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After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

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Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#81

Post by system2 »

gcr wrote: post #67
system2 wrote: post #55

I don't understand the appeal of Replit. Claude and other agents do what they do for much cheaper and efficiently. Is it for newcomers who don't know anything about software development, nd Replit fills the gap with basic user instructions and structure? Why is it even a thing while real agents are there?

Replit's original value proposition was on-demand sandboxed environments. With Claude, it's like you're handing YOUR laptop's terminal to an intern. With Replit, you can mess things up without consequences, which is a great help for newbies.

WSL + local Git? Don't people use it to sandbox their applications and create necessary branches without losing their minds?

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#82

Post by markdown »

Cyclone_ wrote: post #79

I've used it for creating a template for an app. It usually creates a pretty accurate app with at least a basic UI and some interactions. The biggest issue is that once you've created the template, it's pretty tough to add some more complicated features using the AI.

This has been my experience also.

You gotta give it detailed instructions for everything at the start. You can't just build as you go, because every time it adds something it breaks something else.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#83

Post by markdown »

cloudking wrote: post #37

I took it for a spin spin to build a simple task manager. It worked for 45 minutes, built half the solution and then asked me for money. Compared to the other options in this space, it seems like an expensive solution.

What other options?

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#86

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

maxbond wrote: post #69
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe $100k gets you one fresh grad in Bay Area but outside of OECD countries it may get you several middle engineers. I bet most startups outsource their development after the first few core developers.

What do you think would be a better estimate for average salary if we assume heavy offshoring?

Depends from country to country. I live in India so I can chip in on the situation I suppose and give my/(India's?) perspective on this.

So firstly, it would depend if they are doing remote-job/offshoring directly to a dev or if they are contacting a consultancy instead.

A consultancy can seriously bloat the amount of cost but usually non tech are the ones going to a consultancy but in a consultancy very few (like 5%-10%) goes to the actual workers and they are paid from a fresh dev very low amount of money and I would be going on the high end if I said that they paid something like 16k usd for a complete junior and 40k usd would actually put you at a seriously senior level

Though even the 16k can make a very decent living in India.

My brother works at a company (he freelances as well but parents want security so doesn't do it full time) and he earns around 16k usd from the company but 4x the amount of money through freelancing directly

My cousin works at a company and he's working for 4 years now and he could be considered as maybe senior in just a few years and his salary is 30k USD

my brother actually works at one such consultancy and he mentions that most of the companies are actually non-tech which go to consultancies so I am assuming that since replit is a tech company they are doing remote-job

Now I know that my brother has been approached by companies to do full time but its just risky to work in a startup with the current hiring freeze and he manages to do both somehow I would consider that something like 40-60k (60k as an higher end for a great developer), as always things can even reach 70k sometimes but I am talking on a more average basis of sorts.

Off topic but as someone genuinely interested in this craft, (well I am not sure about coding itself, I have coded but I like golang and sys-admin right now, I want to do so much in this software craft and sometimes I am overwhelmed but its so exciting but I genuinely like tinkering/using linux and making software like alternative frontends for some website which blocked me (doubtnut -> doubt.nanotimestamps.org for my own usecase, I code / use LLM's to solve problems I am facing right now or I am curious about and also recently built a custom liveiso for cachy)

Gotta go hand copy some papers oof. Have a nice day!

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#87

Post by ed »

tczMUFlmoNk wrote: post #72
fredfsh wrote: post #56

> But the technical achievement wasn’t translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. “I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn’t make any sense. The business wasn’t viable.” Replit cut its headcount by 50%, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its low…

Wow, so, connecting these dots: - reducing headcount by 50% down to ~70 people = firing 70 people - at a generous estimate of total burdened cost of $1M/person/year, that's $70M/year - which accounts for a full 5 years of that war chest - and, moreover, "at its lowest point" suggests that perhaps Replit has expanded headcount again since; the article mentions that it has done some acqui-hires. Levels.fyi shows Replit…

A sustainable business can pay more employees than a failed startup. And pivoting with 150 employees is nearly impossible; all those people were hired for a different business.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#90

Post by SadTrombone »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #75
fredfsh wrote: post #56

> But the technical achievement wasn’t translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. “I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn’t make any sense. The business wasn’t viable.” Replit cut its headcount by 50%, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its low…

Its a business, not a charity. Just because they have money doesnt mean they should spend on people who arent contributing to the bottom line.

What information do you have that they weren't contributing to the bottom line?
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