Hats off to him!!
22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
191–200 of 351 posts
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#192I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at such an early age. Very admirable. Look at what he did: > Photolithography machines are expensive—up to $150 million—and so Zeloof made his own by bolting a modified conference room projector bought on Amazon onto a microscope. It projects his designs at tiny s…
Agreed! Such a cool project. Regarding the custom photolithography machine, I recall seeing some pictures of chip workers from the 70s that essentially did the same thing. A group of women (I'm pretty sure it was all women) were responsible for manually drawing out (actually more like cutting out) the chip designs on these big sheets, which were then projected down to create the photoresist masks.
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should I, as a young person, support a policy intentionally punishing companies for competing over my labor power just to make it so I have to work for petit-bourgeois small tech companies that can't pay as much?
Because they’re no longer competing. They wield monopoly power that is anticompetitive, and it’s bad for everything else you value. (Assuming you value more than streaming media, two retailers, and ads.)
They have monopoly power in the tech labor market? How so?
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#194Earlier 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 reason big companies have a huge advantage in the U.S is they get access to the jet stream of public market money that goes through highly regulated employee pensions and 401ks to Vanguard and Blackrock and then to the companies in public stock market indexes. The companies that form the stock market indexes get that money for very very cheap relative to small companies who have to find investors one by one or, outside of venture backed tech, take loans at high interest rates.
If someone can run a profitable business when money is hard to come by as a non-public company, it makes sense for a public company to buy them because they can get money much more easily and expand the smaller company's operations and make an even bigger profit. They can even run the company poorly and still make money because their money is cheaper.
Essentially, it's an information and regulation problem.
The best thing yet invented, taxwise, to counteract this advantage that big businesses have in attracting money is Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS)[1]. It' a great tax incentive program because it massively rewards people for investing in startups. It is highly targeted to encourage that and not be a general loophole.
[1]https://www.sba.gov/blog/qualified-small-business-stock-what...
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Algo coders, predictive analysis of publicly available data, large societal trends prediction, using social media data to detect malign intent prior to action, analyzing the same to look for foreign activity, hacking foreign infrastructure, etc etc, CIA/NSA and other agencies hire these types right from University typically. They also fund startups which may be used for national interests and so on. Much of the time,…
I looked at NSA/CIA when I was graduating college and the compensation was notably below market and with very rigid structures. I was given to understand a common path was to put in some time at the actual agencies and then go over to a contractor where you could make good money. That was 30 years ago, though. Could be completely different now.
Same deal when I graduated. They told me there was no big paycheck and no glory and I just noped out mid interview.
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> innovative, potentially competing enterprises I feel like there hasn't been many of these recently. And the few that have been around get massive financing rounds that dilute options into nothing and never go ipo
Are you saying that Google, Facebook, etc have not been innovating over the last years? What does the landscape look like if you remove these companies' contributions from the public sphere?
Google is innovating to make your searches worse but more profitable…
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they’re no longer competing. They wield monopoly power that is anticompetitive, and it’s bad for everything else you value. (Assuming you value more than streaming media, two retailers, and ads.)
They have monopoly power in the tech labor market? How so?
Isn’t the collective wisdom around here that there’s no competing with FAANG when it comes to job offers?
And we know they’ve engaged in anticompetitive behavior among themselves when it comes to recruiting. I would be unsurprised to find out it still takes place.
But I think the point was monopoly power from their core products is the real issue, and that enables the astronomical salaries.
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#198Anybody 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…
We had one in our middle school. Somehow they hired some genius engineer and he took over the basement and built out the electron microscope, radio station and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. It’s definitely doable and repeatable
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
He has support from his family.
For sure, but I bet not all kids with support from their family do cool things. Or put it in the other way, you have to prove yourself worthy before getting any fund (even from parents).
> Or put it in the other way, you have to prove yourself worthy before getting any fund (even from parents).
I really don’t know where you got this mindset but it’s 100% not true. I know many parents who throw many resources at their kids whenever their kids show even slight interest in something. Even if they don’t show interest in many things - they still get great access.
Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
#200Story about a young person kicking ass and half the comments in here are from yeahbutters.
Wordcloud - https://imgur.com/zeagyNf