Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one person who is full-time has a very different salary: > we settled on $11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source The people getting $2,000 per month are part-time: > a "part-time" rate: we could initially afford $2,000 USD per month. It is also explained that if possible, they would go full-time and the salary would then be raised to "the full-time rate". > Our hope was by anno…
> $11,000 per month I think I know why they're running out of money! Seriously that's an amazing salary in 99% of the world for working on commercial software where you don't get to decide what to do, can't remote work, probably aren't working on your passion project, etc. etc.
Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
331–340 of 729 posts
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#332This whole thread is basically a testament as to why the OSS model, unfortunately, is broken. Very competent people are expected to write widely used software for a salary that basically merely guarantees subsistence. It never ceases to amaze me how great software engineers allow themselves to be exploited in such a way. If you consider the societal impact that some of these projects have and the skill set that some…
they re also incentivized to write OSS that benefits huge conglomerates, but not individuals so they can attract the big donors. It's broken many years now. Copyleft licenses can at least salvage some of the wreck
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, I thought the reason that US developers are so highly paid compared to everywhere else in the world was to offset the high cost of living in silicon valley. $132,000 is almost double my salary is the UK. They could easily get 2 full time UK devs for that, or even more in many EU countries with lower cost of living
> $132,000 is almost double my salary is the UK. They could easily get 2 full time UK devs for that, or even more in many EU countries with lower cost of living Yes, but in EU a common problem is, good developers are not worth more because the companies are unable to make use of IT to justify a higher price. It's a bunch of ossified tech laggers, not tech leaders, that employs developers in much of the EU. They only…
Babel is an complex perpetual maintenance solution to bad engineering in the first place. I'd rather be a "ossified tech lagger" then having to deal with that.
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#334On the subject of paying OSS projects, it makes me think that the idea of a part-time OSS "employee" might be a good one. Almost all businesses benefit from OSS but almost none of them pay back to the community. What if a business budgeted for a part-time employee and just sent the money to the OSS community at large. I mean, that "employee" IS helping and develop software, from a certain point of view. Without that work their other employees would have to work much more to reach the same output.
I wonder how virtual employees would work for taxes. Maybe the government could offer a discount for them. It would be cheaper for a company than a "real" employee. No health care, no social security, no office or equipment; just a salary.
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#335Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#336Earlier 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.
Is that before or after taxes? In Belgium, a self employed freelancer earning only 90.000 dollars a year (73.000 euros) is really not that much.
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#337See 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…
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
Back when I was a senior programmer I would probably have had as few credited code changes as that.
But what you wouldn't see are the hundreds of problems I debugged and analysed for other programmers , down to the level of "make this change on line 530".
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#338I find the comments here fascinating. So the lead developer was paid $11k a month, and somehow many start calling this a problem. Apparently, if you work on OSS you should be working for something slightly above the poverty line. People are comparing it to other salaries, but seem to forget that this salary likely does not include any other benefits (health insurance, stock options ...). I mean he is the lead develop…
I don't even get how his salary is an argument here, when babel is one of most critical parts in almost all web applications. His knowledge and skillset is way above any average "lead dev" and he's still doing "grunt" work. Sorry, but this is a very reasonable salary.
If I had to hazard a guess, it's more of a "thing that somehow got into our React toolchain" and less of a "most critical part".
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
Working for a for-profit company is a completely different labor relationship than working for an OSS org or other non-profit. You absolutely should fight to prevent management from extracting more of the value you generated just because you cut your personal costs, but you may be able and willing to accept less income in order to contribute to an organization that you believe in that isn't profiting off your labor.…
> but you may be able and willing to accept less income in order to contribute to an organization that you believe in that isn't profiting off your labor.
But there are plenty of organizations profiting off of the dev’s labor. Why is it different just because those organizations are users and not their employer?
Re: Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, I thought the reason that US developers are so highly paid compared to everywhere else in the world was to offset the high cost of living in silicon valley. $132,000 is almost double my salary is the UK. They could easily get 2 full time UK devs for that, or even more in many EU countries with lower cost of living
Global competition will drive wages down. Right now SV is still were Detroit was in the 1960s.
Are you implying that the downfall of Detroit was global competition?