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I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

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Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#281

Post by Axsuul »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #54
msoad wrote: post #8

$100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer. Specially an engineer at this caliber. But working on OSS full time is probably 100x more fulfilling than building CRUD for a boring ad company.

> $100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer Oh, well then fuck this idiot, right? What a dumbass loser - doesn't even realize they can be a s i l i c o n v a l l e y e n g i n e e r and make a lot of money. Jesus it's so exhausting reading the knee-jerk "SV engineers make more money" reaction to everything. You know what this person has that 99.999% of all SV engineers will never hav…

His first sentence was just setting the context and not meant to be pejorative.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#282

Post by jlbnjmn »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #208
jfengel wrote: post #4

Props. Well done. The thing that struck me most was the podcast appearance. I was distantly affiliated with the music industry at one point and I saw over and over the value of being in the right place at the right time. Great bands languish because they just weren't seen. I don't mean to diminish the work, either the technological or the effort of finding sponsors. I just want to caution about extrapolating success…

Success is more random than we'd like to believe Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that they should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this, though). Another approach is to do everything you can (podcast appearances, for example!) to increase your "luck surface area".

Yeah exactly this.

Luck is arguably the most important variable, so optimize for it. It's less like buying lottery tickets and more like betting on horses but with outsized returns.

If you bet on one horse, in one race, you'll probably lose and blame luck. But if you keep on betting, you're going to get lucky.

5% chance of success on a given attempt just means try 50 times. Which is also why it's important to test ideas fast and cheap, killing bad ideas quickly.

Practically speaking, who you know, who knows you, where you are, and when seem to be the external factors, and the number of distinct attempts seems to be the internal factor.

Do you have any other insights to add?

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#283

Post by adwww »

zenhack wrote: post #195
Ndymium wrote: post #132

Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here. We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities. So this means that if you see a donation/sp…

Yeah, we have an active person in the Sandstorm community from Finland who maintains Wekan[1]. I didn't previously know the specifics, but he's had to tell a lot of people "sorry, I can't accept donations" too. It's so much easier in the US. If you're an individual it's going to be taxable income, but there's no up-front paperwork to do (for that matter, you don't have to "set up" a sole proprietorship here either --…

> It's so much easier in the US. If you're an individual it's going to be taxable income, but there's no up-front paperwork to do

In the UK it's even simpler if you are recieving less than £1,000 a year in donations or similar. HMRC have basically decided taxing people's side hustles would costs more than it returned. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-...

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#284

Post by ska »

Grimm1 wrote: post #49
lexs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed.com puts the average software engineer with 10 years experience in silicon valley at $141k [0] I think you have a very skewed view of "easily" [0] https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries/Sil...

That sounds like base salary. Most compensation in SV comes in the form of stock. A senior at google makes 170kish in salary and another 130-150k in stock.

This is true, but a senior at google is nothing like the median senior in the valley.

This is the problem with level.fyi; it's good information but too many people point at it and say "look how much software engineers make in the valley". This isn't even close to representative.

It's a bit like looking at biglaw salaries in NYC and saying "look how much lawyers make".

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#285

Post by jlbnjmn »

drummer wrote: post #255

>Now, people watching the screencasts will naturally encounter these “private” screencasts and if they like the free ones, they will sponsor me (at $14/mo.) to get access. Why are we calling this 'sponsoring'? It just factually is selling a product to people for a specific amount. Sponsoring/donating is more like people giving money for something that would otherwise be free. Otherwise Microsoft could also require a…

That was my reaction as well.

He's selling courses using a freemium model.

The software is the inbound content.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#286

Post by ska »

adventured wrote: post #52
lexs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed.com puts the average software engineer with 10 years experience in silicon valley at $141k [0] I think you have a very skewed view of "easily" [0] https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries/Sil...

> indeed.com puts the average software engineer in silicon valley at $112k with a $5k bonus per year That figure or the number you edited it to at $141k, is on the low side. The median software developer in the US is at ~$110,000. The top 10% bracket starts at around $165,000. Emphasis that $110k figure is median, average is higher. The average software developer in SV with 10 years of experience is going to be a lot…

Mean salary isn't a very useful number if the distribution isn't close to normal; Without all the data it's hard to be sure - but that plausibly seems to be the case for SV salaries. Certainly matches my personal networks experience (sample biased as that may be).

Where did you get that 110k figure, by the way? That sounds very high for me for a median across all US software. Maybe California specific?

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#287

Post by wongarsu »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #250
Ndymium wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and this is kind of what I do. I have a sole proprietorship and sell stickers and in the future some minor features on the site. Of course it has the overhead of setting up the business and all the accounting/tax stuff (unless you use a service for that which takes ~5 % of your revenue).

Is it illegal if you sell an item/service/upgrade for a clearly absurd price? The obvious workaround here is to paywall some tiny feature with choose-your-own-price, or perhaps offer something akin to Reddit Gold. I presume the law already thought of that?

Lots of brands sell things with prices only justifiable by the branding and associated prestige.

The authors tactic of paywalling things behind a "donation" seems legally much more dubious.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#288

Post by caymanjim »

mullen wrote: post #213
aj7 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aha. And now you understand why we don’t have universal healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, and so much cash in the hands of the wealthy that interest rates are near zero.

I would like to point out that Universal Healthcare would be funded by a separate tax and probably would not come out of Income Taxes.

This is sorta already how it is in the US. While we obviously don't have universal healthcare, or a national pension, we do have Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. These are separate than income tax. On your pay stub, it's the FICA ("Federal Insurance Contributions Act") deduction. There is also a smaller separate supplemental Medicare-specific tax. Federal income tax is a separate deduction.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#289

Post by avgDev »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #101
bluedino wrote: post #27

Comparing $90k as a W2 employee doesn't really compare to making $112k as a LLC or contractor. Taxes, health insurance, retirement... On the other hand, his amounts are going up, so I'm interested to see how high they will go, and what it will consistently level out at.

If you set the entity up correctly and work with a decent accountant, your $112k turns into more like $40k taxable, and if you are married, that $40k drops to $20k @ 10% + $20k @ 12% or ~ $4500 in taxes.

This. In US there are many benefits of owning a business. Cars are an expense, home office is an expense, etc. When you work for someone else you don't have this flexibility but your risk is lower and you are not worried about finding clients.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#290

Post by clan »

Ndymium wrote: post #132

Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here. We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities. So this means that if you see a donation/sp…

That is a very interesting interpretation of the law.

Another would be to regard such a construct as income. Report your income. Pay your taxes and be happy.

It only becomes "gray" areas when people think it is possible to have non-taxed revenue streams.

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