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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?

#181

Post by mschuster91 »

opk wrote: post #61
holistio wrote: post #8

I was horrified and humbled to see that the people making this amazing stuff are making considerably less ($2k/month) than I do... or frankly, than most of us here on HN do. Their impact is so much bigger and I aspire so much to have as a deep understanding of the Javascript world as they do.

I'm always shocked at how high these US salaries quoted on here are. I don't know if that's just FAANG companies or people inflating figures. They do quote $11k for a full-time position as others have pointed out. What I make is much nearer to the $2k figure but I am in Europe. Maybe they'd do better operating out of of somewhere cheaper. Many older open source projects including those I contribute to aren't owned by…

> I'm always shocked at how high these US salaries quoted on here are. I don't know if that's just FAANG companies or people inflating figures.

US salaries are higher than European ones, but that is mainly because Americans need to account for healthcare and (especially in SV) extremely high cost of living.

I have a ~62 m² 3 room flat in somewhat center of Munich and pay only 1.000€ a month in rent, whereas in the US judging by a quick google you'll end up with 2k for a 1 BR.

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

#183

Post by madeofpalk »

PaywallBuster wrote: post #63

Good work so far but why does an OSS tool have to be supported by Silicon Valley salaries? USA and it's biggest cities are already hugely competitive even for profit making enterprises. Even a company like Mozilla with real commercial partnerships and solid income every year can struggle, let alone a tool which is barely noticeable by 90% of users.

I know HN isnt a single hive mind, but its funny seeing these responses all in contrast to "devs shouldnt take a pay cut if they move to a cheaper state/country"

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

#184

Post by jillesvangurp »

Donations are nice but not really scalable as a revenue model. Planning to live of that is not a plan. There are a couple of revenue models that do work in the OSS community:

- Just doing things part time. I have a few projects like this. It's fun, it's apparently useful for others. I obviously limit time I spent on this. I don't financially benefit from this and I don't mind. Lots of stuff I use falls in this category. I make a living using that stuff; I don't mind returning the favor by putting in some time. IMHO this is the most undervalued part of OSS: people just doing the work because they can and because it needs doing.

- Consulting and charging better rates by virtue of being involved with something your customers care about and thus being well positioned to provide expert advice on that. Nothing wrong with that of course but it does remove development time from your project. But then eating your own dogfood can be instructive as well. Especially for development tools. Understanding your customers is a lot easier if you are working with them and they are paying you.

- Getting hired by a company to work on software. Linus Torvalds is the famous example here. Guido van Rossum is another one. This gets easier the more economically relevant your project becomes. Being involved in and associated with major OSS companies has brand value. Babel is relevant enough that there might be a company or two with some vested interest in using Babel.

- Providing perks to paying sponsors in the form of logos on a website, co-branding, conferences, meetups, access to support, etc. Lots of long lived OSS projects survive like this. Conferences are also financed like this. There is no shortage of VC funded companies that need to cozy up to developers that already spend millions on all sorts of stuff to do that. All you need to do is provide them a way to get recognized for that. It's also a great way to build the relationships that you might eventually level up to employment. Your community of professional users is a valuable resource that companies want access to that you can facilitate.

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

#185

Post by arp242 »

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.

I wouldn't consider it a "charity-type job" though. It's a tool that companies are literally using to make money; that's not the same as helping homeless people or working for Oxfam or whatnot.

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

#186

Post by globular-toast »

holistio wrote: post #8

I was horrified and humbled to see that the people making this amazing stuff are making considerably less ($2k/month) than I do... or frankly, than most of us here on HN do. Their impact is so much bigger and I aspire so much to have as a deep understanding of the Javascript world as they do.

Don't forget it's not all about money, though. Above a certain level, money doesn't make people happier (see the hedonic treadmill effect). It's not like this developer is anywhere near poverty. In fact, by all accounts, he's rich. Many people find happiness in being useful. Developing tooling that is used by thousands of programmers around the world trumps working on ads or addictive tech.

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

#188

Post by Ayesh »

DoctorNick wrote: post #125

The ecosystem for for node is literally this goddamn comic from xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/ Really, my advice is to start holding the node ecosystem hostage until you get properly compensated. Leftpad 'em.

> literally this goddamn comic

Isn't this about Daniel, the Curl project maintainer? Don't think curl is used heavily in Node.

I think Daniel started Curl in 1997, but if there is one person who thanklessly held a large part of software industry like this, that is Daniel.

Such a brilliant and humble person!

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

#189

Post by rndude »

adflux wrote: post #165
rndude wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$11k makes roughly €9k. If you work for a company in Germany this would be gross salary of roughly €6.5k a month. The rest 2.5k would be ancillary wage costs for the employer. That finally translates to €4k net after taxes including health insurance etc. I believe many good engineers make that amount of money in Germany.

Really don't understand this logic. .. Very few engineers make 9k in Germany, simple. Why compare net wages to gross wages?

Its 9k cost to employer. Its 6.5k gross salary which translates to 78k gross salary a year for the employee. A lot of engineers make that salary.

If you are receiving money as a freelancer you need to earn at least 50% more to get a similar net salary as an employee therefore a employee salary of 78k gross is roughly equal to a freelancer making 120k a year.

You have to compare net income as everything else does not make sense.

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