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What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

letsencrypt.org

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Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#161

Post by bertiewhykovich »

berns wrote: post #86
jedberg wrote: post #37

To 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…

> Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact mostly remote, but they still have to compete with SV wages because really good people command those wages whether they are here or not. This doesn't make sense. In the case of remote workers it's the San Francisco workers that have to compete with global offer/demand because nobody cares how much you are paying for housing.

I believe that the wage pressure moves in the other direction: most Silicon Valley firms prefer local engineers, but they're a limited resource. If you're paying $2000+ in rent, you're incentivized to seek unusually high wages -- and, as a local engineer in Silicon Valley, you're in a position to do so. Employers are competing for /you/.

(Of course, we shouldn't dismiss the less market-determined psychological factors at play: if you're an executive at a startup flooded with easy money in a culture that doesn't particularly value corporate fiscal responsibility, you may want to pay better-than-market for the pure gratification of doing so.)

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#162

Post by resmote »

walrus01 wrote: post #15
djaychela wrote: post #6

I'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…

people who seriously know how to code mission critical X.590 root CA PKI infrastructure are not cheap when you're looking at total benefits/compensation per head.

Creating a certificate is easy.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#163

Post by mgkimsal »

sidlls wrote: post #149
pc86 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your value shouldn't be tied to where you live per se. If that was the case people wouldn't make $200k in SV, $75k in Omaha, and $9k in Phuket for the same job.

Yes what is and, according to the parent what should be, diverge. What this really tells me is that workers in Omaha and Phuket ought to demand more, and that they are selling themselves for far less than the value they create, or else that they aren't actually doing "the same job." Likely both are true.

In most cases, it is at least partially tied to how much value someone can extract from you, which really has to do with how much value they bring in the market.

It's less about the 'value I create' and more about the 'value company X is able to create using my skills'. And... in some measure, you're going to be tied to how good the company itself is. I could give the same deliverable to two companies, and one may be able to make 20x more than the other, owing to other factors like network, sales, marketing, image, etc. In that case, they could probably pay me more as well, because they're earning more, but that then gets in to business vision and politics - do they see the software/tech as a cost-center or a profit-center?

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#164

Post by resmote »

Crap, I recently switched to these guys because it has some big names behind it. I'd avoided it for a long time because I knew there would be a please donate, hard luck story at some point and I still fell for it. Now I'll have to consider going back to GoDaddy.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#165

Post by resmote »

resmote wrote: post #162
walrus01 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people who seriously know how to code mission critical X.590 root CA PKI infrastructure are not cheap when you're looking at total benefits/compensation per head.

Creating a certificate is easy.

Go ahead and down vote me LetsEncrypt employees. It just proves my point.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#166

Post by ryanobjc »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #104
ryanobjc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't as much as people bitch about, generally speaking you have a few items: - FICA payroll tax - this is US wide, so not really more expensive in CA. - CA state payroll tax, this isn't that expensive, just a few percent. - Workers comp, could be cheaper in other states, but coders/office workers have cheap workers comp. - Health insurance, maybe a bit more expensive in CA Basically hiring people isn't expensi…

Also office space: 100 - 200 sq.ft. per employee * $75/sq.ft. in SF -> $7k5 - $15k per employee.

That's like for the MOST expensive office space in SF though. Also that's PER YEAR, not per month.

I once rented out office space in SOMA, and it was more like $18 sqft/year. It was cheap and in a shitty place, but still SOMA.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#167

Post by sidlls »

bertiewhykovich wrote: post #161
berns wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact mostly remote, but they still have to compete with SV wages because really good people command those wages whether they are here or not. This doesn't make sense. In the case of remote workers it's the San Francisco workers that have to compete with global offer/demand because nobody cares how much you are paying for housing.

I believe that the wage pressure moves in the other direction: most Silicon Valley firms prefer local engineers, but they're a limited resource. If you're paying $2000+ in rent, you're incentivized to seek unusually high wages -- and, as a local engineer in Silicon Valley, you're in a position to do so. Employers are competing for /you/. (Of course, we shouldn't dismiss the less market-determined psychological factor…

Most startups, including funded startups, seem to pay significantly lower than established tech companies in this area. My anecdotal experience certainly fits that. The last time I was job searching the highest offer I got from a startup was $130k plus a hiring bonus and laughable equity with poor benefits, while the young company (IPO within the previous four years) I accepted an offer from came in at well over 20% more than that all-in.

I think startups undercompensate and more or less target lottery-equity chasers.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#168

Post by generalledger »

zachlatta wrote: post #63
vowelless wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Since they're a project of the Linux Foundation, they most definitely don't have any sort of stock plan – since you can't have equity in nonprofits.

I don't want to put words in the parent commenter's mouth, but I think the implication was that they would need to make up for NOT having a stock plan.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#169

Post by sosborn »

ryandrake wrote: post #96
zachlatta wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not actually making $250k each. Keep in mind that this includes employer taxes and benefits, which add up very quickly.

OK, so $200k in salary then. Still stupendously good. WOW! Maybe there _IS_ something to all these "I know this guy who's brother's roommate makes $300K at Google" threads. It just seems so unbelievable.

From what I've been told, take the employee's salary and multiply by 2 to get the actual cost to the company.
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