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A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

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Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#21

Post by boeingUH60 »

_gfwu wrote: post #13

>"It made it very clear that my goal of making $10k a month from a side project is not a crazy goal to have." Honestly that entire interview just reveals how much of that poor guys thinking is already infected by the virus called capitalism. Accumulating personal wealth shouldn't be the end goal here. It's short-sighted and perpetuates the very system that created inequality and injustice in the first place. Instead…

Eh, that's his goal...the only person who has the right to decide that is him. Hypothetically, How would you suggest working on a "more equitable and just system"? Any actions from you that we can imitate?

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#23

Post by neilv »

> As my time in university went on, I started to focus less on optimizing for FAANG (leetcode) and more on building side projects.

That might or might not be a smart move in the current context, but the tragedy of students grinding Leetcode for obnoxious jobs gatekeeping needs to stop.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#24

Post by pmart123 »

teach wrote: post #3

Somebody always wins the lottery. This doesn't mean that playing the lottery is a useful path to riches for anyone else. Edited to add: This is not an indictment on the college student in question! Congrats to him for being prepared to seize on an opportunity and executing well.

A lot of the ai plays seems like small vertical business opportunities that fill a particular niche that could be quickly profitable for a small team, but aren't really scalable or could quickly become obsolete.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#25

Post by yamtaddle »

neilv wrote: post #23

> As my time in university went on, I started to focus less on optimizing for FAANG (leetcode) and more on building side projects. That might or might not be a smart move in the current context, but the tragedy of students grinding Leetcode for obnoxious jobs gatekeeping needs to stop.

I'm pretty sure it's to keep FAANG workers from jumping ship too easily, in order to suppress wages. If it were actually for evaluation reasons, FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of certification with renewal requirements, saving themselves and everyone else an absolute shitload of time and money.

[EDIT] My point is, the practice doesn't continue for "gatekeeping" for its own sake, so if you want it to end, you'd need to address the reasons it's happening. There are obvious ways to solve the stated problems more-cheaply and with less harm to candidates, which leaves unstated problems. The wage-suppression explanation fits pretty well (including with past, proven behavior—this is clearly something they're quite concerned about) and is one of the few things that could justify the expense of the current system versus cheaper alternatives that would solve the stated problems.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#26

Post by tqi »

yamtaddle wrote: post #25
neilv wrote: post #23

> As my time in university went on, I started to focus less on optimizing for FAANG (leetcode) and more on building side projects. That might or might not be a smart move in the current context, but the tragedy of students grinding Leetcode for obnoxious jobs gatekeeping needs to stop.

I'm pretty sure it's to keep FAANG workers from jumping ship too easily, in order to suppress wages. If it were actually for evaluation reasons, FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of certification with renewal requirements, saving themselves and everyone else an absolute shitload of time and money. [EDIT] My point is, the practice doesn't continue for "gatekeeping" for its own sake ,…

> FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of...

I think the DOJ frowns upon that kind of behavior.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#27

Post by wefarrell »

jrpt wrote: post #14
ulrikhansen54 wrote: post #2

There are several stories of companies going from $0 to >$5M ARR in just a few months with the boom in LLM-driven applications. The downside for these types of apps is that churn rates are through the roof, and will probs die when the LLM fad inevitably fizzles.

LLMs aren't a fad though. Yasser has thousands of customers paying him real money because they find value in what his product does. I'm running a somewhat similar website ( https://Docalysis.com/ ) where users chat with files, and it's clear there's a lot of value being added, so people are willing to pay. What's less clear is how this all plays out when there's more competition, but it's not like we'll all go out of…

I do expect constraints to emerge, in the form of regulatory capture and copyright challenges from content owners.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#28

Post by yamtaddle »

tqi wrote: post #26
yamtaddle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it's to keep FAANG workers from jumping ship too easily, in order to suppress wages. If it were actually for evaluation reasons, FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of certification with renewal requirements, saving themselves and everyone else an absolute shitload of time and money. [EDIT] My point is, the practice doesn't continue for "gatekeeping" for its own sake ,…

> FAANG and friends would just get together and come up with some kind of... I think the DOJ frowns upon that kind of behavior.

Industry associations creating certifications w/ testing?

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#29

Post by mahathu »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #21
_gfwu wrote: post #13

>"It made it very clear that my goal of making $10k a month from a side project is not a crazy goal to have." Honestly that entire interview just reveals how much of that poor guys thinking is already infected by the virus called capitalism. Accumulating personal wealth shouldn't be the end goal here. It's short-sighted and perpetuates the very system that created inequality and injustice in the first place. Instead…

Eh, that's his goal...the only person who has the right to decide that is him. Hypothetically, How would you suggest working on a "more equitable and just system"? Any actions from you that we can imitate?

Fair enough, you're right, it's his life, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call out predatory behaviour when we see it, even when the person themselves doesn't see any wrongdoing. One simple change would be to not give 40+ hours of their labour to companies like Meta and google, who operate solely for the profit of their shareholders, just because they have cool massage chairs and free food.

I'm sure for someone at his level of technical ability there are plenty companies that would offer him an internship that also don't actively make the world worse for many people, like facebook does. Or he could work to unionise and give more leverage to the workers at such companies, and then use that power to fight against some of facebooks more predatory business practices. Facebook, the company is nothing without it's developers, but the working class would not be nothing without facebook.

Re: A college student reached $64k/mo in 6 months by being an AI first mover

#30

Post by danwee »

> Just upload your documents or add a link to your website and get a ChatGPT-like chatbot for your data. Then add it as a widget to your website or chat with it through the API.

But, that means they are uploading customer data to OpenAI servers, right? Umm, wonder the legality of that if you don't mention this point in your Legal Terms section (I just quickly searched for OpenAI and couldn't find anything)

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