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Comment by jawilson2 | Hacker News Reader

Am I reading correctly that of the $250K they need, $150K of that goes to a single staff member for 60% of their time? Does that seem...excessive?

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That's 60% of the _budget_ not 60% of their time.

Also: Lance is almost certainly working more than 40 hours a week. Also, he isn't just a systems administrator. He's a mentor, fundraiser, any literally everything else that is needed to keep the lab running. There used to be more staff, but it's hard to retain qualified individuals. He's been there for 17 years, he's not doing it for the money, he does it because the OSL is important!

Oh, and since he's a public employee, you can look up the current salary and history.

https://hr.oregonstate.edu/sites/hr.oregonstate.edu/files/er...

https://www.openthebooks.com/oregon-state-employees/?F_Name_...

I'll summarize it:

$107k in 2017 and $124k in 2023. I don't know about you, but someone with 17 years experience could easily be making 2-5x that depending on the company and role.

And it's $124k on the west coast, specifically western Oregon. Coastal PNW is notoriously expensive to live in - sure, Corvallis isn't Seattle, but it's not cheap, either. Folks like to balk at numbers when it comes to publicly (or FOSS-donation-ly) funded salaries, but also balk at tying context to those numbers. It happens almost every time anyone dares try to pay their bills on open-source work: a flame war over "you don't need that number, you could move to your parent's basement in Arkansas and survive on $20k instead!".

I grew up near/around/in Corvallis. $124k is quite a bit there. Food is cheap, you can find pretty cheap land/realty, etc. Overall it's pretty reasonable.

That said, $124k is not a lot for what Lance does.

Maybe it was at some point in the past? I have friends who currently live there and it does not sound cheap. Again - not Seattle bad, maybe not even Bellingham bad, but still not "124 is quite a bit" levels (from the sounds of it).

Regardless, we can definitely agree: Lance could be making a ton more elsewhere, but is a saint who cares about his work, and I appreciate his dedication!

I have indeed lived life wrong. I work in HPC as a Systems Engineer (right now, in 2025, with graduate degrees in engineering, and 25 years of systems admin / engineering experience) and do not make what this person made in 2017, much less in 2025, OR 2-5x that amount for that matter (total dream salary, geez)... at one time I was the data center manager and teaching CS classes, at the same time, working 80 hours a week.

How the heck do these people secure these high paying jobs? There is some club, and I am not in it. Sorry to rant, but that 1FTE salary is huge.

Take a look at salary reports from places like https://www.levels.fyi/2024

If you think $124k a year is high compensation for someone with 17 years of experience in Portland, your compensation expectations are way off.

Wow, I read your informative link. Where are these jobs? I went through a round of interviews last year for Sr. positions, across a number of locations in the U.S., and quite frankly, the average salary for the positions interviewed for was $80k less than most of those in the list, and $230k less than the SWE manager in the list.

The page lists the locations, and the businesses, where these jobs are placed. Unless you live on the coast (or end up in Denver/Austin), you're going to have a harder time reaching these salary numbers.

> in Portland

Corvallis

No, you are not reading correctly.

The 60% number is the percentage of the budget, not the staff member's allocated time.

However, what do we know about the duties of this staff member? $150k isn't a very high salary for an experienced systems administrator

It's higher than an SDE in Seattle, but less than a senior position at those same companies, for people who want some perspective.

Firmly "Middle ground of the area"

It is unclear from this request, but if this is the cost to the employer it is almost certainly a larger number than the actual pay which goes to the individual.

$150k is not "higher than an SDE in Seattle", unless you meant to say "higher than the average salary for an entry-level junior SDE role in Seattle."

That does seem to pretty clearly be what they meant, given the rest of the sentence.

There are usually three main levels people talk about, entry, mid career, and sr. If you say SDE, I'd assume a mid-career person, which is 100% earning way more then 150k in Seattle. https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... has more data.

In Big Tech(tm) you’d have at least lead/staff and principal on top of those levels, who make even more.

Cost of living in Corvallis <<< Cost of living in Seattle

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

From a university grants perspective that likely includes benefits.

Grant hiring math is

Salary + benefits = cost

Where benefits = salary *~.4

Does "benefits" also include the tax contributions the company pays? After being 1099 for so long, those definitely sound like a benefit to me!

I honestly don't know but I assume so.

They technically call it 'fringe benefits'. My university has four categories of fringe benefits:

Full

Limited

Partial

Grad Health

The only things it specifies are that partial includes social security and full includes life insurance. But given that whatever I set for a post doc/research scientist/etc. salary is the amount they are paid, I assume that everything else including payroll taxes are encompassed in that 1/3 extra for fringe.

Presumably the $150k also includes all oncosts, so the actual salary is quite a bit lower still? As a side note I don't understand the arguments about salaries for nonprofits. Sure they should not be outrageously higher than the average, but shouldn't we want to get the best people for these jobs (instead of them working on aware?), or is the argument that if you work for a nonprofit you should be doing it out of altruism and be glad you receive a salary at all?

The argument that I assume you are talking about has some nuance around it. It's mostly about politically connected or nepotistic people who are pulling large salaries for essentially little to no work. I'm sure most regular employees at a nonprofit get treated as poorly as those of us at a normal business.

But's usually not the argument being made, the complains (same in this case) are often about the salaries of the people doing the actual work. Sure I understand the complains about multi-million salaries for the CEOs of some non-for-profit (on the other hand I have the same complains about the ridiculous salaries of CEOs of for-profits), but if that's the nuance, it doesn't come out in the complains.

Well without actual examples from any supposed position, this discussion goes nowhere.

What do you mean? We are discussing an example right here???

I've been in the IT field for 20+ years, but I've never made that much in a year. What's stopping someone from saying, "Hire two cheaper guys, so there's redundancy?"

The lack of people who are willing to do the job at comparable capacity for $80k a year.

>I've been in the IT field for 20+ years, but I've never made that much in a year.

What on earth have you spent your time learning? How do you have 20 years of experience but no specialized skills that bring a modest salary?

Do you not have time for personal development while at work?

I'm not trying to be rude, I'm legitimately curious.

The $150K probably needs to cover other costs, like payroll taxes. Perhaps other benefits as well? (Health insurance would be the big one -- in the rough ballpark of $20K).

Not if we're talking about an experienced engineer that is the only full-time staff for a year. That's the entire budget, so it feels pretty spot on. Maybe I'm out of touch or misunderstanding your point, though.

GP is pointing out that OSU Open Source Lab is only in jeopardy because a majority of the shortfall is in labor costs. 86% to be exact.

Yes, maintaining stuff requires labour, and people who do that labour deserve to be paid for it. What’s so surprising about that?

Given that it’s a surprise to everyone, it is surprising. Since it’s open source people expect it to be done via donation to unpaid volunteers.

Who is it surprising except you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"In Comments

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

It was a genuine question, not a snarky one. Most of the other comments were making the same point that I was, which is that it is reasonable that labour costs that much.

There was no point made other than to argue why I or others are surprised which I provided an explanation. There isn’t much else to go from here other than your tone was snarky.

Assuming that's the "fully loaded" cost (ie including taxes, benefits, etc), seems like it would translate to a take-home salary of $100k or less.

No? Less qualified software engineers make more with less experience, and while doing orders of magnitude less important work

> Am I reading correctly that of the $250K they need, $150K of that goes to a single staff member for 60% of their time? Does that seem...excessive?

When I was doing AIX and Solaris system administration in Salem Oregon, they paid me $75 an hour.

A lot of people here are comparing Corvallis to Seattle, but they’re hundreds of miles apart.

Salem is the nearest big city.

TBH, making $75 an hour in Salem was like making $150 an hour in Seattle. You can live REALLY WELL on $75 an hour in Corvallis.

Maybe ten years ago, but not since the pandemic.

Seattle is still more expensive, but $150k is just buy-a-house and have-a-kid money in Corvallis anymore.

And that $75 an hour (which annualizes to $156,000) doesn't include employer overhead (taxes, benefits, etc.) which can double their cost.

No, it doesn’t seem excessive at all to me. If the lab delivered the same services for $2.5mil would you still be questioning that $150k salary?

That’s going to be a tough sell to any company. At some point, this is less of a charity and more of a failing company.

I really am constantly surprised at how foolish some posters on this site are, but your comment is pretty exceptional even by recent low standards.

do you actually know what OSUOSL is and what it does? do you care? if not, why are you even commenting on this post?

This is not a company. It is not expected to turn a profit.

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