> 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?
> $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.
> 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.
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).
Is 85% of the USA living on subsistence peanuts, not even enough to survive? Possibly.
It’s not luxury yacht money, but calling it “peanuts” is ridiculous.
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.
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.
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.