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After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

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Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but a decent salary is far different from "235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.)" If You can't see that there is a middle ground between impoverished wages and what was quoted above that I can't help you

> If You can't see that there is a middle ground between ... I can see a middle ground. Most people would probably name it as Europe. And you would have to go looking in Eastern Europe. And I think you would find, if you are lucky, that a competent European junior-ish developer would not get out of bed for less than 60k Euros (65k USD), a more senior developer would demand more. And you need more than one or two deve…

> And I think you would find, if you are lucky, that a competent European junior-ish developer would not get out of bed for less than 60k Euros (65k USD), a more senior developer would demand more.

Let me tell you that you are far off the reality. I live in Paris and junior developers don't get near as much as €60k/year. The 35-40k range is more realistic for juniors, and senior ones can get what, 90k? That's alread considered really good for an engineer here.

Of course you can make six figures, but that implies working for a silicon valley company that hires remotely in europe. And those that have offices in europe adjust their compensation accordingly.

Just for demonstration I looked at Datadog on levels.fyi for the three they accept to show me:

- Paris, $77k-$94k (so €70k-€85k)

- New York $180k (for level 1 SE, senior is through the roof)

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#62

Important: This is not VC funding. This is a Kickstarter project [1]. Honestly, this feels like a scam. Their logo and name is stupidly similar to Adobe which would obviously result in trademark lawsuit. I think they are just scrounging up money from the Kickstarter and will just disappear after a while. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-s...

You could have read the whole article, then you wouldn't have missed this paragraph: "The other, perhaps more urgent issue is the threat of Adobe’s legal department. The marketing and branding of the software looked a little too on the nose for the multi-billion dollar company to ignore. Semple says he’s ready should Adobe decide to flex its legal muscle. “I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in…

> I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it

Honestly, that statement doesn't sit well with me.

Most sensible business people like to have a generous buffer between themselves and the legal line.

If you make it your business model that you constantly try to test the boundaries legal line, then one day it is going to come back and bite you in the backside. The history books are littered with examples.

It also means in practical terms that most of your $235k is going to disappear on lawyers fees.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll name it. You need at least 25000$ to hire a "decent" Software Dev and 50k for Senior Dev in India. They can produce much better output compared to US counterparts both in terms of Quantity and Quality. The hiring needs to be direct or else the "agency" will eat most of the money and give you 3000$/yr "senior" devs further perpetuating the stereotypes. With 235k, you can make an incredible 5 people team + cloud c…

You need at least 25000$ to hire a "decent" Software Dev and 50k for Senior Dev in India. They can produce much better output compared to US counterparts both in terms of Quantity and Quality. If that dev can't even put a dollar sign in the right place, then I'm not sure the quality is everything you claim. Attention to detail matters. Especially in coding.

At least Europeans put the currency sign after the number.

If a dev cannot be United States centric and condescending, I'm not sure of their worth as an engineer.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no. If everything is open source, $235K is good for perks and incentives - and to ensure that the project is alive and active. People will do a whole lot when the incentive is not the paycheck.

Gimp and Paint.net have probably benefited from a million hours of open source labor and yet their capabilities are nowhere near Adobe's products. People underestimate how much work commercial software takes by many orders of magnitude. This kickstarter is maybe performance art but if they're serious there is no chance in hell they will actually produce software that is actually competitive with an Adobe suite produc…

As a counterexample, I would say Blender is even more complicated and is doing very well with the same model. Of course, it started as commercial software but still.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#66
post #50
post #2

Inkscape and Graphite have contributors...can the whole community be galvanized behind 'the one to rule them all'?

I haven't heard of Graphite. But yeah, Inkscape, Gimp, Dark Table, Blender, etc. World class programs. There's no need for this.

I mean, all that money could be put to better use and fund Gimp or Inkscape for instance, instead of that vaporware. But I guess people are more willing to give money to these Kickstarter marketing pitch.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#67
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this romantic notion that the huge company gets it all wrong and a couple of guys in a garage with the right approach can dethrone them. The Apple story all over again. This success story is actually exceedingly rare in practice despite how much we like it. But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with…

> Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding. Even well-established companies once Adobe decides it wants in. Remember QuarkXPress ? It was THE desktop publishing software. Anybody who was anybody would use it. They had the monopoly. Then along came Adobe with InDesign ... Quark are still around, but a shadow of their former shelves.

If anyone is interested, QuarkXPress to InDesign is one of the case studies in my piece on software transitions https://blog.robenkleene.com/2023/06/19/software-transitions...

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#68

Important: This is not VC funding. This is a Kickstarter project [1]. Honestly, this feels like a scam. Their logo and name is stupidly similar to Adobe which would obviously result in trademark lawsuit. I think they are just scrounging up money from the Kickstarter and will just disappear after a while. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-s...

You could have read the whole article, then you wouldn't have missed this paragraph: "The other, perhaps more urgent issue is the threat of Adobe’s legal department. The marketing and branding of the software looked a little too on the nose for the multi-billion dollar company to ignore. Semple says he’s ready should Adobe decide to flex its legal muscle. “I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in…

Despite also reading the full article, I also have the same impression as the earlier poster.

Regardless of what this person says, my own experience and knowledge of trademark law tells me he's full of it.

My knowledge of software development seconds that thought, as does my knowledge of the software packages he's aiming to replace.

It's a scam, I'll happily eat my hat if he achieves -anything- close to what he's promising.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#69
post #38
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimp and Paint.net have probably benefited from a million hours of open source labor and yet their capabilities are nowhere near Adobe's products. People underestimate how much work commercial software takes by many orders of magnitude. This kickstarter is maybe performance art but if they're serious there is no chance in hell they will actually produce software that is actually competitive with an Adobe suite produc…

No idea about Paint.Net but there is not a single thing i could name that I am missing with Gimp. The only downside of Inkscape is that it doesn't properly open and save the most recent Adobe formats other than that I also have no idea why I would need anything more than what Inkscape offers. Sure the Adobe tools have a lot to explore, a lot of buttons and options hidden in millions of submenus. But a good portion of…

And yet gimp does not have the productivity to be used in a creative agency. So while you find gimp useful. It’s useless to pretty much every agency in existence.

Re: After Raising $235K, Abode Remains Committed to Taking on Adobe

#70

Remember those "day in the life of a Google Project Manager" videos, where they do nothing but hang out on Zoom meetings and pig out on free food and snacks? Yeah, in many cases, those folks make roughly $235k/year. (And consume another $100k/year in lobster, shrimp, smoothies, and snickers bars.) $235k is absolutely nothing for software development, and you probably won't be able to hire even one talented developer…

You can EASILY get talented dev for 235k from cheap countries
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