People should be able to invest in promising humans the same way they can in stocks
Posted by Strong-Long-1037@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 14 comments
I’m currently trying to become a disgustingly good reverse engineer; I will earn millions. Time-frame is one year.
Some basic info: I spend my time learning x86-64 assembly, analyzing compiler output, and building my own operating system from scratch. I’ve already gotten it booted into long mode. I now have a proper stack and can load compiled c into it, I also print out a message on pagefaults and division by 0. In the future I want to build drivers, a shell, graphics, networking and other tools.
Now, getting to the point, I see people investing thousands into trash startups who sell stupid condoms, but can’t invest into a single highly motivated person? I think this is a mistake. There should be a human investment market. Not scholarships. We don’t need schools.
What am I talking about? So it might look like someone examining your projects, work ethics, ambitions, and rate of improvement, then decide whether they want to fund your developement. Food, books, hardware, courses. In exchange they get a tiny percentage of your future income.
An example: someone invests into my “become extremely cracked at reverse engineering in one year” project. They buy me protien, a used computer, maybe some hardware to reverse engineer. I would publicly document the entire process. If I were to make serious money doing this job, they would get rewarded for believing in me before anyone else did.
Now the two questions. Is this potentially dystopian? And would I immediately issue shares in myself? Both yes.
mylsotol@reddit
Yeah... No...
DanielMcLaury@reddit
There are plenty of people with that skillset, and they do not earn "millions." Building a working operating system kernel from scratch used to be a pretty standard term project for a CS degree about 30-40 years ago (as was building a compiler). There's tons of people out there who've done it, and for the most part nobody cares. Hell, even Linus Torvalds only makes $1.6 million a year.
Also in general there's just not that much demand for a software reverse engineer. There's not really a ton of cases out there where there's a piece of software distributed as a binary where someone is looking at it and saying, "wow, how is it able to do this?" and willing to pay to find out. The only contexts I can really think of where someone routinely reverse-engineers software are the people who investigate malware, and there are not just tons of those jobs.
If you get good at this stuff, you can make a career of it, but your expectations are way out of line with reality.
ScroatmeaI@reddit
I am currently doing this job and yeah there’s not millions to be made lol. Pretty good money if you can maintain a clearance, but not millions-good
crazybutthole@reddit
Especially now that AI is here
AI can do in an hour what would take this guy 4-5 years.
Healthy_Yogurt_3955@reddit
It is called a loan
doyu@reddit
Ok but what if we add a whole bunch of cocaine to how it works?
Tight-Tower2585@reddit
Interestingly, TODAY on NPR they interviewed a student from Stanford that claimed that investors were funneling money to certain Stanford students, in return for a cut when they 'made it big'.
Your idea isn't as far fetched as you think it is.
Poverty_Shoes@reddit
You just described venture capital. If you need additional funding to make your idea a reality, you have to find an investor (or bank) who also believes in you and gives you the money to make it happen.
gc3@reddit
Do cool you are getting good at your craft but those things have been done. If instead you were figuring out something new like how to make a robot that feels love it might be too much for a single person so youd want a startup.
But what you want exists it's called a loan. Graduate school is the place to get your feet wet pursuing a new idea
FredOfMBOX@reddit
We’d probably want to group a bunch of similar people together and invest in the group. An individual has too much risk.
But also, after you sell enough stock in yourself, doesn’t your motivation to earn get reduced?
Pricklestickle@reddit
how much for 100% of your future income?
Penis-Dance@reddit
There are college scholarships (not the right word) where investors fund students who then sign a contract to repay it with a certin percentage of their income after they graduate.
Aggressive_Deal8335@reddit
That’s basically a loan, or investment
D3Rpy_Un1c0Rn107@reddit
Invests cash in you in exchange for a percent of your future income? A loan?