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

wired.com

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

#241

Post by quickthrower2 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #222
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know many middle class families who would buy 10s of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for their kid.

There are a lot of middle class families who spend 10s of thousands of dollars on sports camps, dance lessons, ski instructors, piano tutors... if their kid was really excited by electronics instead I can see a lot of families helping with that hobby. Like yes that is a sizeable sum of money worthy of consideration but it's not at all prohibitive or unusual for a middle class family.

I would describe what you said as upper-middle class at least. Everyone seems to have different definitions though and the tech crowd is probably skewed up.

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

#242

Post by dqpb »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #106

I'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…

Where does one find broken electron microscopes from the 90s?

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

#243

Post by jcims »

esjeon wrote: post #234
jcims wrote: post #200

Story about a young person kicking ass and half the comments in here are from yeahbutters. Wordcloud - https://imgur.com/zeagyNf

Kicking ass is one thing, clearly it's an expensive hobby to following through the chipmaking history. The dedication is impressive, but, as long as his hobby doesn't affect the current paradigm, he's not kicking ass, but just a micro-celebrity on YT with expensive hobby + flexing. Note that I wrote this comment, because I just don't like blind positivity. Money is really a problem. There were people who talked about…

I didn’t realize there was a formal definition of ‘kicking ass’.

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

#244

Post by resueman »

JohnBooty wrote: post #160
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just wonder how did he afford all this equipment. Living in the US comes with certain advantages like some of the lowest consumer prices in the West including HW equipment being dirt cheap on the second hand market plus houses being big enough for space for such hobbies along with the biggest take home pays yielding some of the highest purchasing power in the West, a formula tough to replicate anywhere else. At le…

I believe everything you're saying! But also, please understand that what he's accomplished here is monetarily out of the reach of your average American as well. Especially the average American teenager. The article notes that his dad is a very successful engineer, so roughly speaking he's almost certainly in the top 5-10%. Most homes do not have garages of this size and most garages are not climate controlled as thi…

> The article notes that his dad is a very successful engineer...

The Wired article? Where does it say that? I only see reference to the skeptical engineer consulted by the father.

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

#245

Post by Avamander »

astura wrote: post #71
Avamander wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thousand dollars is an achievable amount of money for a smart kid in a poor family. I have had good friends from really poor families in Europe make more from bug bounty programs. If that's you're trying imply.

No, It's not. I was a poor kid and didn't get financial support from my parents in young adulthood/college. I couldn't even fathom spending $1,000 on non-essential expenses during college. I was living entirely on student loans and minimum wage summer jobs - When that's your life you can't think about anything but pure survival. It's an entirely different mindset that I have now as a financially secure person. If I g…

> During college

And living alone? If you're under the same roof as your parents you don't have such expenses.

Even more so if you're underage.

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

#246

Post by Avamander »

goodpoint wrote: post #59
Avamander wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thousand dollars is an achievable amount of money for a smart kid in a poor family. I have had good friends from really poor families in Europe make more from bug bounty programs. If that's you're trying imply.

> A thousand dollars is an achievable amount of money for a smart kid in a poor family This is a by-the-book example of privilege. And even if a poor "kid" has the combination of ability and luck to obtain $1K most poor people would spend such money on basic needs like food, clothing and house repairs than a hobby. And that would be the most reasonable choice.

> This is a by-the-book example of privilege.

Yes the privilege of living in a 430 sq ft apartment with your sibling and parent, with the family making approximately $12k a year in total. LOL

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

#247

Post by erosenbe0 »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #180
erosenbe0 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of all the kids who might start working on automotive stuff at 8 years old, building race car parts or engines or go karts. Then imagine the best of the best of thousands of them with parental? resources to build out a great kit and tinker with a lot stuff. This guy is the semiconductor equivalent.

I'm very interested in his childhood education. I want my kid to start early on something he is interested in too but I don't really know how to do that. I know the general rules (expose him to a lot of stuffs, watch him do things, etc.) but don't know how to implement them properly. I myself wasted a lot of time in my childhood so I guess that's why I don't know how to do it properly.

You can't really force it and there isn't a formula. I'm just a journeyman software jockey but my brother got into Harvard, Yale, and Stanford even after skipping a year of high school.

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

#248

Post by Symbiote »

csdvrx wrote: post #233
Symbiote wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather inconsiderate to refer to $1K as "dirt cheap" when replying to someone who says they can only just afford a soldering iron.

> It's rather inconsiderate to refer to $1K as "dirt cheap" when replying to someone who says they can only just afford a soldering iron That's like 10 bucks on amazon? Skip 2 meals, or panhandle for 4 hours. Done - soldering iron.

I'd assumed they were in India, but they wrote in another comment "My PhD is funded by a research council and my stipend is £12k."

I had forgotten the pathetic level of funding science PhDs get in Britain. £12k is possibly on the low end, but a PhD with this funding was on the fourth page of the main site listing them [1].

Minimum wage assuming a 40-hour working week is £19,760 per year, and after taxes works out to £17,100. In other words, they are probably already skipping meals.

For comparison, a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen is paid £47,500 per annum [2], or £31,000 after tax (probably more, I think there's a tax discount for foreign researchers).

[1] https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CMM286/phd-studentship-achieve-ne...

[2] https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-of-university-of-copenhagen...

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

#249

Post by ipaddr »

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…

Many start out flat and as they grow they need to introduce middle management.

Middle management becomes necessary.

But the question is around pay. Should they always make more because they sit higher in the org chart?

I would suggest they make more because of power structures not utility or because they are not as easy to replace.

Because of first class shares, senior leadership shares percentages shareholders with a vote are often the people in power. Common shareholders don't hold much power.

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

#250

Post by resueman »

relaxing wrote: post #197
whimsicalism wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point of anticompetitve behavior in the hiring market is to be able to pay less to get people.

The fact that they pay the highest prices for people means they sure suck at it.

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