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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

I find the comments here fascinating. So the lead developer was paid $11k a month, and somehow many start calling this a problem. Apparently, if you work on OSS you should be working for something slightly above the poverty line. People are comparing it to other salaries, but seem to forget that this salary likely does not include any other benefits (health insurance, stock options ...). I mean he is the lead developer for a "product" that is used by millions of people, what would a person like that earn in industry? Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe.

If we want to create a sustainable OSS infrastructure, we definitely want that developers make a good living from it. But it seems the dominant notion is that developers should donate their time/money and live close to the poverty line, so that companies can rake in billions in profits, without paying for the tools they use.

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I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

Usually the product of a team of 4 is not that well known nor successful. And you can't really compare the average developer with the three developers mentioned since they are clearly outstanding and could get hired by almost any company.

This is the thing I don't think people get. They are treating these devs as though they are just run of the mill when it's highly likely they're very skilled.

The salaries of engineers don't scale that much with success of the product. He can get hired by almost any company, but those companies will pay standard pay for lead developers of a team of 4.

(But also no, his salary is not what bankrupts Babel. It is too low for that.)

Team of 4 of an unknown startup, yeah that'd be around $5k after taxes, health and social insurance and 5 weeks of vacation. Team of 4 of product like Babel, your doubts are misplaced.

And you're forgetting equity.

I think that level is plausible but rare.

As employees, maybe in the UK or Ireland. Most likely not in Germany, and never in any eastern European country.

As contractors, you could theoretically in any country, the more eastern, the more luck you need to have, but it's doable.

Source: I've asked ex-colleagues, recruiters, and people at meetups.

> never in any eastern European country

A couple of Russian enterprise companies have been sucking up all available Java talent in the last couple of years, with top salaries coming up to a million roubles for non-managers. Salaries in Russia are calculated per month and post-tax (people don't even know how much tax they pay), so it's about $13k per month after tax, and $20k per month before tax. I have also seen a couple of openings for Rust engineers in financial sector promising up to $10k a month (after tax).

Of course, this is a very far outlier from the average rates: senior engineer in Moscow typically takes home $3-5k (after tax, monthly). But it's not 'never'.

Idk, the median salary at Uber dev office in Lithuania (which is in eastern Europe) is ~9k EUR per month (which is 11k $). Granted they don't hire that many people and most other companies pay considerably less but I wouldn't say that this is something unachievable for higher end tech leads working in some companies.

It's hard to compare between different countries due to different taxes and so on. But that's almost double what a generic team lead would make here in Sweden (50-60 is probably closer) but a high level dev working a prestige project could make more of course.

They should probably change the business model to make more money from consulting or lecturing. Many companies pay well to get "famous-project" devs for consulting or talks. Donations is usually a different budget than training or short term staff.

True, and in many (oldschool) companies, it is easier to book a workshop for $10k than give a donation of $5k.

Of course, the drawback is that the project would need even more devs to compensate for the time giving workshops, so IDK whether it would work out in the end.

The salary is high for Europe, but not outlandish. I come within 15% working in IT in old industry but without leading a huge project and managing people, cooperation and giving talks. So, no, they should not pay much less even if the contributors probably have their dream job in contrast to me.

If you include benefits, then yes. You don’t even need to be lead developer to reach that kind of salary if you assume the $11k includes pension, vacation, mobile phone, computer, maybe a budget for seminars, lunch, etc.

Are you kidding me?

FANG has lots of offices in Europe.. I work at one of those at around 20-35k USD / month, depending on stonk prices :)

Making 11k USD is not uncommon for contractors in northern Europe, Switzerland or Germany.

Sure, you can find many who are paid less. But talent is expensive.

That's how much is needed to be paid for getting people to do unethical work. It is not directly comparable to working on a compiler used by many people.

What about the people working on open source compilers at those companies (e.g. ReasonML at Facebook).

At 20k USD / month, you are either incredibly good and/or lucky or you are not saying that you are working in Switzerland, in which case you forgot to say that your cost of living is higher than SV and you have no public health insurance. (but 20k/month is comfortable anyway, even in Switzerland)

There are plenty of contractors in India making $8-10k a month so there must be thousands in EU making $11k a month or more due to proximity and language advantage.

Check freelancing sites to get some idea. Plenty of guys getting long term work at $60-$80 an hour.

One thing with software products is that revenues are usually not correlated at all with the size of the dev team, much more with the popularity of the product.

Seems plausible to me. That'd amount to something like $5k after taxes (definitely in a higher tax bracket), or a bit above €4k.

$11k makes roughly €9k.

If you work for a company in Germany this would be gross salary of roughly €6.5k a month. The rest 2.5k would be ancillary wage costs for the employer. That finally translates to €4k net after taxes including health insurance etc.

I believe many good engineers make that amount of money in Germany.

Really don't understand this logic. .. Very few engineers make 9k in Germany, simple. Why compare net wages to gross wages?

Its 9k cost to employer. Its 6.5k gross salary which translates to 78k gross salary a year for the employee. A lot of engineers make that salary.

If you are receiving money as a freelancer you need to earn at least 50% more to get a similar net salary as an employee therefore a employee salary of 78k gross is roughly equal to a freelancer making 120k a year.

You have to compare net income as everything else does not make sense.

There is nothing that says those 11K include ancillary costs. It's called salary, so compare to salary, not to salary + ancillary costs.

Seems easy enough as a contractor

11k usd to GBP is £7791~ - that's £93.5k / year roughly. Most senior devs should make more than this in London; though this is pre-tax.

London is kind of exceptional because of the high cost of living; everything is more expensive in London.

For sure. California is also quite expensive! You are probably better off earning ~$80k in a LCOL area in the US as opposed to ~£90k in London after taxes, expenses etc

Actually, the average salary for people with computer science degree and 5+ years experience is 9-12k USD according to IDA (Engineering union in Denmark).

That's just the average!

Other comments are right, $11k a month is a very high engineering salary anywhere in Europe.

However, during the last year there's been more and more american companies that offer these kind of rates remotely. So, a good developer could make this, and even more, while living in Europe, although you might have not consider him "working" here (whatever this means in terms of remote work anyway).

Yeah I see dozens on the Braintrust platform literally daily. Some remote roles have gone up to $240ph which would be absolutely insane in Europe (or most of the US).

Yeah, $11k is a very high salary in Sweden. Almost the only way to make that as a developer is to be an independent contractor.

But he essentially is an independent contractor, that's the point. And talking about Sweden, you miss the pension, health insurance and the employer contribution to the taxes.

How is he an "independent contractor" when everyone -- not everyone here, but he himself and his, ahem, employers -- is talking about him as an employee, and he's been there for years? Never mind the GitHub commits, analyse how many times in the last year he's had to hunt for next month's gig.

> $11k a month [...] Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe.

lolnope

I like how one user deleted his comment saying even in Ukraine or Georgia basic dev earns more than 10k USD/month

No way. That must be top tier talent. With 10k USD a month you basically own the town.

You can go very very far with that money in western Europe too. Maybe places like Paris or London may be much more expensive, though.

> Maybe places like Paris or London may be much more expensive, though.

Definitely. In my experience (lead dev in the UK), salaries for senior positions in London are at least 1.5-2x the amount elsewhere in the UK - but living costs are also much higher.

10k a year perhaps

> basic dev earns

Not true, basic junior devs in Poland start even from $15K per year(invoice equivalent without VAT).

Good devs in Ukraine get $50K/year+ but AFAIK they have 5% taxes only. Good = hireable by S&P500 companies for example. Anyway most of them prefer to move to Poland for example due to better government/QoL.

Lol sure. If you get this kind of responsibility anywhere in western Europe in a professional setting, you are getting paid definitely somewhere in that salary region.

The effective amount will of course differ greatly between the countries, but please don't forget that the expenses vary as well. (15k a month in Switzerland isn't as much as 15k a month in Germany)

I'd say around 1 percent of devs make that much... And then Mr tax man will take between 50 and 70 percent

I didn't include all devs. Of course a "normal" developer doesn't make this much. As a lead developer you earn a lot of money here.

I know a couple of senior (non lead) developers who earn this much.

A lead developper would realistically pull 75K euros a year. Rarely more.

Senior devs (not lead) in Prague can earn $100k a year plus vacation, health insurance, etc.

can, most don't.

https://teleport.org/cities/prague/salaries/

Quite obvious.

We're talking about top devs here.

You're talking about devs that are very good at negotiating and got one of the very few positions offered by a foreign corporate entity with very deep pockets.

That website is absolutely bogus. Maybe it's been set up to make people think they should be earning less than they are.

I just had a look at the median salary for median salary for a physician in Gothenburg and it comes up with $43k annual. I know for a fact that a full time general practitioner earns ~7k euro a month after working for a year and general practitioners are on the low end payscale of doctors. There is also not a lot of variation, because health is predominantly provided by the regional government. If people work in private practices they actually would earn more. Looking at some of the other numbers all the ones I know about are around a factor of 1.5-2 too low.

I had a look at Oslo, and it's suggested median salary for a software Engineer was almost exactly the same as the average starting salary for a STEM master degree graduate in 2020 (https://www.tekna.no/lonn-og-arbeidsvilkar/lonnsstatistikk/b...). That does not inspire confidence, but maybe they are better in other profession, or other cities.

I don't even get how his salary is an argument here, when babel is one of most critical parts in almost all web applications. His knowledge and skillset is way above any average "lead dev" and he's still doing "grunt" work. Sorry, but this is a very reasonable salary.

Critical parts in almost all web applications, including those built directly on the pack of this work. Facebook, Gatsby, Next.js, Netlify and Cloudflare (a bit more indirectly).

If I had to hazard a guess, it's more of a "thing that somehow got into our React toolchain" and less of a "most critical part".

A thing that, if removed, would be a huge pain.

No not really, typescript or esbuild, among other things.

Wait, since when is $11K a month slightly above the poverty line?

"Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe."

LOL you're saying someone, in a rank and file (even if senior) developer position would be paid 'significantly above' $11k per month anywhere in Europe? This is a serious case of "citation needed".

I would say companies with a revenue above a certain number should be compelled to pay an annual subscription for any and all Open source projects they use. Even if it means projects have to include that in their licenses.

The problem is the developer earning $11k didn’t actually work on the project.

right, as a consultant I make significantly more than that, and when working full time I make that amount before all the perks.

As the lead maintainer of Babel, he could’ve easily landed a job doubling 11k.

He is already working with a discount

If my employer donated to Babel, I would interpret that like they would be sending gifts to the Crown. I mean fine, but understand that people might be salty.

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