Also, it's not peanuts. How many extra developers are $28400 per month?
No, actually they don't. In the time I've been there they've 10x the size of the company. Maintained majority control through multiple rounds of funding. Significantly increased salaries. Provided a great work life balance. Etc.
Why are developers obsessed with how many additional developers they could hire with hypothetical savings?
This then means that while op wouldn't immediately add 1M ARR, the original dev and the new devs could soon add 5M ARR (stupid extrapolation, it won't be as much in practice, at least normally)
According to my napkin calculus, you could get about 4.5-9 developers (for 1-2x minimum wage) onboard here in France for 28k€/month. I'm betting in other countries with low salaries and a vast talent pool, 28k€/month would get you even more employees.
In Austria, the "IT Kollektivvertrag" [0][1] (think contract for the whole IT collective/unions) demands a minimum of €2503 brutto (before taxes) per month for developers (those are normally falling under ST1 category), and that 14 times a year, and that's for entry level (as in, not first job but starting at a company). Note also the 14 times a year, where the last two extra salaries (Christmas pay for December and vacation pay for June) is taxed much less (note, we can get bonuses on top of that too).
[0]: https://www.wko.at/service/kollektivvertrag/kv-abschluss-inf...
Note for above PDF (only the short money table the full one can be easily found via searching "Austria IT Kollektivvertrag 2022"):
- The ST1 is for devs, and LT1 for leadership roles.
- "Einstiegsstufe" is Junior, "Regelstufe" is "normal" and "Erfahrungsstufe" is Senior
So if you get hired as senior in a leadership role you'd be entitled to €5521 Brutto salary, 14 times a year, or more depending on your experience/knowledge and your negotiation skills.
In France a young developer easily costs €100k/year to employ, even if he earns a third of that before taxes.