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

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#71

Post by biztos » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

hughes wrote: post #4

mimog wrote: post #2

$2.06M for eight employees seems very steep

Approximately 100% salary overhead is pretty standard, so eight $125k employees plus infrastructure and office costs sounds reasonable.

Is it really 100% in SF? That strikes me as high -- even in a lot of European countries it's not a full 100%.

Anyway: considering what they do and where they do it, I don't find these numbers high at all. I would be shocked if they didn't have at least a couple engineers making over $200K in actual cash compensation if they're working in the Bay Area.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#72

Post by klodolph » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #54

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…

I'm in Silicon Valley and I would love a $250k salary. But I also didn't graduate college and incur the immigrant tax. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What I'm saying is, not everyone gets $250k and the MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME in San Francisco is $90k. If you're not making that much, don't sweat it, you're likely way above median either way. Edit: to clarify further. As an Engineer with a reasonably-employed girlfriend, I still get to liv…

To clarify, average $200k per person in staffing costs. Staffing costs > salary.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#73

Post by tjohns » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

vtlynch wrote: post #38

hughes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 100% salary overhead is pretty standard, so eight $125k employees plus infrastructure and office costs sounds reasonable.

Can you explain why there would be 100% salary overhead? This seems quite high as a non business owner/operator.

Taxes, health care, other insurance (disability, etc.), and other benefits (401k, etc.) are a significant fraction of the cost to employ someone. These things are not cheap.

The standard overhead is (I believe--correct me if I'm wrong!) anywhere from 25% to 100%, depending on your base salary and how competitive the benefits package is.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#74

Post by jedberg » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #53

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…

I would hope they have high caliber programmers and ops people, considering the problem space. Those don't come cheap. Can anyone comment on tax overhead for the company in SV? What net salary do 250k amount to? (net as in minus the tax for the company, not the employees income tax)

It depends a lot on corporate structure and actually HQ address for tax filling. Each city has their own business license rates and deductions. And some cities (like SF) have extra taxes per employee. Their website lists their HQ as SF, but it would be impossible to know from the outside what their exact tax situation would be.

I guess my point is though from a company perspective not much more than anywhere else. The biggest cost to a company here is competing on wages.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#75

Post by dublinben » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #61

Curious where the 20K a month in hosting is spent? Perhaps Google or Amazon could throw in some credits to help out?

It is almost certainly necessary for them to have dedicated hardware in neutral datacenters. They can't just run their infrastructure on AWS or Google.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#76

Post by cc81 » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

Descon wrote: post #14

jruroc wrote: post #3

|$250k/employee hmmmm

They should consider running the service in Canada, where software engineer / programmer salaries are a third of that

A follow up tweet clarified that it was 10 people and not eight. But even that is a pretty high cost per employee I agree.

But the question is: Can you get a team of engineers that have the ability and crypto know-how to build something like Let's Encrypt in Canada for 1/3 of the salary?

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#77

Post by MustardTiger » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

adanto6840 wrote: post #10

mimog wrote: post #2

$2.06M for eight employees seems very steep

250k per employee all-in (benefits, etc) doesn't seem that outrageous being in SF. Plus I'm guessing they're all high caliber employees given the scale of what they set out to do and what they've accomplished with a relatively small team.

"Being in SF" is a silly excuse. There is no reason for them to be in SF.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#78

Post by zachlatta » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

vtlynch wrote: post #38

hughes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 100% salary overhead is pretty standard, so eight $125k employees plus infrastructure and office costs sounds reasonable.

Can you explain why there would be 100% salary overhead? This seems quite high as a non business owner/operator.

Employer taxes, standard benefits (health, vision, dental, etc), extra benefits (like free food, budget for books, and other niceties), and office space.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#79

Post by jcoffland » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

jaas wrote: post #62

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…

The 2M staffing budget in 2017 is for ten people, not eight. Was not clear enough in the blog post initially, apologies.

Actually it is for 8. Two of the people are being paid by another company. At least that's what I understood.

Re: What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt

#80

Post by sidlls » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

All the complaints about salaries are dismaying. Why not consider that plenty of other places seriously undercompensate engineers instead of trying to cut this organization's pay structure down?