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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?

#271

Post by szatkus »

gnomewascool wrote: post #222
NiekvdMaas wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the the commit activity of some maintainers, that seems to be correct: 7 commits in a year: https://github.com/babel/babel/commits?author=hzoo&since=202... $110k invoiced: https://opencollective.com/left_pad/transactions

Are FOSS "donations" for on-going or past work, though? I'd lean towards a mixture of both. However, by that measure the original creator should also be compensated for their past work, given that they wrote about an order of magnitude more code than the second most prolific contributor, at least in the main babel repository.[0] (I have no way to easily measure other equally important contributions, such as shepherdi…

Interesting that his contributions apparently declined when he went full-time.

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

#272

Post by capableweb »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #184

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 catego…

> Donations are nice but not really scalable as a revenue model

Are you joking? This blog post is evidence that donations do work, but that doesn't mean you can just throw money around, you still need to allocate them effectively.

They are currently pulling in ~$166K a year, which can fund a team of developers anywhere else than the most expensive places. Since Babel is a open source and supposedly international project, there is no reason to pay the people working on it SF salaries.

They are doing the classic mistake of trying to optimize for getting more funding as well instead of focusing on minimizing costs, which tends to be much easier.

If they really care about being sustainable, they'll eventually realize this. But as put by sebmck both here and on Twitter, seems the group as no interest in actually making sure Babel survives but rather want to extract as much money as they can before it's too late.

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

#273

Post by indemnity »

bsder wrote: post #232
creshal wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sorry, I never even noticed their "teams" things. And it looks like the full pack is now $650.

Holy shit, I must be grandfathered in, I’m still paying US$150 per year for the all products pack.

Just paid three days ago too.

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

#274

Post by machiaweliczny »

rvnx wrote: post #102
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

> basic dev earns

Not true, basic junior devs in Poland start even from $15K per year(invoice equivalent without VAT).

Good devs in Ukraine get $50K/year+ but AFAIK they have 5% taxes only. Good = hireable by S&P500 companies for example. Anyway most of them prefer to move to Poland for example due to better government/QoL.

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

#275

Post by indemnity »

sofixa wrote: post #257
tarruda wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you split by 3 full time devs, that's more 90k/year which allows for a decent living in most places. Probably not enough for San Francisco though.

$90k/year is between a good and outrageously good salary for Europe, depending on the country. So yeah, plenty of talent available for cheaper than $90k/year.

I don’t understand why salaries are so low in Europe. I work in New Zealand, not exactly a tech hub, and I’m on $220k p.a. (mid career). $160k US, 130k EUR. 39% top tax.

I wouldn’t say I am significantly above average and I’m not in management (architect/principal engineer).

Similar story in Australia. Not quite US levels but decent compensation, I don’t feel taken advantage of.

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

#276

Post by Jorge1o1 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #223
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All FAANG companies pay 100% of the employee's health care in addition to the salary. When people talk about total comp for these FAANG companies they mean base pay + stock the 100% health coverage is just assumed. I will say coverage for the full family often isn't free but it's still pretty cheap.

I'm pretty sure they just pay for health insurance premiums instead of the health care. Deductible followed by a percentage of everything until you reach your out of pocket coupled with poor paid leave if you get paid leave at all is a significant cost to health care. This is combined with a culture that glorifies not missing a day of work for any reason, which can't help folks use the health care provided.

While I agree about the culture glorifying overwork (recent post on HN) and the difficulty of using health care / PTO at times, numerically my employer-backed health care plan is actually quite generous.

My $0 premium health care plan has only a $2000 deductible, $6000 out of pocket max, 20% coinsurance for “big” procedures, $10 copay (regardless of deductible) for primary care, and I actually get PAID a $500 yearly health stipend for going to the gym.

On the other hand, I’m a 22 year old male who goes to the gym several times a week, eats home-cooked nutritious and healthy food, and works a desk job so...

Edited: Copay is deductible-agnostic

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

#277

Post by sdevonoes »

uncomputation wrote: post #160
axguscbklp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babel is one of the most popular and widely-used tools in the history of web development. Why should its developers and maintainers not make at least as much money as entry-level Silicon Valley developers?

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 :/

Everybody who is not working for FAANG-level/SV is underpaid. That's like 90% of the developers in the world (I include myself), so don't feel bad :)

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

#278

Post by brabel »

wereHamster wrote: post #247
akmittal wrote: post #105

See what creator of Babel has to say >Babel used by millions, so why are we running out of money? Bluntly: Because funds were misallocated for years, and the project has been too slow to improve. >The reason there's no money is because someone took a $130k annual salary and didn't actually work on the project. https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1392019586833387522 - So donating money because of this post may not be a…

Open source projects funded by donations need accountability. Regular reports about how much money is available, how it's being spent, and what the results are. If I saw that this guy, getting a full-time salary, creating fewer PRs in a year than me in a week, I'd be pissed, and the project certainly wouldn't get my donations.

If they were getting a fulltime salary and not actually working on the project, can't they be accused of commiting fraud?

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

#280

Post by emptyfile »

indemnity wrote: post #275
sofixa wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$90k/year is between a good and outrageously good salary for Europe, depending on the country. So yeah, plenty of talent available for cheaper than $90k/year.

I don’t understand why salaries are so low in Europe. I work in New Zealand, not exactly a tech hub, and I’m on $220k p.a. (mid career). $160k US, 130k EUR. 39% top tax. I wouldn’t say I am significantly above average and I’m not in management (architect/principal engineer). Similar story in Australia. Not quite US levels but decent compensation, I don’t feel taken advantage of.

Because supply and demand? What sort of answer do you think you'll get?

We get it, anglos are a lot more rich then averaege europeans. Congrats.

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