So you want young people to start working on some interesting ideas which have potential to help humanity?
Well, my top priority at that age was not to be poor. The optimal strategy was to work in the boring parts of IT and hopping to a better job whenever an opportunity arose. (This worked for me, thank you)
So, sorry but the deal where I work on some crazy idea and become poor if it fails was just unattractive to me (and probably isn't to a lot of people who are not born rich).
> Well, my top priority at that age was not to be poor.
There's a weird case of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs where the bubble you live in during college has a lot of people worried about self actualization because their support group (or loans) is helping take care of things like food and shelter. Historically, the moment you graduated you were responsible for all of that stuff, but that's been blurred by people moving back in with their parents. I don't know if that's enough to change the equation but certainly for a lot of previous generations we were trying to get our own oxygen masks in place before helping others.
The problem is that your ideals become immediately in conflict with logistics and you end up having to compromise. Even mentorship is fraught because mentors are human and some of their non-negotiables may be wrong. If you refuse you may be entirely on your own. All of a sudden you're 30 and the asshole in the mirror is someone you hardly recognize. That's probably a better demographic to target for such things, both because they're more interested and they have practical knowledge that increases the likelihood of your efforts to be described as
"effective" instead of the dreaded, "well-meaning".
Well, my top priority at that age was not to be poor. The optimal strategy was to work in the boring parts of IT and hopping to a better job whenever an opportunity arose. (This worked for me, thank you)
So, sorry but the deal where I work on some crazy idea and become poor if it fails was just unattractive to me (and probably isn't to a lot of people who are not born rich).