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Alin, are you ok to share the specs of that server? I'm interested mainly because I'm a server guy and have a bunch of stuff at Hetzner, but nothing (yet) big enough to be US$600 for a single server. :)
The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s. That's why I write apps for a corporation now.
That’s by design. You are meant to work for a corporation. Capitalism is nearly dead due to this - corporation flooding the market, drowning indie enterprise, and clogging money. We need a return to capitalism and do away with guilded corporatism.
The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s. That's why I write apps for a corporation now.
More users than ever.
Isn't $5800/month a shit ton of money in Romania? Who even gets paid similar amounts there? He mentions a consulting job, but you don't consult as many hours a month as a salaried person
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 even get a family doctor in your area.
Me and my wife have been trying to buy a house for the last 4 years and even tried to renovate a 100 year old house in an isolated village because it was all we could afford. Long story but we got scammed, the land plot is unusable in its current state.
Housing prices are so out of control here that even with that consulting money I would still need to not spend anything for a year to be able to afford a house that doesn’t need heavy repairs and has all the paperwork in good order. It’s very common here to sell houses that were built without a permit.
> A bare metal Hetzner server: $600 Alin, are you ok to share the specs of that server? I'm interested mainly because I'm a server guy and have a bunch of stuff at Hetzner, but nothing (yet) big enough to be US$600 for a single server. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. Was surprised to see him complain about a 15% business / income tax.
The problem for me is not having to pay that tax. The problem is that we as Romanian citizens never see anything good done with them. And that's why I feel the need to complain. We're out of communism for more than 30 years but the mentality of officials has barely changed. People are dying in dirty hospitals of infections that they didn't have before getting there (see Colectiv 2015). Analphabetism is higher than in…
> At least 13 of the victims that died in hospitals were killed by bacteria, probably because the disinfectant used was diluted by the manufacturer to save money.
(From Wikipedia.) That's so sad to read, considering they had actually survived the fire.
> A bare metal Hetzner server: $600 Alin, are you ok to share the specs of that server? I'm interested mainly because I'm a server guy and have a bunch of stuff at Hetzner, but nothing (yet) big enough to be US$600 for a single server. :)
The entire article is discussing annualized numbers, so $50/month, a fairly middling Hetzner server.
The author writes, about his purchases of computers, phones, and other hardware, “These are not recurring so I can't count them in.” Here in the U.S., many such items would be considered capital assets, for which the cost would be recognized as an expense over time through depreciation, for both management accounting and tax purposes. It appears Romanian practice is similar; see “Depreciation” on this page: https://t…
As someone who, in a past life, also sold apps on the Mac App Store (with some success), I could never escape the sense of insecurity, whether it be Apple "breaking" (or fixing?) things every WWDC, constant pursuit of the next idea, or potential competition. Not to mention, the fact that sometimes reviews seemed oddly personal and the occasional rude customer support emails could ruin a day. (This all probably says more about my own mental psyche than anything and I'm glad some people thrive in it.)
In the end, I felt more comfortable doing the 9-5 engineering job, but it was definitely worth it and really taught me to be self-sufficient and exploratory in software development.
To add context, it seems like the CoL of Romania is ~45% cheaper than the US [1]. Which seems like would make for a very comfortable lifestyle with that income. [1] https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states...
Yeah but people’s budgets are not made fully of restaurants and groceries. The bulk is made of housing, cars, phones, goods, clothes, which cost the same as western europe for the most part. In some cases I find food in the UK cheaper. Petrol is also comparable. While far from London the real estate market in a large city is comparable to say Manchester or similar. I doubt people writing apps live in areas where a ho…
> A one-room apartment in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Brasov, Sibiu or other big cities will cost from €350 to €500 per month
Good luck finding that in Manchester!