Say I got this potential deal: trading system that makes 30% per year at a >= 1.5 Sharpe ratio (ideally > 2). Problem: in order for this system to exist, someone HAS to program it. Now if you understand the least of how this world works and how hard it is to come up with such a thing, you may realize that's not a commitment for a weekend. Takes a lot of energy / investment on my side to get there. And there's the very real possibility that I get nothing at the end, that's why I'm not just nonchalantly doing it "on weekends" (fact that I've been doing parts of it as a hobby in my last 10/20/30 years is a different story). But if I know that I got paying customers IF I do it then I will actually find the resources to finance the endeavor. So: say one 6M - 1year from now, I'm selling this Interactive Brokers plugin that makes as promised. My commission: 20% of the profits, nothing else. Why not just use it myself? Coze after 20 years of slaving in Eastern Europe, my whole net worth is =~ $100k and cash liquidity =~ $10k. Mathematically I won't survive to billionaire if I play my own system with my own money! And I need "billionaire" to beat fucking Google and alikes.
If you change your mind on the contract model, I charge $115/hr. Full stack developer, that specializes in sever-side, algorithm development.
My currently employing company is currently losing $10 million a year to a sever-side, algorithm development, former contractor. Know what that means? Never again.
Not contradicting you but their business model is still worth a quarter of a billion dollars, just what we do. Get other parts of the business rallying together and you get to what a recent Hacker News article pointed out: when you think YOUR civilization is special just think that the estimated mass of unknown archaea (archaebacteria) is > 300x the mass of the most advanced lifeform today (humans).
What do you mean plugin? Is it so active that it must be trading at speed in real time? I mean can't you sell the signals instead(in which case you don't even need to code it)?
Hmmm, so the software devs are doing work that costs a couple million and the company is valued at a quarter billion. And this companies valuation has nothing to do with the software engineers work? I'm not biting. Without getting into the IIoT company I co-started, I will just say any specialist who is worth their salt won't be working for free. That isn't unique to software development, that is true for any specialist discipline. Any project that asks someone to work for free either isn't worth doing or needs better capitalization. Why should the developer take on all of the risk? If your developer had to give you 1,000 free hours of development time to build the entire stack of your system/algorithm, that is 1,000 hours they could be spending on another project that does pay. They are essentially giving up $100-150k of income and likely (very likely) will never see a pay back. What's to say this isn't one of those projects that never really have an end (most projects) then 1,000 hours becomes thousands. Good luck finding that person.
You're right: beating "fucking Google and alikes" is so critically important that you should refuse a 30% return after slaving decades to earn $10k. You also shouldn't think about taking out the largest possible loan you can get, paying the interest with your guaranteed 30% earnings, and living like a king. Nor demonstrating those numbers to someone after you've done it for a year or two and selling your system for billions. I mean, sure, that would require actual proof that it works and that it's not just a fantasy... but I'm sure that's a trivial detail. Congrats on your idealism. Keep on hating those Google bastards and living in poverty; that will show them.
Lack of personal pronouns in sentences. Causing English teachers to angrily slash "F-" across the page with a red pen since 1066.