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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I pay for the full JetBrains subscription. While I still use vscode for typescript and rust, I use JetBrains for anything else. It's one of those no brainer purchases that pays for itself within a month.

Programmers create enormous value. If you can get even small single digit percentage improvements by leveraging better tooling, it pays for itself almost right away.

I estimate conservatively I produce $500,000 in value a year. If I can eke out a 1% improvement in productivity that's worth $5000 a year.

I think it's a big blind spot that developers don't invest enough in.

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Many vendors do think like this when they start their offer with 'how much is your time worth'? Indeed, your tool might save me 1 hour but it's not necessarily worth the price.

On complex codebases though I mostly need the IDE just to navigate code. Anything released in the past decade knows how to index some classes, jump around and do 'find usage'.

I agree that tooling most definitely helps, starting with your office, your chair, your hardware and your software config. You could also get 1% out of sleeping more I think.

Chair, desk, distraction free environment, fast computer, fast internet, multiple screens, consistently good sleep, diet, and exercise. Stable emotional environment (relationships). You could easily get better than 1% from each of those. I'm ruthless about optimizing these.

Software tools, keyboard shortcuts, libraries, frameworks and saas software are also good targets to optimize that often don't get enough attention.

(Serious question) I'm curious to hear more about "ruthlessly optimizing" your emotional environment and relationships. That is not something heard everyday...

Or if you'd prefer not to personally summarize, are there any books, articles, videos, etc, you can recommend that expand on this overall life philosophy?

It's not the right word for that, but in general just be extremely picky about serious qualities in your partner. Ditch bad relationships and maybes quickly, because there is a high opportunity cost. Value peace in a relationship, and stay away from people who like to fight.

> I estimate conservatively I produce $500,000 in value a year

Do you actually earn this amount per year? Or, is this just a projection of what you think the value of code you write is?

I think he was talking about the value he generates, so possibly something like revenue/profit per employee kind of thing. For example, FB and Google make more than $1M revenue per employee. You can go more granular and look at the impact of your team or yourself as well.

But can be his comp as well, these are not unheard[1] of numbers.

[1] https://levels.fyi

Yes, I'm talking about value. My comp is less than that figure. There are some developers with total comp like that though.

You can never earn the amount of value you produce. Your employer can't survive if they hire you for that amount.

Not sustainably, but they could if they underpay others. Or run a deficit.

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