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What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

letsencrypt.org

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Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#131

Post by secabeen »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
ryandrake wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary I don't think people are _complaining_ about it, just expressing surprise/shock. It's one thing to read the anonymous "I know a guy who's brother's roommate makes $300K at Google" comments that you have to take with a grain of salt, but another thing to see an actual company's data. Eye opening for sure.

$200K per person staffing budget isn't $200K per person salary. Benefits, employer share of payroll taxes, and other things that don't show up in top-line salary are in there. You are a lot bigger cost to your employer than your gross salary.

Yep. Here at UC, the non-salary costs can be in excess of 60% of salary.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#132

Post by conductr »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
ryandrake wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary I don't think people are _complaining_ about it, just expressing surprise/shock. It's one thing to read the anonymous "I know a guy who's brother's roommate makes $300K at Google" comments that you have to take with a grain of salt, but another thing to see an actual company's data. Eye opening for sure.

$200K per person staffing budget isn't $200K per person salary. Benefits, employer share of payroll taxes, and other things that don't show up in top-line salary are in there. You are a lot bigger cost to your employer than your gross salary.

Just to add on, usually salary is ~3/4 of cost to the company, so ~$150k is the average salary which seems completely inline for quality talent with experience

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#134

Post by Fogest »

ryanobjc wrote: post #99
cc81 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A follow up tweet clarified that it was 10 people and not eight. But even that is a pretty high cost per employee I agree. But the question is: Can you get a team of engineers that have the ability and crypto know-how to build something like Let's Encrypt in Canada for 1/3 of the salary?

probably not. the best canadian coders are already here in the US.

Says who?

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#136

Post by jakewins »

I wish there was a way to donate money towards a fund - like, give $100USD, that goes into some index fund, and then LetsEncrypt withdraws $3.50 (as per https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates) a year until the sun burns out.

I'd much rather spend my money knowing its a small ways toward making this kind of thing self sustainable.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#137

Post by boodm »

geofft wrote: post #85
maker1138 wrote: post #57

They are not paying $250k per employee. You have to factor in payroll taxes, paying accountants to keep books and CPAs to do taxes, benefits, and a multitude of other regulation-imposed payroll costs. All of this is to support salaries of around $125k - $150k. The same goes for pretty much any employer. If a fast food restaurant hires someone at $8/hr, it actually costs them around $16/hr to hire the employee. In a f…

In a "free market", I'd demand higher wages to cover medical expenses, my membership in the local road association so I could use the roads, etc. And I'd get it because I'd be in a union (as a programmer in this current non-free market, I don't feel super compelled to unionize, yet). But otherwise, yes, agreed.

In a "free market", I'd agree to do it for the same minus the local road association costs. Sorry, you're out of a job.

Edit: People downvoting reality. OK.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#138

Post by mrweasel »

mikeyouse wrote: post #26

Funny to see people quibble over a few hundred thousand dollars when they're doing a substantial amount of the heavy lifting to encrypt the web. At over 10 million certificates issued in the past year, their staffing costs represent $0.20/cert. For those who've deployed with Let's Encrypt, did you get a quarter's worth of value from their service?

Also if people don't like the Let's Encrypt budget, they don't have to donate, and they certainly don't need to use the service.

The important thing, to me, is that Let's Encrypt is being open and honest about how the donation money is spend.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#139

Post by pc86 »

jedberg wrote: post #105
berns wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact mostly remote, but they still have to compete with SV wages because really good people command those wages whether they are here or not. This doesn't make sense. In the case of remote workers it's the San Francisco workers that have to compete with global offer/demand because nobody cares how much you are paying for housing.

It doesn't make sense but it is true. If you're really good, someone will make you an offer for an SV salary, and now everyone needs to compete with that. Besides, it's only fair. Your value shouldn't be tied to where you live per se. It's true that people in some areas make less because they have fewer options in their area, but for a high caliber person, they have plenty of options whether they move their physical…

> Your value shouldn't be tied to where you live per se.

If that was the case people wouldn't make $200k in SV, $75k in Omaha, and $9k in Phuket for the same job.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#140

Post by jondubois »

jedberg wrote: post #37

To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary (which seems to be everyone at the moment), a few things to keep in mind: 1) That includes benefits 2) They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley 3) Given what they have accomplished with such a small team, these are probably high caliber people. 4) In SV there is a good 25% premium you…

That's a pretty damn high salary regardless. But I think that's fine if most of that money end up paying for the engineers who do the actual work and not the management.
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