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Costs of running a macOS app studio business

notes.alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#131

Post by ryandrake »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #78
micromacrofoot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they say “not a good culture fit” and you can’t prove anything

Yup. Also, the entire industry pretty much actively supports and accommodates ageism. It's not like a few "rogue actors." Everyone is in on it, and it starts from the top. Also, I found out that some younger folks really hate us. A number of folks used the interview process to try humiliating me, and taking out their personal animus. After a few of these, I decided "Bugger this for a lark," and just accepted that I s…

I have this cynical recurring fantasy that when the Unix epoch rolls over and every legacy system is broken, they’re not going to have anyone left in the workforce who knows the difference between the stack and the heap, and who can debug through disassembly when the binary has no symbols; so they’ll hire us graybeards out of retirement to save the day. Then I wake up and admit that what’s more likely to happen is the 25 yr old Directors of Engineering would rather rewrite all the software in JavaScript rather than admit they need us.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#132

Post by archagon »

vinni2 wrote: post #19

I am surprised there is so much money to be made in such simple applications. Kudos well done

Me too. I’ve made some small Mac apps back in the day that solve some real problems, and I’ve probably only made a thousand dollars or so off of them. (The vast majority from donations for an open source utility, actually.)

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#133

Post by wnolens »

ryandrake wrote: post #127
saagarjha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not true. If you keep your expenses down and your compensation up (FAANG, etc.) you can easily make enough to retire early.

“Just be one of the vanishingly few to 1.work at FAANG + 2.as a L6-or-greater SWE + 3.in the Bay Area” is not a realistic strategy. Yes, if all those miracles come true that lottery winner can retire early, but I don’t think that is a broadly applicable plan.

It's not even just FAANG anymore. Plenty of places pay over 350k for a senior.

And Seattle is probably a much better place with respect to taxes and cost of living. Most other cities where FAANG will employ are fine. Don't have to be #1 to win.

Still a lottery winner with respect to the global employment market. But if you graduated with a US software engineering degree, you can make this happen.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#134

Post by kj23iojI32i22iI »

It's funny how the author complains that he has to pay 15% taxes in Romania. In Germany you have to pay ~50% for taxes and different duties and all expenses are much higher than in Romania. Also German tax authorities are known for "torturing" self-employed people with different types of requests. So when I worked as freelancer in Germany I voluntarily abstained from possible tax reductions via expenses, because German tax authorities will make your life a hell to force you pay as much taxes as possible.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#135

Post by Sytten »

dinkblam wrote: post #80

> The disadvantage of using a Merchant of Record like Paddle is that I don't get to reclaim the VAT at the end of the year. > That's because it's some kind of B2B relation: > I sell them my app in gross with 0% VAT, and then they resell it and collect taxes themselves. thats confused and wrong. it doesn't matter one bit if the merchant-of-record collects and remits VAT or if you do it yourself. the money ain't yours…

I assume he means on his expenses. Which is also wrong. You sell taxable items to paddle but since they are outside your jurisdiction you don't charge them taxes. But you can claim taxes on your expenses no problem. At least that is how it works in Canada

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#136

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

j0hnyl wrote: post #129
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had enough saved, to allow myself to do OK. I wasn't planning on retiring for another ten years, but I wasn't really given a choice.

How old are you?

I am now 61. I was 55, when I left my last company.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#137

Post by SushiHippie »

justinclift wrote: post #104
SushiHippie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not OP) The cheapest are €44.76/month so that's already ~$600 (if you want your server to be located in germany you are already at minimum €51.36/month which would be ~$680) But you can get better bang for buck on the "serverbörse"/server auction. (That's what I'm currently renting) https://www.hetzner.com/sb But if you want to have large storage while also using RAID + a decent amount of RAM you'll still get to the…

> EDIT: ah okay, you thought it was $600/month? Yeah, complete brain-o on my part. We have several dedicated servers with Hetzner, but nothing like a $600/month one. :)

Gotcha, that would've been very interesting

But currently there is one server at the auction for €600, so there are definitely some people using Hetzner who spend that kind of money for one server haha

There is no way to share a direct link to it, but these are the specs:

CPU:

AMD EPYC 7401P

RAM:

16x RAM 32768 MB DDR4 ECC reg.

(so 512GB total)

DISKS:

2x SSD U.2 NVMe 960 GB Datacenter

4x SSD SATA 3,84 TB Datacenter

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#139

Post by CPLX »

These apps are neat I think I’ll buy at least one of them.

Is there a good site or source or something to find more apps like this? I am a fan of these very simple purpose built Mac apps that are keyboard heavy and solve simple problems.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#140

Post by [deleted] »

codingcodingboy wrote: post #92
alin23 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s a lot of money in Romania. I could live very comfortably if that would continue being the case. If I had my own place. My “not bad” remark is because I still can’t afford housing with all the money I make. I’ve been living in rent since college >10 years ago and I’m sick of it. You get no legal benefits when renting in Romania, everything is done by hiding from the state and local authorities. So you can’t…

No offense but I think you do not understand how privileged you are.

[deleted]
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