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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?

#191

Post by lewispollard »

iagovar wrote: post #116
rvnx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how one user deleted his comment saying even in Ukraine or Georgia basic dev earns more than 10k USD/month

No way. That must be top tier talent. With 10k USD a month you basically own the town. You can go very very far with that money in western Europe too. Maybe places like Paris or London may be much more expensive, though.

> Maybe places like Paris or London may be much more expensive, though.

Definitely. In my experience (lead dev in the UK), salaries for senior positions in London are at least 1.5-2x the amount elsewhere in the UK - but living costs are also much higher.

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

#192

Post by mekkkkkk »

In OSS you offer something for free with no guarantees and few strings attached and in return hopefully get public contributions. You might get something on top of that in the form of donations, but trying to project growth, incomes and hires seems rather naive. If that kind of product development is what you want, you better sell a product.

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

#193

Post by bengale »

underwater wrote: post #111

I work for a startup that benefits from open source. I can and do make the case for spending a lot of money on SaaS products and hiring people. But there is no way in the world I can stand in front of company leadership and ask for money to spend on something that I already get for free. I'd look out of touch with the realities of running a business and the request would be roundly shouted down. If there's some value…

> can and do make the case for spending a lot of money on SaaS products and hiring people. But there is no way in the world I can stand in front of company leadership and ask for money to spend on something that I already get for free. I'd look out of touch with the realities of running a business and the request would be roundly shouted down.

You're right is very difficult. It feels like there needs to be a product version of these tools, I can definitely explain to my partners that we need this tool and it costs £xxx. But to explain that we should pay for free tools when we might be one of a very few that are is going to be a hard sell.

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

#195

Post by cycomanic »

underwater wrote: post #111

I work for a startup that benefits from open source. I can and do make the case for spending a lot of money on SaaS products and hiring people. But there is no way in the world I can stand in front of company leadership and ask for money to spend on something that I already get for free. I'd look out of touch with the realities of running a business and the request would be roundly shouted down. If there's some value…

The irony about this is that it's the same companies then complaining that development is not being continued or not going in the direction they want.

Essentially what you're saying is that the realities of running a business is the equivalent of a millionaire going to the local soup kitchen/food bank and taking as much food as possible and then complaining about the food.

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

#196

Post by cblconfederate »

loremipsium wrote: post #177

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.

that would require a total shift in the industry. closed source isn't different, tons of startup are unsustainable and only vie for adoption

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

#197

Post by creshal »

bsder wrote: post #146
plasma wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there is no way in the world I can stand in front of > company leadership and ask for money to spend on something > that I already get for free. I'd look out of touch with > the realities of running a business. The request would be > roundly shouted down. I agree, at minimum, the its free but seeking sponsorship model is making it hard. Looking at their Sponsorship options on GitHub [1] I see there's a useful p…

Yeah, that jump from $20/month to $500/month is too big. JetBrains asks for $500 per year--that's probably right about the discretionary spend of a decent engineer. $500/month means you're going to have to generate me an invoice and that invokes a whole bunch of corporate machinery that you don't want activated if you want a donation.

> JetBrains asks for $500 per year

For IntelliJ; their other tools are $200 a year. And I suspect the average enterprise Java engineer has more discretionary spending than a random JS fullstack devsecops person.

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

#198

Post by Tade0 »

I would have more sympathy for them if they didn't start leaning on core-js two years ago.

I get that two implementations of the same thing seem suboptimal, but Denis Pushkarev's, ahem, legal situation proved that sometimes you might want to do that.

Also with this move they freed up a lot of resources which previously went into maintaining their own polyfills and still there are problems? Where all that went?

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

#199

Post by Traubenfuchs »

If you don‘t enjoy it, stop working on it. Eventually others will step up, one way or another. Either by working on your project or by making a new one. This is not about saving the world, but about some nice to have software we can do without.

That‘s the nature of open source.

„I want to work on #specific_thing and get paid for it!“ -that‘s usually not how the world works.

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

#200

Post by OmegaPG »

throwaway8709 wrote: post #133
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.

Are you kidding me? FANG has lots of offices in Europe.. I work at one of those at around 20-35k USD / month, depending on stonk prices :) Making 11k USD is not uncommon for contractors in northern Europe, Switzerland or Germany. Sure, you can find many who are paid less. But talent is expensive.

There are plenty of contractors in India making $8-10k a month so there must be thousands in EU making $11k a month or more due to proximity and language advantage.

Check freelancing sites to get some idea. Plenty of guys getting long term work at $60-$80 an hour.

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