What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt • Hacker News Board

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#321

Post by needcaffeine » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

vostok wrote: post #319

needcaffeine wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know where. Not trying to be snarky.

I work in a pretty small niche that's concentrated in high cost of living areas so I would prefer not to get too specific. One example was a company in the same country as Omaha with similar cost of living. A different company was in a different country than Omaha and the naive cost of living was higher, but the cost of living, after adjusting for taxes, was actually very similar. I hope that gives enough information…

Country, or county?

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#322

Post by jhall1468 » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:21 AM UTC

e40 wrote: post #299

zeveb wrote: post #116

Earlier 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…

You would think people working for a SV company in places with a much lower cost of living would take a much lower salary, but you would be wrong. It is certainly my experience in hiring.

As it should. Nobody is going to get a discount on great engineers because everyone wants great engineers, and there are a hell of a lot fewer great engineers than job openings for them.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#323

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #123

rrdharan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that there remains so much disbelief regarding these figures. There are a plenty of people at large software companies in Silicon Valley who are paid well north of $300k. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Staff-Softwar... https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Dropbox-Engineer-Salaries-E... https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Staff-Software-Eng...

Google has thousands of engineers. How many "senior staff software engineers"? "This estimate is based upon 18 Google Senior Staff Software Engineer salary reports" "This estimate is based upon 1 Dropbox Engineer salary report" "This estimate is based upon 1 Facebook Staff Software Engineer salary report" So we're looking at salaries of 20 engineers. There are how many thousand engineers in the Bay Area? I don't thin…

Yea, I always understood those Super Senior Staff Software Engineer roles at these top companies are for the rare "I invented the TCP in TCP/IP" people, not the more common "third average software engineer from the left".

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#324

Post by vostok » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

needcaffeine wrote: post #321

vostok wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a pretty small niche that's concentrated in high cost of living areas so I would prefer not to get too specific. One example was a company in the same country as Omaha with similar cost of living. A different company was in a different country than Omaha and the naive cost of living was higher, but the cost of living, after adjusting for taxes, was actually very similar. I hope that gives enough information…

Country, or county?

Country.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#325

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:29 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #264

nappy-doo wrote: post #49

Fascinating. Everyone here is complaining that 2M for 8 employees seems steep, but I think this seems really cheap. Admittedly, I work at Google, but we bat around the number of 400-500k per employee when discussing them here. 250k/ in SV seems really reasonably priced in comparison.

Are you sure those figures are something your employer is okay with being shared here?

Google's publicly held. You can find out a lot more than that tidbit in their public filings with the SEC.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#326

Post by vacri » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:43 AM UTC

So many people complaining 'why not remote', when half the staff is operations, and they run their own hardware.

It's going to suck when your ops staffer in Tahiti has to fix a physical server problem in the SF datacenter...

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#327

Post by daniel_iversen » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

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…

Seems totally reasonable, also I don't know about the US but in other parts of the world there are other kinds of staff related costs you have to consider too like fringe benefit tax etc. Seems like let's encrypt is a great meaningful endeavour that produces good results for the world on a pretty elegant idea and lean implementation.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#328

Post by otakucode » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

I notice that they explain the purpose and benefit to the organization of every single category of employee - except the executive director.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#329

Post by selllikesybok » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #302

cbhl wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay discrepancy between teachers and programmers in San Francisco is really bad. - School districts in SF and Oakland are short dozens of teachers -- imagine having sixty classrooms on the first day of school where there is no teacher. (e.g. http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Bay-Area-school-dist... from last year) - San Francisco is basically building "dorms" for teachers to give them a place to live: http:…

> The pay discrepancy between teachers and programmers in San Francisco is really bad. I'd say, 'reflects the distribution of skills and positions available' rather than 'is really bad.' There is at least an order of magnitude more people capable of being minimally-acceptable public-school teachers than are capable of being minimally-acceptable Silicon Valley programmers.

That's a fascinating assumption.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#330

Post by stryk » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 2:08 AM UTC

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…

Considering what this team is doing, creating, and providing to everyone free of charge-- especially keeping in mind the scale of it, and the magnitude of it's impact on the entire Internet-- I'd say pay them more than $200k. They maybe should offer top tier salaries, in order to attract and keep top tier talent (not meaning to disparage the current team in any way, they could be best in show for all I know -- what they've done thus far is pretty incredible and they're just getting started)