I'm surprised that this crowd in particular is so incensed by someone paying $125 bucks a month for their software. If anyone knows how much it costs to make good software and run a company that operates and maintains, I'd think it would be HN.
This same thing comes up anytime the topic of paid IDEs comes up, and people will act surprised that people pay for Jetbrains IDEs
I think it's understandable when we consider most people struggle to meet ends meet, especially in their college and formative years.
However really if something provides value to your life, it should be rewarded , especially if that value is higher than the cost.
E.g Jetbrains IDEs pay for themselves every week in time saved. Many apps I subscribe to easily provide higher value to me than they cost.
Me paying for tools to increase my productivity at work might still make sense if it helps my pay increase, but it's even more worth it for the employer to do it.
Good software - like IntelliJ, GoLand, etc. - don’t just act as a tool to get the job done, they act as a force multiplier enabling vastly better UX, tooling, etc. compared to competing software. I can’t imagine relying on Eclipse or VSCode for my work nowadays - I could do it fine, but it would feel like cutting an arm off.
good way to treat customers IMO.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2022/06/29/increased-subscri...
Maybe for those who have lots of money to spare, they might be willing to pay as much for incremental increases in convenience, but I doubt that applies to most people — even in rich countries.
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This is markedly different from the sentiment expressed in an Alan Kay quote (paraphrases): Most people spend about as much in their computer as they do on television, and use it about the same way. [He] would consider a good computer more valuable than a car, for the possibilities it entails [but no hardware/software creator seems to be operating with that level of ambition in providing users that much leverage].
> Maybe for those who have lots of money to spare, they might be willing to pay as much for incremental increases in convenience, but I doubt that applies to most people — even in rich countries.
The cost of a product is more closely related to the cost (e.g. labor) of producing it than how useful it is. My mattress was purchased online for less than $200 and shipped. It's lasted almost a decade before showing any signs of age. That's maybe $25 a year for something I spend almost a third of my time using! By that standard, I shouldn't even be willing to buy a computer, which has a higher cost / value ratio.
Doesn't really work like that, of course. Competition acts to keep prices down, but this only operates within a product market, not between different markets. Most stuff is much cheaper than would correspond to the use we get out of it, thankfully. Expensive writing tools are targeted towards people who can definitely afford them, and they manage to get away with enormous profit ratios in part because they're in niche markets with little competition between products. They're a rare exception where the price has trended closer to the value to users rather than the cost of production.
Fair… I was just trying to be generous in the cost estimate, but this just makes my point stronger.
> Competition acts to keep prices down, but this only operates within a product market, not between different markets.
That’s an interesting perspective. Reminds me of something I read — that home computer prices have straddled the $1K price over decades even though their usefulness has multiplied. It seems like there’s some other perspective that anchoring prices, AB’s whatever that is also tends to value hardware more than software.
There’s a baffling disconnect here between how people perceive their own value of time while feeling entitled to the product of others’ time for essentially nothing.
And there is nothing more accurate about the average HN user than that.
Especially me. I’m the best and smartest.
If you’re a salaried SWE, obviously expense the $150. But for a contracting SWE? $150 is really nothing compared to what a woodworker, wedding photographer, welder, or most any other self-employed professional has to spend on their tools.
I keep my work on work owned hardware and my personal stuff on my own computer/phone etc. That means paying for my own 1password etc (I only use free dev tools, as it happens)
It's possible to write software on your own or with a small team, and sell it for low prices, and make a decent income from it. I know it's possible because I've been doing it for a decade.
But somehow over the years software developers have moved everything to subscriptions, prices are going up, and everyone competes for the attention of the people with lots of disposable income.
I'm confused what price you think most of these softwares should be charging. If you exclude things like MLB or Disney+ where their cost is tethered to the amorphous costs of entertainment, most of these don't cost all that much per day given how much a full time developer earns/costs per day.
Looking at the costs and voting with your dollar, like OP did, is your responsibility as a consumer to drive efficient market and resource allocation.
I don’t care for subscriptions because they lock out those of us with limited means.
Edit: even so, I still have $16/mo in subscriptions on my phone. :-/
It’s a bubble. Outside of the bubble there are quite a few people who don’t mind paying subscription fees for software that delivers value. HN is not a good place to gather market sentiment or perform product research for this reason.
Which really makes you wonder, what businesses just survive by just this SAAS model that couldn't before in perpetual license/pre smart phone world.
Or is it serving a lucrative niche that pays for itself every day in productivity? Need to be clear before making a judgement.
But what really drives me crazy is that if you asked people "Can you look at the actual software you are paying and take 20% to donate to developers of open source alternatives?", they would find all types of excuses.
Neither of those numbers comes close to 5%, which would be a net income of $30,000/y.
So per-capita income is far less than the $67k figure you picked, and 5% is about right.
In addition, using the mean (average) is deceptive, because it is skewed by the few people that earn a lot (Jeff Bezos walks into a bar). Using the median would make more sense (although the person you replied to hasn’t, probably because it is harder to find).
The mean on HN is possibly higher, making the point moot? There are a lot of international commenters that could swing the number down.
Side note: if you want to compare how well you are personally doing you need to compare by other factors. Age cohort especially matters for income and wealth comparisons - even for software dev?
Confused by this comment -- the source I linked IS using median, not mean. I guess that does mean (heh) that the number isn't skewed as much by higher numbers, but can still be skewed by the larger number of part-time high school kids too.