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Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

babeljs.io

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Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#171

Post by punkbit »

There's a lot of greedy selfish people out there.

This past year I was mostly unemployed, and wasted countless hours, days and weeks, months doing tech interviews. A complete waste of my time that I'll never get back. I live in London and it's stupidly expensive.

Although all of my problems, I've kept sending my donations to people, projects to show my support, appreciation, and also charities and family in need.

I got some short contract work in-between, luckily, but nothing much.q

I think we should give back, have at least some empathy to others and respect the ones that've been here for longer, that are truly talented.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#172

Post by arp242 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #16
jiofih wrote: post #13

If you want to make money and pay developers a salary, you need a product. I don’t want my js tooling to be a commercial product (hi Rome). Can we go back to the original spirit of OSS where everybody donates a little of their time instead?

I don't think it works in 99% of cases. There almost always seems to end up being a few people who do 90% of the work.

In most cases it's just a few people who do >99% of the work. Project with significant contributions outside of the "core dev(s)" are much rarer than people think, and so are the number of contributions.

I really need to finish my site which visualizes this ... But here's some data on ElasticSearch I did a while ago: https://lobste.rs/s/qtsjh1/elasticsearch_does_not_belong_ela...

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#173

Post by adflux »

av8avenger wrote: post #135
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $11k a month [...] Significantly above that salary, even in most of Europe. lolnope

Lol sure. If you get this kind of responsibility anywhere in western Europe in a professional setting, you are getting paid definitely somewhere in that salary region. The effective amount will of course differ greatly between the countries, but please don't forget that the expenses vary as well. (15k a month in Switzerland isn't as much as 15k a month in Germany)

I'd say around 1 percent of devs make that much... And then Mr tax man will take between 50 and 70 percent

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#174

Post by qwytw »

_odey wrote: post #109
dandellion wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

As employees, maybe in the UK or Ireland. Most likely not in Germany, and never in any eastern European country. As contractors, you could theoretically in any country, the more eastern, the more luck you need to have, but it's doable. Source: I've asked ex-colleagues, recruiters, and people at meetups.

Idk, the median salary at Uber dev office in Lithuania (which is in eastern Europe) is ~9k EUR per month (which is 11k $). Granted they don't hire that many people and most other companies pay considerably less but I wouldn't say that this is something unachievable for higher end tech leads working in some companies.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#175

Post by [deleted] »

axguscbklp wrote: post #169
uncomputation wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What entry level SV dev makes 11,000 x 12 = 132,000 x 1.25 (tax) = $165k/year pre-tax? I know the salaries here are high but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If they are that high for entry level then I’m being seriously underpaid :/

I am assuming that in the article the $11k/month figure is pre-tax. It is higher than Silicon Valley entry-level, I think, but I had thought that it is not higher by much. However, I just did a bit of Googling that made me realize that maybe I am significantly overestimating entry-level Silicon Valley salaries.

[deleted]

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#177

Post by loremipsium »

The salary discussion aside. That's what I have always been ad odds with OSS. Nobody is forcing you to put it up for free. Put a price tag on it an sell it. If it doesn't sell, lower the price. If it still doesn't sell, good. Stop trying to force adoption on software that cannot sustain itself.

Nobody ever heard oracle scrambling for cash.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#178

Post by ZephyrBlu »

mattmanser wrote: post #152
mssundaram wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

132k is not that much for a US salary. And besides, I'd rather see the engineers of such an important project be well paid.

The median salary for a senior software engineer in the US is $133k. And that'll be heavily skewed upwards by SV, so yes, it is actually quite a big figure, given that it's a charity-type job which generally pay less.

> And that'll be heavily skewed upwards by SV

That's highly unlikely given how a median is calculated.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#179

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #57
jiofih wrote: post #13

If you want to make money and pay developers a salary, you need a product. I don’t want my js tooling to be a commercial product (hi Rome). Can we go back to the original spirit of OSS where everybody donates a little of their time instead?

The original spirit of open source software is free as in freedom, not free as in beer. People have to make a living. And who will manage that thing where everybody donates a little of their time? Babel has nearly 600 open issues and 150 outstanding pull requests; it's a full time job just to manage that.

>The original spirit of open source software is free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

I'm beginning to doubt this, at least from the consumers perspective. I'm willing to bet most commercial users of these tools are thinking in terms of free as in not having to raise a purchase requisition. IE free as in beer.

Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?

#180

Post by arp242 »

callamdelaney wrote: post #150
dandellion wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt the lead developers of a team of 4 make more than $11k in most of Europe.

11k usd to GBP is £7791~ - that's £93.5k / year roughly. Most senior devs should make more than this in London; though this is pre-tax.

London is kind of exceptional because of the high cost of living; everything is more expensive in London.
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