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What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

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Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#221

Post by billiam »

zeveb wrote: post #116
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…

I think $200K/person is fine, but I do quibble with this: > They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley Why? Why compete for talent in Silicon Valley when there are people all over the country who'd love to work on something like this? I can get why they might prefer not to do remote teams (it's a challenge), but there are cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Kansas Cit…

You people are hilarious.

Hey, YC, I've got a great idea for a startup in the incredibly hot cert/encryption space. The team is world class and in place. The product is shipping and customers are doubling every 6 months. $8 million at $40 million please.

Y'all idolize the bloodsuckers in Teslas that run this site, and give Josh and team grief. Jeez.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#222

Post by jsudhams »

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.

Agree with this. Some in south India make 100K USD for the job that would make 140 to 180K in USA. But not everyone though and like other post mentioned it is about the companies perception of your value and most of the Fortune 500 companies have some base setup for each title irrespective of where you live.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#223

Post by mmkx »

They need to spend less or they're the next Tor foundation, an ineffective black hole of hacker wannabes and hanger-ons. Running high performance services don't cost very much as evidenced by their hosting entry. Maybe 5 engineers max. No way they are working on features every day. Should be very slow outside of patches. CA/SSL specification does not change weekly...

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#224

Post by nickpsecurity »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #174
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…

I think $2.91M is a modest (if not lean) budget for the important work they're doing. How many websites now have HTTPS because of LetsEncrypt? How much would they have needed to pay for certificates from an incumbent CA?

I agree in terms of results and like them. Yet, I'll ask you since you're still in industry: "Wouldn't it be cheaper if they got hackers in Germany like close to Berlin? And not be operating in a police state with secret courts and such?" The latter is ironic given Germany's history.

Legal aside, I've seen plenty of folks over there putting together OS's, VPN's, cryptophones, etc. Most doing heavy lifting don't make SF wages or have office costs that high. Plus, one could poach some veterans in PKI from one of the big security companies. At least one of them. I doubt it's the only such place given all the country names in my files on cutting-edge research.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#225

Post by mrb »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #205
mrb wrote: post #119

To Let's Encrypt: if you guys took bitcoins as donation I would give $10 in an instant. The friction of filling out this long Paypal form is just too high for $10... http://i.imgur.com/oZZWeuG.png (And, no, I don't have a Paypal account.) Make it easy to give, and you will receive more donations! Edit: I am not the only one who wants to donate BTC! Bitcoin was the number one request asked last year: https://twitter.c…

That's an interesting way of putting it. I think I would spend longer double-checking a bitcoin transaction that I would one through paypal. Name/address are easy to autofill even if you don't want anything saving your card info.

I'd do the bitcoin donation as such: unlock my phone, launch Bitcoin Wallet, capture on-screen QR code, type $10, hit send. Done.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#226

Post by omegaham »

dragonwriter wrote: post #158
sndean wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the federal govt it's at least that percentage... Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane.

> Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane. If you consider how little uniformed military personnel are paid and how high the other costs associated with them are to start with, I'm actually not all that surprised that somewhere in some specialized area in the DoD this ratio is reached.

This was interesting when I was in. I was making $25k a year as a corporal, but I was saving almost all of it because I wasn't paying for rent, utilities, health insurance, food, or the gym. My expenses were Internet, cell phone, and car insurance / gas. That was it.

I make three times as much in the civilian world, but I'm saving less.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#227

Post by Spooky23 »

resmote wrote: post #175
Spooky23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about that is insane. To put it in perspective, almost any Fortune 500 is paying $200k for a contract Level-2 helpdesk analyst.

No one I've ever known makes that in support roles. Consultants can get that easily though.

The worker makes $30, the contractor and body shops take the rest.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#228

Post by Spooky23 »

Matthias247 wrote: post #155
Spooky23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about that is insane. To put it in perspective, almost any Fortune 500 is paying $200k for a contract Level-2 helpdesk analyst.

Short term contracts might be different, but 95% of normal software engineers in germany will e.g. never reach 100k. Including those in the large corporations. I think 200k might be barely in reach for a senior manager. In other countries/regions this will even be far lower.

It's a nonprofit looking for next years funding. An engineer defintatly ought to be paid as if it's a short term gig.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#229

Post by imron »

ceejayoz wrote: post #215
imron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can donate directly, either once off or recurring monthly - https://letsencrypt.org/donate/

I'd rather avoid PayPal, and I like Patreon as a central clearinghouse for monthly donations.

On the flipside, Patreon takes a 5% cut on top of whatever fees there are for the payment method you use, so there's less of your dollar reaching the intended recipient.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#230

Post by autotune »

nappy-doo wrote: post #49

Fascinating. 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.

400K per employee at a 32.7 billion dollar company is a vastly different ratio compared to spending ~250K per employee at a start-up with limited funds.
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