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@ZZZZZZ yeah, it seems relatively low risk given you can resume your studies

Have you thought about survivorship bias and the fact that e.g. most startups fail? If things don't work out with AI bug hunting (e.g. substantially more competition) and with Moving Papa (great ideas fail all the time), world you still be a competitive candidate if you looked for other jobs?

@FastFourier Yeah I mean I'm not too sure about how the job market will look or how competitive I'd be as a candidate but I provided my website (michaelcheers.com) to give you guys an idea. In general I'd say the job market will probably get worse so having no degree would be a big issue since that's generally how bad job markets go. So in general I'm skeptical I'd be a good candidate and if I decided to go that route I'd likely go back to uni instead to finish my degree.

@FastFourier In terms of survivorship bias, yeah that was a big concern, that was a lot of the reason I wanted to make the income markets to hopefully get a more objective perspective.

Of your classes this semester, which seem valuable? Intro to machine learning and data structures are topics that you probably need understanding of at a level equivalent to getting an A on a final. It's of course plausible that you are already expert in these past that level- or that uni wouldn't actually get you to this level I don't know how well your university teaches. However, if not, probably worth pricing in how long you will take to learn these in a non-academic setting (and if you will get to around to it)

@HastingsGreer In practice I'm skeptical that any of my courses will be valuable. In my experience I haven't really noticed learning anything of value in any of my courses thus far. Like for example for data structures I have not really ever found much value in it ... nowadays on most things performance is very fast anyways and just using standard databases, Dictionary and HashSet etc is sufficient ... there's not much value in actually understanding how they work. In terms of machine learning, again I don't think that's actually that much value in really understanding how it works which is what the courses tend to teach. In general, you can just use frontier models out of the box or you can try and fine tune open source models or ones that support it that are closed but again there's not much point in actually understanding how it works. That said, I'm not sure maybe there's something I've missed but that would my general thoughts on it that there is little value in the content.

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How long have you been thinking about dropping out? and what do you want to do after dropping out?

@SavioMak I've been thinking of dropping out seriously since December since the bug bounty hunting using AI was going well (see https://hackerone.com/michaelcheers). I thought there was no point in continuing in uni since even doing the bug bounty hunting with AI in a less efficient way was so lucrative but at the last minute around Jan 5 I considered the argument that the opportunity cost of continuing in university is low since with AI it's mostly about being there to manage when it gets into loops and stuff, though later I was able to automate it quite a bit more so it ended up being mostly about triage which was also very challenging even though the AI was already triaging most stuff. Anyway, I've been working on another project for the same guy who's the CEO of Moving Papa (mentioned on https://michaelcheers.com) he wants to build a SaaS business which is like a CRM and also helps businesses manage operations and track expenses and stuff like that. He is convinced I should drop out given he was super successful not doing uni. He has a contact with the company that runs ads for his company and he said he recommended me to him so I can do website development working for that marketing agency's clients. Also, if I do drop out, he wants me to do website development for customers of his SaaS product. In general, the reasons for dropping out are:

1. I have some income at least with the digital stamp (mentioned on michaelcheers.com, dedicated website at lynxseal.com)

2. I think the Moving Papa guy will have plenty of work for me if I want it so I'm not worried about running out of money. I have about $10k in savings but paying back my grandparents (who are paying my uni) for the half of the tuition (total per term is ~$10k so I lose $5k) they would've lost this term will cut into that.

3. It seems like from everything I'm hearing the job market for software developers is really bad at the moment and is probably only getting worse. My parents seem to think I'm exempt somehow from this trend since I have more skills and experience than many do but I'm not sure if this is just motivated reasoning or actually makes sense. Ergo the opportunity cost is low.

4. Despite the theoretical logic of how university doesn't take that much time so the opportunity cost is low, in practice, I find that it makes it very hard to focus on the bug bounties for example. Especially since I'm also working a ton on that SaaS project.

I just found it hard to objectively weigh all the arguments here since it all seems like such a tangled mess with AI throwing a wrench into everything and the Moving Papa CEO being convinced that dropping out makes tons of sense and my parents and grandparents being convinced it's the worst thing I could do.

@ZZZZZZ Is taking a "Leave of Absence" considered dropping out for this market? https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/registrar/leave-absence

@SavioMak Yes the option I was considering is just dropping all my classes. UTM doesn't really have a policy vis a vis what's dropping out versus what's a leave of absence so you can come back anytime just by filling out a simple form.