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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

Given that you are a Google engineer, you could probably just pay the $1000/year yourself? That sounds weird at first, because why should you pay for Google's costs. But then again the reasoning is that Google should pay, because they depend on these libraries. But you depend on Google, Google depends on the libraries, so you depend on the libraries. So you not paying is pretty much the same thing as Google not paying: I can understand very well why you don't; because you don't have to.

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Some problems with that:

Why should I personally pay for the tools I use at work to make my employer money? Should I also buy my own work laptop? My own software licenses? It doesn't make sense.

Then there's also the tax issue, as others have pointed out. I'd be giving post-tax money in a lot of instances, whereas for Google it would have much more favorable tax treatment.

But the biggest problem is that me personally making $1000/year of donations is pissing in the ocean. It accomplishes nothing. A program where every engineer is doing so accomplishes a lot more.

> Why should I personally pay for the tools I use at work to make my employer money? Should I also buy my own work laptop? My own software licenses? It doesn't make sense.

Wait til you hear about the amount of tools trades people have to buy for their jobs!

Yeah I know about that, and it's terrible and shouldn't happen. Thankfully that plague doesn't affect our industry, and I'd hate for it to start.

(Also worth pointing out that some of those tradesmen are legitimate contractors, and own their own tools in the same way that a legitimate software engineer contractor would own their own computer and IntelliJ license.)

Only if they are self employed though surely?

It's common for car mechanics and construction workers, especially in specializations like electrical or HVAC, to own and use their own tools. Obviously, better employers provide stipends or some form of compensation.

In which country is this??? Definitely not in Europe

The same country that bankrupts people when they get sick.

OP doesn't depend on Google. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, not one of dependency. Perhaps if Google was the only employer that would hire OP, but odds are they could quickly get a different tech job at a thousand different companies.

Your argument could be used to say that OP should pay out of pocket for server hardware to run their programs that Google uses, which doesn't make sense.

No matter where OP works, they would depend on open-source software. I think the question of dependency is without a doubt here.

My argument cannot be used for server hardware, because, after all, Google has to pay for that.

But they(probably) would depend on different open source software

Because the benefit is for Google. Alternative would be to develop in-house or buy a 3rd party library for higher cost to the company.

I assume because donations would, ideally, be tax deductible through the company (or at least would have no personal tax repercussions) whereas making a donation of a gross cost of $1000 to an employee might mean only donating $500-600 net.

I am sure Google would be happy to deduct this from your salary and donate it instead.

You are making some weird arguments in this thread. I don't understand how you think it's reasonable for employees to personally shoulder the burden of everything they use at work rather than work simply paying for it, which makes a lot more sense and is the way that things are typically done. Start deducting the cost of work tools from employee's salaries and suddenly your employees are going to become very inefficient at their jobs, as they won't want to spend their own money on anything.

Sure, from a strictly logical viewpoint you are correct. There is too much red tape and its really Google's problem to fix. And you giving $1000 wouldn't even solve the larger problem of Google not having a system for you to direct them to make the donations. But in both of those cases the project still doesn't have the $1000. You could always just give it to them, on average you'd hardly notice and you might even feel good about what you've done.

My overall political philosophy here is that individual elective donations solve few problems, and that large-scale collective action (whether by governments or large employers) is a much better solution overall. E.g. SNAP is a lot more effective and efficient at ensuring that people don't go hungry than relying on individual people to continuously choose to donate food/money.

Same for this. One individual elective donation to an open source project doesn't do much. A larger system though can do a lot.

Yes, my argument sounds weird. About as weird as Google paying for software they don't have to pay for.

Maybe rephrasing my argument makes it more palatable to you: Shouldn't we, the guild of software engineers, take care of our own and pay our sub guild of open source developers? Why would we leave that to faceless companies?

That sounds like just a difference of semantics and accounting of the same notion. In net, your suggestion also results in $1k moving from google to the open source. Although that is modulo tax implication differences, since open source projects have not often been able to secure 501c non-profit status from the US IRS, which would facilitate those sorts of pass-through donations easier.

> In net, your suggestion also results in $1k moving from google to the open source.

It also amounts to a $1k pay cut for employees, which no one will be happy with. We already capture a small amount of our value add to the company in terms of wages; this would just make that a little worse. And no, there is no fixed amount that goes to salary plus open source contributions, necessitating the same overall net sum.

As does yours. But you are using an economic trick to hide it from yourself. See the "Save More Tomorrow" plan by Nobel Laureate Thaler and Sunstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)#cite_ref-21

It is not really different from whether the company pays for your office space, laptop, and health care, or makes you pay for those out of pocket.

It's not an economic trick. If my employer weren't paying for offices they wouldn't be plowing the rest of that on top of my salary. Indeed it's the opposite; fully remote workers make less.

It would probably be way more tax-efficient for the company to donate,

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