Hacker News Reader

Comment by FiberBundle | Hacker News Reader

This whole thread is basically a testament as to why the OSS model, unfortunately, is broken. Very competent people are expected to write widely used software for a salary that basically merely guarantees subsistence. It never ceases to amaze me how great software engineers allow themselves to be exploited in such a way. If you consider the societal impact that some of these projects have and the skill set that some of their maintainers have, which pretty much dwarfs the skill sets of people in other well paid professions such as lawyers or doctors, it's frankly ridiculous that they are expected to work for significantly less money. Not to mention that the abstractions some of these people wrote basically allow a significant number of people to enter the industry in the first place.

View on HN

I'm the lead dev of Ardour, paid entirely by voluntarily payments for the software, and I make about $100k/year from the software itself. That's after nearly 35 years as a C++ software developer. Some people think I'm a brilliant programmer, I'd settle for "probably about as good as anyone you're likely to be able to hire".

So why it is not ridiculous that I'm not working for twice that or more at some larger tech outfit?

Because one of the benefits of working in the open source domain is that the entire structure of the work is completely different. No marketing. No bullshit. No corporate structures to satisfy. I can't speak for anyone else (within OSS or not), but to me those benefits are worth at least $80k/yr, if not much more.

To be fair, perhaps my attitude would be different if I had not previously been involved in starting up a certain well known e-commerce company which, while not allowing me to never work again, let me get the financial aspects of life into pretty good shape.

But I think I know plenty of younger people who want to be in software and are willing to earn less in exchange for more interesting work, less bullshit, more freedom and maybe even a sense of purpose beyond "we're going to make boatloads of cash".

You are a tremendous contributor to open source software. My visually impaired friend appreciates the keyboard controls of ardour and as a result of your hard work (and his) creates and masters a lot of music without too much difficulty.

So, you know, thanks. You made the world a better place.

> This whole thread is basically a testament as to why the OSS model, unfortunately, is broken

This blog post for me is evidence that we can make crowdfunded open source work, as long as the people receiving the money know how to effectively use it. The team handling the economy of Babel right now, does not, hence Babel is not sustainable.

But, if you'd make the salaries a bit more realistic, Babel would have money over each year. But that's based on them not giving themselves one of the highest salary in the world. Let's see what they'll do.

> Very competent people are expected to write widely used software for a salary that basically merely guarantees subsistence.

"merely guarantees subsistence", what the hell? Maybe if you live in SF, but any other place in the world, this kind of salary is not even what seniors pull in yearly. My own anecdote:

> Not only a decent living, but that's a very good salary in most places in the world. As an anecdote, I've always worked in private sector IT (as a developer and manager), have around 20 years of experience and worked in both small and big enterprises and startups, and I've never had that high salary. If you'd offer me that for working on open source full-time, I'd be surprised. My expectation would be that there is a ton of people willing to work for much less, so why Babel had to go with that person?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116591

If the people who are working on these projects are talented and can command high salaries, $11k/mo is realistic. It's already a large pay cut.

> My expectation would be that there is a ton of people willing to work for much less, so why Babel had to go with that person?

Are all those people capable of managing Babel?

I think the real question is: do you need top talent for important open source projects, or are average developers fine?

You somehow seem to think that amount someone earns is somehow related to how good they are.

> $11k/mo is realistic. It's already a large pay cut.

Yes, sure, in Silicon Valley anything is possible but for the 99% rest of the world, 11K USD per month is ridiculously high and even people with decades of experience won't collect that unless there is a specific situation. It's definitely not normal outside of Silicon Valley companies.

> Are all those people capable of managing Babel?

Yes, I know of at least 10 JS developers with decades of experience who could handle maintaining Babel if it was up to them, and they don't earn close to 11K USD per month today. I'm sure they'd be happy to work on Open Source and effectively earning more, but many be happy just working on Open Source full time.

I think there is a correlation between income and skill. More specifically, I think it's likely that highly skilled people have higher than average incomes.

> It's definitely not normal outside of Silicon Valley companies

How many companies do you class as SV companies?

It seems like in the US in general there are salaries at that level and higher, not just SV.

I have also seen people talk about salaries in Europe at that level, though I suspect they are rarer than in the US.

You realize that $11k has to pay their taxes, healthcare, and retirement state-side right? It’s peanuts.

I think it's somewhere in between. Taxes, healthcare, and retirement are big in the US. And keep in mind that self-employment taxes (operative here) are more than the taxes taken out as an employee.

But $11K/month * 12 == $132K. To roughy back-of-napkin equalize for higher self-employment taxes, let's say that's equivalent to $100K salary if you were an ordinary employee. (I just made that up, I don't know how accurate it is).

$100K is still 84th percentile income for US, you are making more than 84% of people in the US. It's not "peanuts" or "subsistence".

($132K is 91st percentile income).

Back of the napkin to me: say $25.5k pre-tax retirement / college savings for child, 30% federal, 15% state, $3200/mn to rent an apartment in a mid sized city in the US, $400 month for car and gas, $1k for food, $1k for healthcare, $160 for utilities, leaves them with $288/mn. Not enough to ever own a home, build wealth, travel; better hope they have a spouse that is employed & has employer subsidized healthcare.

And yet, regardless, it's still more than 85% of incomes in the USA. That seems striking.

Is 85% of the USA living on subsistence peanuts, not even enough to survive? Possibly.

Not saving for retirement and one surprise bill from insolvency is the status quo. AMERICA!!!!

The median salary in the US is a quarter of that.

It’s not luxury yacht money, but calling it “peanuts” is ridiculous.

Most folk in the US are on poverty wages, one surprise bill away from bankruptcy or homelessness; we shouldn’t expect OSS maintainers to fall on the sword and rely on inter generational wealth or live in poverty when their colleagues, using their software, at big companies are making (what used to be considered) middle class wages.

$11k is not peanuts by any means.

Are you a software engineer in the US? That’s like green out of a boot-camp rate, not even close to senior, let alone staff, principle, or fellow.

I am a SWE with ~10yr experience (and no degree) and can't seem to find any of these jobs. For most of the country this is far above average.

Where should I be looking for these jobs? I interview well, the problem is always getting into an interview. Most recent was an Erlang/C++ position on the east coast but they only want to offer $90k. The apparently pulled my resume only because of my Erlang experience.

Everywhere… IDK? FWIW most of my career has been remote in northern New England, working with companies in Boston or SF. Seriously, I’ve only received a single (non-founder) offer below 6 figures since I dropped out of college, at a non-tech company. I walked out cold when it got to negotiations because they were so far off base. A bit rude, yes, but I was genuinely insulted. It was three times lower than the next lowest offer I have received at that point.

I’ve been trying hard to just be an IC too ever since I burnt out on my own startup. Avoiding management hasn’t been hard with Ruby/JavaScript and a bit of Swift/Kotlin exp. I’ve only recently started entertaining eng.manager/director conversations and been clear that would take $600k+ to get me back into that world, and leading with number has not been a show stopper in my convos with FAANG companies.

I suggest https://www.levels.fyi/ as a starting point in setting your expectations. Make friends with a recruiter, helps to see the world from their perspective & learn what the bands are / who’s hiring.

Have you seen levels.fyi? Just make an account on teamblind.com and ask for referrals and leetcode enough

Mind introducing me to some of these people? My company is actively hiring experienced JS devs and I’ve yet to find any senior enough to maintain Babel for under $200k

Sure thing, what the company does exactly? Just so I don't waste their time with stuff I know they are not interested in.

An active tips in order to get to know these people in the future: attend developer events and mingle with people, build rapport and a network. If you're moderately social and generally a good person, you'll find yourself in their circles in no time.

>This blog post for me is evidence that we can make crowdfunded open source work, as long as the people receiving the money know how to effectively use it.

Isn't this a restatement of the problem? My (uninformed) impression is that there are structural issues that make it hard to effectively run crowdfunded open-source projects. As you say, the secret sauce appears to be a question of managing the organization.

Do you have any thoughts on how to reproducibly run such a projects?

I mean, it’s also important to recognize that the average salary most people in the US gets paid does not include benefits. Let’s say the salary for a senior engineer is $100k. (This is super low in reality, especially in the tech world. Maybe not when including other types of companies.) Let’s say the typical cost of benefits is 30%. That works out to $130k total. That’s around $10.8k a month. And remember, this is the low end.

In the blog post, they said they’re going to have each person make $6k per month (excluding benefits). Subtracting 30% for benefits, it works out to $50k a year base salary. For software developers in the US, that’s a pittance at any level.

No, OSS devs shouldn’t be forced to take that little to work on important projects like Babel. If we want talented devs working in a certain area, we need to make it financially attractive.

$130k is quite low for someone of Henry's skillset. Especially in US. Especially for Babel

> OSS model, unfortunately, is broken.

I don’t think this is true. The mode works phenomenally well (eg, Apache, Linux, Postgres, etc).

But it doesn’t work for all projects and isn’t the same as commercial software. If I create a project with the goal to make lots of money, then I probably won’t succeed.

Conflating “doesn’t work for me” with “broken” is not using all the available evidence.

It shouldn't be about making lots of money, personally I find it great that most good software engineers aren't primarily driven by money, but that mindset shouldn't imply exploitation. It's just a fact that large corporations and companies in general benefit disproportionally from OSS. The value that open source software creates stands in no relation to the price that companies pay for it, even if the maintainers of some projects are perfectly happy with the compensation they receive. If you don't need a large part of the money that your work justifies, then just give it to charity, but don't allow companies to take it.

> pretty much dwarfs the skill sets of people in other well paid professions such as lawyers or doctors

I don't know how you could possibly measure this except by years of training, which would put both doctors and lawyers ahead of software developers. But really, it's apples and oranges.

Doctors, for one, work to fiddle essentially a blackbox, under intensive regulation, and the results of their work is very hard to measure. This has led to a model where artificial processes are introduced that select for the privileged and the smart to become doctors. The artificial education does not mean these people have more skillsets. Like most education, it just signals conscientiousness and intellect.

On the other hand, software design is probably the single best domain for humans to build new skills, with its fast feedback loop, transparency, ease of measuring results, and the fact that the whole system is more or less documented and obeys human intuitions.

117 million downloads every month.

1 cent a download = 117,000,000 cents = $1,170,000.

So the project is dying because they cannot get every downloader to pay 1 cent for every download.

Even at 1/10 cent it would still come to $117,000

This is how screwed up open source is.

An advanced technological industry which doesn't have infrastructure in place to collect fractions of cents per product delivery.

Why can't the software be downloaded using an API using a key you have to pay for or something?

I can't understand why there are 117 million downloads every month. I doubt there are 117 million programmers using Babel and why download it every month?

I'm sure 99% of all CI systems out there are just blindly doing npm install without any cache or pinned packages. Multiplied with microservices so that every run has to rebuild not just one service.

For the savings in data transfer, it's not worth the time to set up and kind of caching for package dependencies.

To mitigate the risk of supply chain attacks, on the other hand...

I hadn't thought of that. Internet access isn't virtually free everywhere in the world.

Just license your software under the GPL, then corporations can't take and use it without contributing back.

It's hard for me to feel sympathetic for people who deliberately sign up for a model that encourages free-riding and then complain about it.

So much this.

Earning money with "do whatever"-style licenses like BSD or MIT is bound to fail. Use GPL and sell commercial licenses on the side.

What exactly would the benefit of licencing a tool like Babel under GPL be? It would be completely moot. Using a GPL transpiler isn't going to confer GPL virally onto the code that you run through it.

It would mean big greedy companies with skittish legal departments would be forbidden from using it without paying for a commercial license.

they re also incentivized to write OSS that benefits huge conglomerates, but not individuals so they can attract the big donors. It's broken many years now. Copyleft licenses can at least salvage some of the wreck

Reply on news.ycombinator.com