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I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

blog.joinmastodon.org

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Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#71

Post by bluGill »

naIak wrote: post #13
layer8 wrote: post #4

He’s also receiving €1 million as a one-time compensation. Not quite enough to retire on that.

Damn, where is Mastodon getting €1M from? Also where do you get from that you can't retire with €1M. It seems very feasible as long as you keep a frugal lifestyle.

Generally charitable foundations figure that you can withdraw 3% per year from your savings and never run out. Remember you have to account for not only good years, but also really bad years, so even though you can average 10% over the long term in the stock market there will be decades that you are negative. There are also bond investments that are safer, but have worse return. And inflation is always eating into your savings so if they don't grow by that much every year (on average) eventually you will run out of money.

3% of a million is only 30k per year. A frugal person can live on that little - but it will be hard. You can make more than that working at McDonald's near me, and nobody would claim that is a living wage.

Now if you want to retire you don't need your nest egg to last forever, only until you die. You can thus withdraw a bit more than 3%, but I'm not sure how much. (and you may have other pension plans to work with). Still if you withdraw 100k/year from this million you will run out of money in less than 20 years (with 12 being realistic) 100k per year is not a great income for a programmer.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#72

Post by verdverm »

polynomial wrote: post #22
xupybd wrote: post #12

"The fediverse is an island within an increasingly dystopian capitalist hellscape." This seems like an extreme view to me. It's not so bad

It also glosses over or ignores the fact that Discord is low key crushing it, and is hardly a "capitalist hellscape"

those new Discord ads sure are great!

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#74

Post by lutoma »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #67

Found it interesting they've lost status as a non-profit for tax exemption in Germany, and now establish a non-profit in the US for attracting investors while dev and ops remain in a German gGmbH.

My understanding is that the non-profit in the US exists exclusively to handle fundraising from US donors who might not be able to give to non-US organizations for tax reasons.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#75

Post by Barrin92 »

lrvick wrote: post #52
naIak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, where is Mastodon getting €1M from? Also where do you get from that you can't retire with €1M. It seems very feasible as long as you keep a frugal lifestyle.

€1M would not even cover the property tax to retire in the cheapest bay area home.

thankfully nobody's forced to live in the Bay Area. With a million in the bank you could live off the interest in Portugal or an even cheaper city in Asia without touching the principal. Frankly on 40k you can even live here in Germany comfortably where Eugen hails from too.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#76

Post by jshen »

lapcat wrote: post #47
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So worse... a committee.

It's an open source project. What exactly are you expecting? Keep in mind that every for-profit publicly-owned corporation has many shareholders, as well as a board of directors, which is, gasp, a committee!

yes, but they typically hire a singular CEO to drive a cohesive vision and strategy with the check that they can fire the CEO at anytime.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#77

Post by weinzierl »

jonathaneunice wrote: post #28

"I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job." -- Bill Murray

In addition to that: With money you can always buy popularity easily, but converting popularity into money is hard work at least. I'd even say that turning fame into significant wealth is an art only few have truly mastered.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#78

Post by fizwidget »

polynomial wrote: post #22
xupybd wrote: post #12

"The fediverse is an island within an increasingly dystopian capitalist hellscape." This seems like an extreme view to me. It's not so bad

It also glosses over or ignores the fact that Discord is low key crushing it, and is hardly a "capitalist hellscape"

When I opened Discord recently a popup appeared explaining how to earn “Orbs” and trade them for rewards. I’d say that’s pretty consistent with “capitalist hellscape”.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#79

Post by abdullahkhalids »

periodjet wrote: post #26

> The fediverse is an island within an increasingly dystopian capitalist hellscape. It’s telling that people like this who use “capitalism” as a pejorative never have any compelling alternative to offer beyond “let experts in the state micromanage everyone and everything”.

Many physicists between 1859 and 1915ish talked about how Newtonian mechanics was incorrect because it could not explain the perihelion precession of Mercury [1]. No one had any idea what the better system would be, till Einstein developed the theory of general relativity ~1915.

Why would not point out what is wrong with the current system?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)#Advance_of_pe...

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#80

Post by kvirani »

amiga386 wrote: post #60

Fantastic! Now he's not there to block progress [0], can we remove Mastodon's intentional DDoS please and just include the link preview in the toot . Add a disclaimer on the UI saying "link preview comes from toot" if it makes you happy. Then Mastodon can be a good web citizen and not a force for evil. It's only been an open problem for 7 years. Nothing in the grand scheme of things. [0] https://github.com/mastodon/m…

I don't see his linked comment as blocking progress. Both of those questions are very valid and something I'd expect from a good core maintainer.

Disclaimer: I don't have any additional context.

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