Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

babeljs.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 729 posts

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

#451

Post by falcor84 »

franciscop wrote: post #432
eplanit wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like measuring a carpenter by how many nails they've driven per day.

This is a bit ridiculous on the other direction. It's like your main job is putting nails, and at the end of the year you have only put 29 nails. Sure, nails per day is not the best metric, but if in one year building furniture you only put 29 nails in total it's definitely not a good outlook for your productivity.

But his job wasn't putting nails. In this metaphor, his job would have been increasing the furniture company's output and profits; maybe he found another of doing it. Perhaps for instance, he figured out that instead of nails, he could utilize another joinery approach, like dovetails.

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

#452

Post by kyawzazaw »

ericlewis wrote: post #392
phpnode wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a really bad look for Sebastian. He started babel and made the most contributions overall, but he hasn't been involved in the project for 5 years at this point. He left to join Facebook and babel would have died if it weren't for the efforts of Logan, Henry, Nicolo and the other contributors. The original post on the babel website was written in response to him investigating the babel funding situatio…

Just as an FYI: Rome was started under the react-native team at Facebook and has been in development for well over 2 years, Facebook let him take it with him when he left.

that's really rare, right?

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

#453

Post by ceejayoz »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #444
ceejayoz wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The organization is substantially larger than just its paid employees. https://babeljs.io/team

I'm sorry but how does this not sound worse? "My job is to manage a team of employees who code." vs "my job is to manage a team of unpaid volunteers who code, while I earn a proper salary".

Managing volunteers is still real work - sometimes more so. It's hardly uncommon for non-profits to have paid staff managing volunteers.

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

#454

Post by explorigin »

dominotw wrote: post #438
explorigin wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that many other countries have socialized medicine and a better nationalized retirement program. We pay for those and, because of our system, they are very expensive.

employees here have employer sponsored healthcare. The gap is huge even if you take out of pocket expenses into account.

Don't just look at salary, compare against cost-of-living. There are gaps, I'm not denying that. It's just not as large as is looks on paper.

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

#455

Post by bjornjajeja »

tarruda wrote: post #429
phpnode wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a really bad look for Sebastian. He started babel and made the most contributions overall, but he hasn't been involved in the project for 5 years at this point. He left to join Facebook and babel would have died if it weren't for the efforts of Logan, Henry, Nicolo and the other contributors. The original post on the babel website was written in response to him investigating the babel funding situatio…

> In the meantime, Sebastian has started another competing project, Rome Tools, which was recently VC funded. > The whole thing stinks. Will Rome Tools employees get called out and shamed in public if they don't have enough visibility on their github profile? I had no idea he had started a competing project. This really stinks, almost like he is sabotaging his competitor.

Honestly the very idea of a JavaScript compiler like that is destined for obsolescence per standardized features added to browsers.

Folks should just develop their own shims where necessary and TEST AGAINST VARIOUS BROWSERS.

Sure no one likes doing that, but it’s important to follow the fast-pace ECMAScript adoption.

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

#456

Post by olingern »

andrew_ wrote: post #384
phpnode wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a really bad look for Sebastian. He started babel and made the most contributions overall, but he hasn't been involved in the project for 5 years at this point. He left to join Facebook and babel would have died if it weren't for the efforts of Logan, Henry, Nicolo and the other contributors. The original post on the babel website was written in response to him investigating the babel funding situatio…

Based on his track record (he did the same thing after departing Yarn), I'd say that's a definite risk. Unstable ground, to be sure.

This is not correct

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

#457

Post by jrochkind1 »

danielsju6 wrote: post #412
capableweb wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You somehow seem to think that amount someone earns is somehow related to how good they are. > $11k/mo is realistic. It's already a large pay cut. Yes, sure, in Silicon Valley anything is possible but for the 99% rest of the world, 11K USD per month is ridiculously high and even people with decades of experience won't collect that unless there is a specific situation. It's definitely not normal outside of Silicon Val…

You realize that $11k has to pay their taxes, healthcare, and retirement state-side right? It’s peanuts.

I think it's somewhere in between. Taxes, healthcare, and retirement are big in the US. And keep in mind that self-employment taxes (operative here) are more than the taxes taken out as an employee.

But $11K/month * 12 == $132K. To roughy back-of-napkin equalize for higher self-employment taxes, let's say that's equivalent to $100K salary if you were an ordinary employee. (I just made that up, I don't know how accurate it is).

$100K is still 84th percentile income for US, you are making more than 84% of people in the US. It's not "peanuts" or "subsistence".

($132K is 91st percentile income).

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

#458

Post by EricLeer »

nicolo-ribaudo wrote: post #415
19h wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me $72k for a non-full-time project per year is still insane. The median senior engineer pay in Italy is around EUR 38k - up to EUR 78k if you have around a decade of experience.

Those $72k is equivalent to EUR 45k in Italy (at least, in my region). You can check it using a "taxes calculator" website: https://it.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=45000&from=year&... (it's in Italian, sorry). On top of those 45k EUR gross the employer pays 13.5k, so it's 58.5k EUR. As of now, $72k USD is 59k EUR. I don't have many data points, but so far I have been offered only one 20 hours/week job (at a salar…

Still if you multiply that by 1.5-2 to get to a full fte, it is a high salary.

I wonder how these salaries where determined, if it is like you said that it was just devided by 4, or if there was some outside governance/input for it.

I still feel like if you would place a job ad for a babel engineer for an amount like that it would be filled instantly.

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

#459

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

FiberBundle wrote: post #300

This 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…

I'm the lead dev of Ardour, paid entirely by voluntarily payments for the software, and I make about $100k/year from the software itself. That's after nearly 35 years as a C++ software developer. Some people think I'm a brilliant programmer, I'd settle for "probably about as good as anyone you're likely to be able to hire".

So why it is not ridiculous that I'm not working for twice that or more at some larger tech outfit?

Because one of the benefits of working in the open source domain is that the entire structure of the work is completely different. No marketing. No bullshit. No corporate structures to satisfy. I can't speak for anyone else (within OSS or not), but to me those benefits are worth at least $80k/yr, if not much more.

To be fair, perhaps my attitude would be different if I had not previously been involved in starting up a certain well known e-commerce company which, while not allowing me to never work again, let me get the financial aspects of life into pretty good shape.

But I think I know plenty of younger people who want to be in software and are willing to earn less in exchange for more interesting work, less bullshit, more freedom and maybe even a sense of purpose beyond "we're going to make boatloads of cash".

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

#460

Post by pmlnr »

varispeed wrote: post #370
ChrisRR wrote: post #283

Earlier 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. If that's true, then you should probably have a word with your employer. Typical dev pay is 80k (~$120k) or twice as that if contracted.

Eh, no. Really no; that typical is at absolute max 50K across the UK.
Post reply on HN