If the market crashes or they cannot raise needed funds, they could easily turn around and begin charging $1 per certificate per year and still be a much better value than other CAs.
What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
241–250 of 394 posts
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#242I recently replaced my paid SSL certs using LE. I took what I would have paid in SSL costs over the next two years and donated it instead.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm only out of a job if you can successfully get to work without using the roads owned by the local road association. And if you can do that, so can I, so I wouldn't be paying that cost. But this is SF we're talking about, so that seems unlikely - transportation is extremely monetizable.
Alternatively, maybe you're taking a worse route to work and willing to suffer a worse commute, in which case fine, you're just willing to work for lower pay than I am. I'm only out of a job if you're an equal-quality employee despite being willing to work for lower pay, in which case one of us is being stupid (either you are undercharging, or I am overcharging) and could just choose to stop being stupid.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in the federal govt it's at least that percentage... Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane.
> Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane. If you consider how little uniformed military personnel are paid and how high the other costs associated with them are to start with, I'm actually not all that surprised that somewhere in some specialized area in the DoD this ratio is reached.
They also probably don't include BAH and BAS as salary since they are considered reimbursements. Just as you wouldn't include cost of barracks as part of your salary if you lived there. BAH and BAS are a very large part of compensation.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think $200K/person is fine, but I do quibble with this: > They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley Why? Why compete for talent in Silicon Valley when there are people all over the country who'd love to work on something like this? I can get why they might prefer not to do remote teams (it's a challenge), but there are cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Kansas Cit…
As covered elsewhere, most of the team is remote. But they still get SV salaries because great people get those salaries no matter where they are.
Glad to hear it! That was my first thought on glancing over the figures: 'hmm, I bet they're located in Silicon Valley, they could save money by moving somewhere cheaper'. But if the money is actually going to hiring the best people instead of into the pockets of San Francisco landlords, fair play to them.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
$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.
We can take that to an extreme:
(from 2015) http://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/
(from 2015) http://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/
"...the CRS (Congressional Research Service) report says the cost of keeping a single American soldier there (Afghanistan) this year is an eye-watering $3.9 million..."
I don't think there's too many millionaires coming back from Afghanistan.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#247When considering the salary for their staff, it is important to point out that LetsEncrypt only works if there is trust. They need to have high caliber people that they can trust and this costs money. Hearing that LE Is paying their people a fairly good wage, makes me much more comfortable using and supporting them.
Lots of people are talking about how expensive Silicon Valley is and how they have to compete with other salaries... but this is the justifying reason to me. If you pay enough that money is off the table, you can trust them a lot better.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#248I'm quite surprised - $2.06 on staffing seemed steep, so obviously read on as I was thinking that there must be a lot of employees. But 8? OK, I'm just a teacher, and I earn around £30k a year... not the kind of figures I've seen bandied about on here for graduate programmers who seem to be pulling in 8-10 times that for their first job... So I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the payroll (which I doubt would ha…
With things such as tax and healthcare it typically costs a business 1/4 to 1/3 more per employee than their wage, so each person here is perhaps on $180-200k assuming a completely even split. Considering this is deep crypto in San Francisco it's not too surprising.
> deep crypto
I'm sorry but this isn't "deep crypto". Very technical jobs that need a very good job done, since a lot of people depend on it? Sure. But they're not inventing anything new here. With all due respect, signing certificates is something you can grab from the openssl library, rewrite in a memory-safe language, have the community look at, and you're good to go.
I'm not saying I think 200k is too much. There are many reasons why it adds up to that much. I just think the technical requirements are not the reason for those wages.
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#249To 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…
> 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.
Why? I don't think it is surprising. Throwaway account, but when I interviewed at FB and Apple I got offers for over $1m/4yr total comp, which is $250k/yr. Is Let's Encrypt doing less valuable work? Should the employees voluntarily give up compensation for some reason?
My previous startup job was similar in salary to the FB offer, though without the guaranteed RSUs (>300k/4yr).
When I look at the public salary data it seems low
Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
#250So, what's the plan for when the bubble pops, Let's Encrypt runs out of funding, and meanwhile all browsers have switched to requiring HTTPS for all websites?
I'd assume people would have to start paying for certs.
Resume, not start. But yeah, simple as that I'd say.
But I very much doubt it will get that far: the only cost they can't cut back on is hosting. The rest remains as-is if you don't touch it. Those hosting costs I feel like we could easily cover with the community, but they even have big corporations behind them to drive it when need be.