|$250k/employee hmmmm
They should consider running the service in Canada, where software engineer / programmer salaries are a third of that
or 90% of the US that is not SF/Silicon Valley
What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
41–50 of 394 posts
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#42I'm quite surprised - $2.06 on staffing seemed steep, so obviously read on as I was thinking that there must be a lot of employees. But 8? OK, I'm just a teacher, and I earn around £30k a year... not the kind of figures I've seen bandied about on here for graduate programmers who seem to be pulling in 8-10 times that for their first job... So I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the payroll (which I doubt would ha…
A fully loaded cost of ~$250k for a senior developer or SRE is not at all extraordinary. Especially when for something like Lets Encrypt you really want/need to hire experts.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's for ten employees, not eight. Salary + benefits. Could have been more clear in the post, but we have eight employees now and have budgeted for ten in 2017.
Assuming 100% overhead for benefits, etc., that's 100K per employee, which is quite low for Silicon Valley.
The 100% overhead only applies to the "average" job. Health benefit costs are typically the biggest piece of the benefits puzzle and don't scale with salary. In SV the overhead is more like 25%.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have to compete with the rest of Silicon Valley. That's about what it costs to get a good engineer around here, when you count benefits.
Couldn't this be ran out of Nowhere, Idaho though? Remote workers, etc.
I assumed they were remote, otherwise I would have thought they would have premises costs stated. Rent, heating etc.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have to compete with the rest of Silicon Valley. That's about what it costs to get a good engineer around here, when you count benefits.
Why would they have to be in Silicon Valley?
They don't (and in fact I think they are mostly remote) but they still have to compete with it.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#46$2.06M for eight employees seems very steep
Approximately 100% salary overhead is pretty standard, so eight $125k employees plus infrastructure and office costs sounds reasonable.
Not really.
Overhead doesn't scale linearly with pay. Once you're into 6 figures, it's definitely not equal. I'm guessing much more like $150-200k per employee in compensation.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have to compete with the rest of Silicon Valley. That's about what it costs to get a good engineer around here, when you count benefits.
Why would they have to be in Silicon Valley?
just because LE competes with Silicon Valley in recruiting doesn't mean the employees are, or need to be, in Silicon Valley.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#48To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary (which seems to be everyone at the moment), a few things to keep in mind: 1) That includes benefits 2) They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley 3) Given what they have accomplished with such a small team, these are probably high caliber people. 4) In SV there is a good 25% premium you…
> I can say that I'd consider myself lucky to get such a team for such a great price
I am concerned that they might be being underpaid for doing the type of work that they are. Let's Encrypt is not only a great service, but an important one too. I assume they have a good stock plan to make up.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#49Fascinating. Everyone here is complaining that 2M for 8 employees seems steep, but I think this seems really cheap. Admittedly, I work at Google, but we bat around the number of 400-500k per employee when discussing them here. 250k/ in SV seems really reasonably priced in comparison.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#50I'm quite surprised - $2.06 on staffing seemed steep, so obviously read on as I was thinking that there must be a lot of employees. But 8? OK, I'm just a teacher, and I earn around £30k a year... not the kind of figures I've seen bandied about on here for graduate programmers who seem to be pulling in 8-10 times that for their first job... So I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the payroll (which I doubt would ha…
A note: You don't cost £30k to your employer, more likely 1.5-3x that. So say an employee costs a total of $250k, their pay could be anywhere between $80-180k with other compensation (retirement packages, health benefits) and overhead making up the rest. (the higher the multiple, the less efficient the company likely is, in this case I'd expect it would be closer to the 1.5x mark than the 3x mark)