[HN Gopher] How I make a living working on SerenityOS
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How I make a living working on SerenityOS
Author : akling
Score : 428 points
Date : 2022-10-29 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (awesomekling.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (awesomekling.github.io)
| sendfoods wrote:
| Congratulations. I have only listened to your awesome programming
| sessions once or twice, and did find them very enjoyable!
|
| On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you
| using in CLion? Thanks!
| kristoff_it wrote:
| This is awesome and I'm confident SerenityOS and all its related
| projects (eg Ladybird) will only grow in popularity over time.
|
| Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to
| what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have
| to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that
| forces him to write bad software on purpose.
|
| It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a
| chance to experience this.
| brunojppb wrote:
| Andreas is a truly inspiring individual. I follow his videos on
| YouTube for a long time and his calmness and direction while
| coding the SerenityOS is something I try to learn from him.
| version_five wrote:
| How much time or focus is associated with "money making"
| activities would be my question? And is it less than it would
| take to earn than money part time and focus the rest on serenity
| OS?
|
| I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work
| for people who have already built something great, but it
| dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being
| beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a
| coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I
| don't think that's the case here)
|
| *edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens
| with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making
| something
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| At least of some of that "making money" stuff is just the sort
| of publicity you should be doing to help your project even if
| making money isn't the goal.
|
| I honestly think it's more common for projects to under-do that
| than to over-do it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| An inspiring story.
| Accacin wrote:
| Great post, I'd been meaning to sponsor you for a while and
| completely forgot so I've signed up on Github :) Stay awesome!
| akling wrote:
| Thank you so much for the support Accacin! I will do my best :)
| labrador wrote:
| Andreas started this project to keep himself busy out of rehab
| for drug abuse. I did something similar out of rehab for alcohol.
| He named it Serenity OS from the Serenity Prayer for this reason.
| Being responsible and earning income to support your family is an
| important part of recovery. Beyond that, he's doing it for
| spiritual reasons. Sometimes the most debilitating feature of
| addiction is isolation and loneliness. He's created a community
| that is warm and friendly.
|
| I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons:
| He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of
| contributers He's supporting his family He's got
| himself well out of isolation with a big community of people
| Edit: forgot one. He's staying sober
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| tristanbvk wrote:
| agumonkey wrote:
| Quite a heart warming story. I hope this inspires a lot of
| people. Kudos to him.
| helmholtz wrote:
| And, might I add, paid a fitting tribute to Terry Davis.
| fb03 wrote:
| Nice! I didn't knew about that. Can you elaborate on this?
|
| I still mourn Terry Davis passing.I really enjoyed seeing him
| work on his Operating System and I was really saddened when
| his mental condition deteriorated to the point he got
| homeless, ultimately ending his life. With meds, he'd still
| be here and kicking :-(
| nasalter wrote:
| There is an interview with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS on the
| CoRecursive podcast here: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-
| with-andreas-kling/
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Fun fact: I was super nervous to interview Andreas. I knew the
| way to really understand the backstory of Serenity was to ask
| Andreas about directly about his early days of recovery.
|
| It felt invasive, but Andreas just shared and shared. Amazing
| person and his youtube car videos are so good and raw and
| honest.
|
| We also actually spent sometime playing around with Serenity
| and that was fun (and was never released).
|
| But yeah, I love the boldness of just starting to build
| something, taking a step in the direction and not worrying that
| it seems so large.
| williamstein wrote:
| There was also an amazing new talk on porting Zig to SerenityOS
| today on youtube: https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ
| julianeon wrote:
| Those of you using Serenity OS: this is an amazing value, and an
| incredible talent you have there. Consider contributing, even if
| only once. The market price for talent like that, if
| realistically priced, would be about 5 times what he's earning.
| easygenes wrote:
| Some senior engineers at big tech companies make more than a
| million US per year, so someone with an excellent diverse C++
| skill set and an entrepreneurial bent could well make much more
| than that.
| ketzo wrote:
| I don't know about _much_ more. The last time I saw the top
| ends of Google's IC pay scale, it was ~$1.5 million TC, and
| that was for, like, two people.
|
| I'm being nit picky. But big tech isn't THAT insane. 7 figure
| TC is incredibly, incredibly rare. It's not just "senior
| engineer", it's "senior senior senior senior" or more.
| vidarh wrote:
| For C++ the top end of the market is more like trading
| systems and the like than Google.
|
| Still rare, though, but the C++ market has lots of weird
| little very high paid niches.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You also need the "willing to work high up in big tech"
| trait, and probably jump through leetcode loops too.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Those million dollar engineers are not being paid for there
| c++ skills they are being paid for their leadership
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Or their knowledge the payer doesn't want the competition
| to acquire.
|
| My understanding is that most of these really high wages
| are more strategic than anything else.
|
| If they are an IC, they probably wouldn't be leading
| anything except maybe thought leadership.
| [deleted]
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Absolute legend and an amazing role model for people learning how
| to be a hacker. Not a lot of them remaining. Most are just
| grinding leetcode.
| gigatexal wrote:
| "As you can see, the numbers above put me at roughly $4200 this
| month. My wife and I live a modest life, and while taxes in
| Sweden are high, this is enough to break even where we are right
| now."
|
| Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he
| should be making a lot more.
|
| In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things
| you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your
| terms).
| kaashif wrote:
| > He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot
| more.
|
| What do you mean by this? His situation seems perfectly good -
| he has enough to live on without drawing down savings and gets
| to work on his passion project.
|
| If we think he should get more in donations, we should donate
| more, I guess?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| At a job you tend not to worry about next months salary being
| s lot less. If you are let go because they can't afford you
| you get a job somewhere else. So being poor (as in can't make
| ends meet) is less of a concern than something like this. If
| I were doing this then "marketing" would also be on my mind.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| He was an engineer at Apple for many years I think. So that
| means he has some buffer to take on Serenity for last 2 years.
| I wish him good success and hope to see him having to not worry
| about money. Subscribe and support him!
| rjh29 wrote:
| He's working full time on a project he absolutely loves, with a
| community he loves. Sure more money would be good but we can't
| have everything!
| akling wrote:
| Indeed! But if I did suddenly have a lot more money, I would
| use it to pay people in said community to work on SerenityOS
| :^)
| mtnGoat wrote:
| This is a great statement! I think it's a privilege to work
| on something you'd put your own money into, and have
| conviction about. I'm happy that you have found that thing.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| So many comments saying he should make more doing something else,
| how low his wage is, etc.
|
| He said he's HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself,
| can be enough.
|
| It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their
| world view instead of accepting the one this person shared.
|
| As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for
| sharing!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| aliqot wrote:
| Absolutely agree. The older I get the more I realize we all
| have a few callings in life, and not all of them are justly
| compensated for the purposes they fill, but it does not make
| them any less significant in my eyes.
| azakai wrote:
| And to add to that, it also makes other people happy too, to
| contribute or just to follow. Really cool stuff, and
| meaningful.
| vasco wrote:
| > Once the channel grew large enough, I was able to enable
| monetization in the form of ads. I felt a bit weird about this,
| since I use an ad blocker myself, but I figured that the kind of
| person who watches my content is perfectly aware of ad blockers
| and can make their own decisions about them.
|
| The classic.
| [deleted]
| trykondev wrote:
| This is so fantastic to read -- congrats Andreas! I admit I am
| very envious reading this. I would love to be in a similar
| situation, able to focus full time on a passion project (in my
| case, video game development). Maybe it's time to start planning
| my own Patreon...
| edpichler wrote:
| This inspiring dude is does awesome projects. I am not a regular
| donor, but every time I see him working in something, I do it. It
| also makes me happy to know that he is Swedish, a country that I
| love very much.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Ah, Andreas YT programming sessions. The length, the sincerity,
| the mood. The way he is able to communicate with us while being
| alone in a room. His very conscious effort to not get side
| tracked. And, of course, him just being a really effective
| programmer, while not being flashy or pretentious about tech or
| tooling in the least (and also probably because of it).
|
| Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes
| I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in
| programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it
| out.
| longrod wrote:
| Thank you for sharing Andreas! It's absolutely phenomenal how far
| along SerenityOS has come and it's also a peek at how FOSS is
| supposed to be - a way to learn, hack on something fun, share it
| with others but without any huge expectations.
|
| Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion,
| this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to
| work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out
| it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously.
|
| I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience
| it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but
| that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience
| allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication
| etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront.
| tootie wrote:
| This is the thing that confused me. What exactly is the
| audience for this? It seems like more of an intricate art
| project than a useful piece of software.
| azakai wrote:
| It is exactly that - an art project.
|
| Maybe it will also be useful some day, maybe not, but to me
| at least that's not the point. It's really cool that we can
| fund some art projects like this in the software industry!
|
| Not a perfect comparison, but it's like how some people
| approach math simply for the beauty of it. That's enough of a
| reason! And sometimes that math ends up useful too - maybe
| because math has a connection to reality. So does software -
| it runs.
| ativzzz wrote:
| The audience is the people who contribute to the art project
| and want to be part of the community. A community that serves
| itself for no other reason than to serve itself. Seems like a
| good time to me
| traverseda wrote:
| It has a nice consistent ui toolkit that seems highly
| productive. I hope the user-space (window manager, default
| apps) eventually becomes an alternative linux user-space.
| trashburger wrote:
| https://justforfunnoreally.dev/
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, more or less, at the moment it's for fun and art. It's
| recreational. Odd thing is that SerenityOS has made so much
| progress so quickly that it may soon be a viable daily-use
| operating system.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I for one am looking forward to that. The pace of OS
| development has been inspiring, to say nothing of the
| appliations (a usable browser?!)
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Truly inspiring. Keep up the good work!
| gigel82 wrote:
| It's surprising you can live off $4200 / month in Sweden (after
| tax I presume that's about _$2000 / month_).
|
| That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example
| ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).
| bjornsing wrote:
| The median gross salary in Sweden is 2618 USD/month.
|
| (Sweden used to be a rich country, but we've fallen behind over
| the last few decades.)
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Don't forget that you need to take payroll tax into
| consideration (31,42%)
| fragmede wrote:
| Don't forget the US has federal income tax (even if you
| only make $30k/yr); Washington doesn't have an income tax
| but has all sorts of sales tax, and then of course there's
| the matter of health insurance costs. Choose the wrong plan
| in the US and get into a car crash through no fault of your
| own, and suddenly you're declaring medical bankruptcy on
| minimum wage. How many days of PTO and sick leave is that
| minimum wage job giving? Is the workplace unionized? How
| much is rent for that matter? Did you get housing in, say,
| Sthlm by waiting in line or did you use one of the
| loopholes? How much does food cost, in the grocery store,
| eating out, and food delivery. How easy is it to recycle?
|
| There's a lot more thought that should go into a
| consideration when choosing between two places to live. A
| simple dollars to SEK comparison doesn't begin to scratch
| the surface of it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| No one in Scandinavia pays anything like that amount of income
| tax.
|
| Sweden has three levels (2106) 0 %, up to 18
| 800 kr About 31 % for 18 800 to 443 200 kr. 31
| % + 20 % (statlig skatt): 443 200 kr to 638 800 kr.
| 31 % + 25 % (statlig skatt): 638 800 kr and above
|
| 5200 USD is about 550 000 SEK so 31% of about 250 000 SEK plus
| 51% of about 100 000 SEK.
|
| Roughly 130 000 SEK, or about 1000 USD per month.
|
| See https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatt_i_Sverige#Inkomstskatt
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| You need to include payroll tax (arbetsgivaravgift) as well.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Surely you can't ignore the tax that is usually paid by the
| employer?
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| As another commenter have pointed out, you're missing payroll
| tax.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That's more than enough unless he lives in a big city. At one
| point I even bought a waterfront apartment walking distance
| from downtown in a medium sized city making a bit less than
| him. Things are pretty affordable here. The taxes thing is just
| FUD/propaganda. (Well, ignoring the energy crisis that might be
| about to hit us hard that is.)
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| not surprising at all.
|
| p.s. in Sweden the average is slightly below 30 hours of
| work/week
| efrecon wrote:
| Uh?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| _Average weekly working hours: 30.9 hours per week in 2011,
| it had dropped to 30.1 in 2021, only being below 30 in
| 2020_
|
| _Across Sweden, only around 1% of employees work more than
| 50 hours a week, one of the lowest rates in the OECD, where
| 13% is the average. By law, Swedes are given 25 vacation
| days, while many large firms typically offer even more.
| Parents get 480 days of paid parental leave to split
| between them_
|
| Joe Armstrong, Erlang creator, talked a lot about being
| able to work on Erlang while being in Sweden because as a
| parent he was allowed to work less hours a day and had
| plenty of free time.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I averages may be a bit quite deceiving since they're
| across industries. About 80% of office workers do a full
| 40 hour week.
|
| More than 40 is likewise very rare. A work-week is
| legally standardized up to at most 40 hours. Overtime is
| a thing, but demanding chronic overtime without good
| reason is a legal liability, where the boss responsible
| is held personally liable.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I don't live in the US but get the impression that US prices
| have skyrocketed in many cities? Like paying $20 for a sandwich
| in California for example, or $4k rents in New York. So even
| though the dollar is a stronger currency internationally, it's
| worth less and less within the country?
|
| If that's true, retiring in Europe might get more and more
| common for US software developers...
| vlunkr wrote:
| I imagine many developers just retire outside of the big
| cities, where prices drop drastically.
| akling wrote:
| At the moment, I'm paying myself a net salary of $2,700 /
| month. It's perfectly livable where I am :)
| vidarh wrote:
| > (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month).
|
| No OECD country has a total tax wedge (including _employers_
| payroll taxes, which may be relevant here since he 's running a
| company) above 50% for an average salary other than Belgium.
|
| Sweden is at ca 42% vs ca 28% in the US.
|
| Which is of course high, but e.g. effectively includes full
| health cover etc..
|
| (For comparison, income tax and _employee_ contributions
| average at ca 24% of an average salary both places)
|
| Source: OECD Taxing Wages.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's on the low-end of average for a software developer salary
| in Sweden. Sort of thing you'd earn with 5 years of experience.
|
| Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income.
| Raydovsky wrote:
| If you're earning 1.8k eur in Sweden with 5 years of
| experience, you're doing something really wrong.
|
| In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at
| least woth 5 years of exp.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| May figures may be a few years out of date, but it's not
| that far off. Also varies with where you live. Stockholm
| pays a bit more, but is also significantly more expensive
| to live in.
|
| This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will
| probably at least double that.
| tqh wrote:
| It is not. If you studied three years at University you
| should ask for at least 35 300 kr a month before taxes. If
| you worked for five years you should earn a lot more. See htt
| ps://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangsl...
|
| So donate more...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Dunno, I still think it can be characterized as the low-end
| of average, even if it's closer to 2-3 years of experience.
| Maybe not in Stockholm, but there are a places that still
| offer like 30k for entry level hires.
| tqh wrote:
| As written in the article talking salaries in Sweden is
| avoided, so there are probably many offers in that range.
| The recommendation is for Sweden in general though, not
| Stockholm. It is for any kind of engineer, where IT is
| above average.
| guerrilla wrote:
| What are you referring to in the article? All taxable
| income (which would include salary) is public information
| in Sweden and the majority are unionized and do talk
| about salaries.
| tqh wrote:
| Mostly "Please understand that I'm publishing this for
| transparency, not to brag about making so much or
| complain about not making enough." and such.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I thought. I think you read too much
| into that. He's just being the humble and cool guy he is.
| It's not as taboo here like it is in the US.[1]
|
| 1. https://www.ft.com/content/2a9274be-72aa-11e7-93ff-99f
| 383b09...
| pzmarzly wrote:
| I don't know how taxes work in Sweden, but in most countries
| gifts and donations are taxed at much lower rate than
| employment income, so I would expect the net income to be way
| higher than $2k.
| noAnswer wrote:
| That can't be true, or everyone would be paid in gifts and
| donations. (Anyway. He has to report his donations as his
| self-employed earnings.)
| guerrilla wrote:
| > everyone would be paid in gifts and donations.
|
| That's literally fraud and tax evasion which comes with
| enormous fines, prison time, revocations of licenses and so
| on, which is why people don't do that.
| kelnos wrote:
| Context matters. You can't arbitrarily declare something a
| gift and expect the local tax authorities to just agree
| with you.
| cinntaile wrote:
| These types of gifts and donations are considered regular
| income and are therefore taxed as such.
| coldtea wrote:
| Depends on the country
| cinntaile wrote:
| The grandparent already said that so I clarified the
| situation in Sweden.
| miraz12 wrote:
| It would be closer to $3000 / month after tax.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Since he's employed he also needs to pay payroll tax. Roughly
| speaking with both income tax and payroll tax accounted for,
| you usually end up with at about 50%.
| miraz12 wrote:
| I work in Sweden having a similar salary and pay around 35%
| tax.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Yeah, but that's missing the 31,42% tax that the employer
| is paying before you pay your 35%. (and the extra % for
| pension, insurance, etc)
| miraz12 wrote:
| Aah, yes I was thinking it was salary and not company
| income. My bad! Who knows what he actually takes out from
| that in the end then though.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Interesting. I've never taken a keen interest in the project
| because I think the WIndows 95 look reminds me too much of
| Microsoft and fvwm95 :)
|
| I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there _is_ in fact a
| remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it
| has almost the same UI but it 's much more boring than VUE. VUE
| was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes.
| CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a
| result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring
| brownish colours.
|
| But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really
| good to hear that he can still make a living from it.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's interesting to see some people are making it work living off
| these types of projects.
|
| > I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly
| at the time, with thoughts like "who do I think I am" and "what
| am I even doing" echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was
| too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected
| nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up!
|
| I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella
| pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised
| to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the
| story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations.
|
| I'm not sure of your location, but in the US these are not
| donations but income on which taxes need to be paid.
| treffer wrote:
| Germany, IANAL but was curious because I've seen it
| differently here: "donations" that are clearly not tax
| deductible, the only real test for that wird in some sense.
|
| Lawyer Google tells me donations are just money gifts. Some
| organizations that are approved can hand you a recipe that
| allows you to tax deduct it. And I think those organizations
| also don't need to pay taxes on it.
|
| TIL. Not sure how well that resonates in Sweden though.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah they're not de jure donations, but de facto.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Living on donations, especially recurring donations like Patreon,
| must be difficult. It is the first thing people cancel when the
| economy gets difficult like high energy prices, and you also
| can't ask for a raise.
| asddubs wrote:
| >I've also been approached by a handful of folks from VC firms
| and while I have nothing against them, I'm not taking any
| meetings. I'm not interested in selling influence over the things
| I work on, and I'd much rather have many small donors who believe
| in me than one huge investor telling me what to do.
|
| I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of
| thing a venture capitalist would be interested in
| convolvatron wrote:
| at the bottom of the barrel these people have moderate amounts
| of money and _noone_ to throw it at
| rogerclark wrote:
| Andreas will always be the GOAT
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| andreas, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for
| sharing your story of recovery. you have unimaginable courage.
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