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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?

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually is correct. He's routinely dogged the project and team after leaving the project: https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1176534097881006080 , and was a founding member: https://engineering.fb.com/2016/10/11/web/yarn-a-new-package...

Having worked on both projects, I can tell you that it's more complex than what you're making it out to be.

It’s always complex, but that tweet is pretty damn explicit. It’s a bit of a challenge making anything else of that.

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

#562

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. Cost of living is one input into cost of labor, but far from the only one. E.g. Canadian salaries are much lower for programmers than American ones, looking at comparably expensive areas. A huge part of the reason Silicon Valley coders are expensive is…

> A huge part of the reason Silicon Valley coders are expensive is that the ecosystem there has made for phenomenally successful tech companies. They have both the money and the motive to engage in a bidding war for talented developers. Alternative narrative: All the companies want to be located in Silicon Valley but no developers actually want to live there. So you have to pay ridiculously high salaries for people t…

There are things that suck about SV, but there are great things too: the weather is extremely nice, lots of cultural diversity, good food scene, and there's so much tech that you have lots of opportunities and security.

But taking a cynical angle like yours, you could apply that reasoning to any big city in any country: why do they have to pay more? Well, obviously because people hate Tokyo/Paris/NYC/Milan/London/etc.

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

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, it's not a joke of a salary in the United States. Is $130k a joke of a salary for an NBA player even though it's 90th percentile? Context matters. $130k is barely over the median pay for a Senior Software Engineer in the United States. A lot of the people stewarding and maintaining these projects are talented enough to be earning wages that are much further into the outliers (i.e. FANG compensation of 300-…

yes, context does matter. So why are you comparing a full time OSS developer with FANG? ridiculous. I don't have any opinion on the babel drama, but 130K isn't a "joke" even for a OSS developer who is "senior".

I'm comparing the salaries because the person is qualified to do either job. Someone turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain OSS, and then is accused of embezzlement by someone who left for FANG salaries and VC-backing.

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

#564
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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.

Uhh, maybe London is special but getting 70-100kGBP out of university is not really hard there. Just high CoL and taxes are making that a lot less

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

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

open source maintainer salary !== FAANG total comp package E5 engineers at FB are making an avg 200k base [1]. That is not that far off what you would expect the difference to be between open source maintainer and senior engineer at Facebook. That is not 3-4x. Even if you include stock, that will put the FB eng around 350k. You may have an argument for the 2-3x range but basically only at the very top level companies…

I agree that 2-3x is more appropriate. Either way, don't you think the maintainer of Babel could easily be making more money and doing easier work (individual contributor at some large org)? The accusations that this person is freeloading off of Babel donations seem absurd (especially when you consider who is making them). The babel maintainer could be coasting at a large engineering organization with a lot less resp…

Oh yeah, 100% agree with you there.

I was solely commenting on the SV compensation point, but yes, you’re totally right that he could be doing less work for significantly more money elsewhere. The accusations are unjust for sure. IMO less because of the salary numbers and more because commit count is simply not a good measure of employee performance.

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

#566

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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".

This is an open source project, if those discussions were happening they'd still be largely visible as contributions on github.

Why? Maybe they talked on video chat or a screenshare, or a messenger like slack. Forcing people to use a possibly less efficient communication method just to have a hard record of their contributions seems like the hallmark of an extremely dysfunctional and distrustful development organization.

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

#567

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

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".

Potentially. But not in a team of 4.

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

#568

> we settled on $11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source. > For now, Nicolò, Henry, and Jùnliàng will all be paid a temporary rate of $6,000 per month. This doesn't solve the problem, I used to donate to Babel, before they made it apparent they are just interested in funneling the money to one developer. 11K per month?! That is absolutely bananas and same reaction I had the last tim…

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

I don't live in Silicon Valley. I live in Colorado, in a Denver/Boulder suburb. Not one of the most expensive places to live, though prices have been skyrocketing during the pandemic.

I see jobs all around me every week that go to the $150k-160k range. If I decided to take a Google or Amazon job I could easily break $200k, maybe more (including stock grants).

Developers in the US get paid more because demand has actually pushed our wages up to closer to what they're actually worth to an employer.

I've read estimates that a strong software engineer can add $500k-$1M of value per year to a company. You want a strong software engineer in charge of Babel, right?

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

#569
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think 11K is a lot? If you compare how much companies make thanks to this project, I am curious why don't they make 100K a month?

For 100K, you can write your own version. It's not hard.

> It's not hard.

Maybe not, but it is still a major PITA.

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

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

This is an open source project, if those discussions were happening they'd still be largely visible as contributions on github.

You say this definitively, as if every OSS project uses GitHub exclusively for all communication. This is obviously not the case.
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