[HN Gopher] I'm now a full-time professional open source maintainer
___________________________________________________________________
I'm now a full-time professional open source maintainer
Author : chmaynard
Score : 604 points
Date : 2023-02-02 21:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (words.filippo.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (words.filippo.io)
| asim wrote:
| "I now have six amazing clients, and I'm making an amount of
| money equivalent to my Google total compensation package,[1]
| which proves the thesis that it's possible to be a professional
| maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for
| senior software engineers."
|
| His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make you
| think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at your
| high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry. I was a
| nobody when I left my job to work on open source full time. It
| was a year before I found a corporate sponsor and that was only
| because my friend worked there and he understood the value of
| what I was working on. Patreon was laughable in terms of what
| came back. Just be fully aware as you read this. With existing
| brand and following you can do what he did, without it you'll
| struggle immensely like I did.
| pfortuny wrote:
| The "thesis" he speaks about only needs one example to hold,
| and he is it. So, not much of a "thesis" but a data point.
|
| It is possible to survive a shark attack. Well, yes, but do not
| count on my to try.
| usr1106 wrote:
| With six clients one could think, ok it's not so expensive for
| them, but still sums up nicely for the developer.
|
| Still I think the situation is highly exceptional. Which
| employer/client would be happy with someone working for them
| only 1 day a week? And think about the adminstrative overhead
| for a single person to deal with 6 contracts all the time. With
| some clients the paperwork can be significant.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| The context switching is substantial with 6 clients, even if
| it's the same tech. As for 1 day per week: a very senior
| person can give good advice or point to the right direction.
| The company I work for isn't a tech company, but we do hire
| people to provide specialist knowledge and it doesn't require
| full time position to do so.
| stakhanov wrote:
| > He's an outlier in the industry.
|
| ...even more than that. He's an outlier in the industry and has
| chosen an industry with access to pyramid scheme money.
|
| Neither the investment bubble surrounding FAANG, nor the job
| market bubble surrounding the talent pool that FAANG recruits
| from (namely SE talent that happens to be localized in the Bay
| Area) were sustainable.
|
| Now that the market seems to finally be correcting away from
| that unsustainable local equilibrium, he's hopping right into
| the next one by becoming an open source crypto bro.
|
| > "proves the thesis that it's possible to be a professional
| maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market
| for senior software engineers."
|
| "Prove" is a strong word but "possible" weakens the statement.
|
| "It's possible to earn 95th-percentile compensation." True, by
| definition, for 5% of all people. Nothing to see here. "There's
| more than one way of getting there." True. "Honest pay for
| honest work will get you there." Probably not. "Just seek out
| the bubbles and jump right in is a reproducible way of getting
| there." Probably not, you'd have to get the timing right, and
| that's mostly luck.
| jossclimb wrote:
| For anyone reading this, don't be misled by "open source
| crypto bro." into thinking the author is a web3 "crypto"
| developer, he is the maintainer of the go crypto library.
| Also what do you mean by 'Bro'?, it sounds demeaning. I have
| met filippo and he is far from being how you're insinuating
| him to be.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yes, this guy is doing proper crypto, and the "pyramid
| scheme money" comment is uncalled for and incorrect.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Does it matter if "the guy is doing proper crypto" if he
| is getting paid by "pyramid scheme money"? Arguably it is
| _worse_ since his presence is ostensibly legitimizing the
| "pyramid schemes". It feels like the techie version of
| celebrity endorsement
| kelnage wrote:
| As are geologists who do "proper geology" research that
| aids the identification of underground oil wells. Yet
| it's still relevant to point out where their funding
| comes from when it's an oil company.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Pointing out, maybe. But calling OP an "open source
| crypto bro" and saying he earn "pyramid scheme money" is
| too much.
|
| Effectively what should be pointed out is "this guy makes
| some extremely fundamental crypto libraries that are used
| by millions of projects out there, including
| cryptocurrencies". But that's hardly relevant.
| stakhanov wrote:
| I just use the term "crypto bro" broadly to refer to anyone
| who benefits, directly or indirectly, from
| cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and things like that. I do
| consciously choose a term that expresses the fact that I
| have a negative attitude towards those things as I believe
| that they're not "honest money".
|
| Taking Google-money means taking money that's earned
| through surveillance capitalism and anticompetitive tactics
| deployed by a monopolist that erode our free markets.
| Taking crypto-money means taking money earned through
| "greater fool theory" of valuations of investable assets.
|
| People, on the whole, are never all-good or all-bad. When I
| see somebody showing off their good sides, I instinctively
| start looking for the bad. When I see somebody owning up to
| their bad side, I instinctively start looking for the good.
|
| The good in this person is that he does open source. But
| that doesn't make him an angel. The bad in this person is
| that he's a top earner in part because he takes money that
| causes bad things to happen in the economy. As to his
| personality, I simply have no information on that and have
| never met him.
| bertman wrote:
| >When I see somebody showing off their good sides, I
| instinctively start looking for the bad.
|
| Fair enough, no reason to denounce him as "crypto bro",
| though, because you know full well what it insinuates.
|
| Also:
|
| >Google-money [...] surveillance capitalism
|
| The email domain from your profile points to
| 180.136.102.34.bc.googleusercontent.com ...
|
| Just saying, you know.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I do consciously choose a term that expresses the fact
| that I have a negative attitude towards those things as I
| believe that they're not "honest money".
|
| The fact that "bro" is a derogatory term for you is also
| not great.
| jossclimb wrote:
| > I just use the term "crypto bro" broadly to refer to
| anyone who benefits, directly or indirectly, from
| cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and things like that
|
| Which he does not do. He develops cryptographic libraries
| (used to encrypt files, network connections and the
| like). Nothing to do with cryptocurrency at all, save
| some cryptocurrencies might use the library he writes,
| but most of the use will be for TLS connections, file
| encryption etc.
| stakhanov wrote:
| The article mentions "Filecoin", whatever that is.
| some_furry wrote:
| It mentions it as one of the well-known outputs of a
| company he consults for. I am confident that he is not
| working on a cryptocurrency at all.
|
| If your definition of "crypto bro" is so broad to include
| "receives money from any person or company that has ever
| incidentally done anything with cryptocurrency" you've
| basically painted the entire industry that way.
|
| Just because it mentions "Filecoin, whatever that is"
| doesn't imply that he's working in cryptocurrency.
|
| I use "crypto bro" to describe people who actively
| work/invest in cryptocurrency directly and/or evangelize
| it. This usage does not intersect with Filippo at all.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| > any person or company that has ever incidentally done
| anything with cryptocurrency
|
| But Filecoin IS a cryptocurrency. It's not merely
| "incidental".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Of course it is. Cryptography libraries can be used for
| lots of things. If one of his clients uses them for
| cryptocurrency, it is incidental.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Look again at the logos prominently displayed in the blog
| post. There's nothing incidental here and you don't get
| to make that kind of money otherwise...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That still doesn't make him a "crypto bro", any more than
| those companies using cloud providers makes the cloud
| providers cryptocurrency specific. They require stuff
| that's pretty universally applicable.
|
| Or change my mind and show me which of his projects is
| cryptocurrency-specific.
| laech wrote:
| > has chosen an industry with access to pyramid scheme money.
|
| Seems you can confusing cryptography with cryptocurrency,
| this guys is a cryptographer, that's a proper expert level
| security guy, nothing to do with pyramid scheme money.
| stakhanov wrote:
| Cryptocurrency is one way of applying cryptography, and the
| article mentions "Filecoin", whatever that is.
|
| Even aside from cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs and that
| kind of stuff, there's a lot to question when it comes to
| the ethics of the computer security industry. A lot of it
| is snake oil, like Firewalls that basically whitelist
| everything so as not to become annoying. A lot of it is a
| racket (e.g. you can't get insurance for your company if it
| doesn't have antivirus software). VPNs basically make money
| by helping people break the law by circumventing
| geoblocking. I could go on, but I won't.
| feanaro wrote:
| Break the law? What are these countries that have
| instituted geoblocking into their laws?
| kelnage wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's fully accurate. Filippo mentioned
| one of his backers is the Interchain Foundation [1], and
| several others of his backers are at the very least
| cryptocurrency/web3 adjacent. Note, the GP didn't say that
| Filippo is working directly on cryptocurrency - but that
| the funding is likely (at least in part) coming from
| cryptocurrency profits.
|
| 1. https://interchain.io/
| xorcist wrote:
| I read that comment as referring to the Bay Area startup
| bubble.
|
| I myself don't refer to anything that isn't paying new
| customers with old customers money as a pyramid or Ponzi
| scheme, because I think that trivializes actual pyramid
| schemes.
|
| But a lot of people do, apparently, and it's completely
| understandable that a self perpetuating scheme where startups
| losing money at their core business at a varying rate are
| constantly sold at higher and higher valuations to see who
| holds the last hand, is regarded with the same skepticism.
| stakhanov wrote:
| By "pyramid scheme" I meant crypto, not Bay-area startups.
|
| > I myself don't refer to anything that isn't paying new
| customers with old customers money as a pyramid or Ponzi
| scheme
|
| In Wikipedia's definition, that aspect doesn't seem to be
| strictly necessary [1]. They define it as "a business model
| that recruits members via a promise of payments or services
| for enrolling others into the scheme".
|
| In my mind it also plays a bit of a role whether you're
| doing that with retail investors vs. high-net-worth or
| institutional players. A retail investor generally can't
| invest in startups, but might invest in crypto if their
| neighbor recently bought some and then talked them into it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
| HPsquared wrote:
| A person doesn't get any direct reward for convincing
| their neighbour to buy crypto, though. Compare to a
| multi-level marketing scheme where the person would
| directly sell to the neighbour.
| kettleballroll wrote:
| > "Prove" is a strong word but "possible" weakens the
| statement.
|
| Prove is the technically correct word here, in the sense of
| mathematical proofs: the existence of an example proves that
| it's not impossible.
| stakhanov wrote:
| Yes, it's absolutely mathematically correct, while being
| entirely uninteresting when taken in its strict
| mathematical meaning.
|
| When a motivational speaker says something like
| "Billionaire X proves that it's possible to be a
| billionaire" that's mathematically correct, yet totally
| uninteresting. What people go there to hear about is
| methods for reproducibly becoming a billionaire or even
| just slightly increasing your odds of becoming a
| billionaire, and this article is just as lacking in that
| department as most motivational speeches.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I think open source is a good thing. It
| seems like the author is working hard, doing good work,
| sharing it, and making a solid livelihood may be well-
| deserved for him. There's just nothing here that suggests a
| reproducible method.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| The number one rule of transitioning to contractor is _do not
| start from zero_. This can't be stressed strongly enough!! The
| amount of time and energy it takes to get the ball rolling in
| that space before momentum kicks in is enormous. Hoping to rely
| on the goodwill of the anonymous masses, and not leaning
| _extremely_ hard on your existing direct network is absolutely
| a failure waiting to happen in 99.9% of cases. If you are
| working full time, and plan to transition, you absolutely
| should be moonlighting it first and/or have hard contracts in
| place with your first 'medium/long-term' client already (i.e.
| not a one-off engagement).
| neilv wrote:
| > _I'm sharing details about my progress to hopefully
| popularize the model, and eventually help other maintainers
| adopt it,_
|
| Hopefully this won't inspire people who don't meet the right
| conditions and whatever luck contributed to this existence
| proof.
|
| I've known a lot of poor people trying to make it as
| independents in open source. I once sent a laptop to a homeless
| kernel hacker (and, earlier, sent them food), and had to find a
| laptop specifically to be small and discreet, because they
| feared being stabbed for anything flashy-looking. Another, who
| has done talks on their novel work at major hacker-as-in-HN
| conference, as well as other accomplishments, I had to tell
| them about Medicaid, because they couldn't afford to go to the
| doctor when they really needed to. One who accomplished
| something major that most HNers have used or heard of, was
| living in a trailer, and died. I've also known plenty of people
| in open source who had modest day jobs and were pretty stressed
| and depressed from money problems, and the cascading effects of
| that, despite being at least as tech-skilled as people making
| FAANG money.
|
| If you happen to find yourself as the official maintainer of
| multiple open source components that are recognized as key by
| numerous enterprises (and cryptobro ventures) that are flush
| with cash, and you have ins at some of those, and you have a
| safety net warchest from years of FAANG, and enough reputation
| you could probably go back if the whole indie open source
| consultant thing didn't work out... sure, consider a
| consultancy like this post describes, as a lifestyle move.
|
| Otherwise, it's like the movie star child of a Hollywood
| producer evangelizing this great career success formula they've
| found, prompting a bunch of aspiring actors to buy one-way
| Greyhound bus tickets from Kansas to LA, where most of them
| will be lucky if the worst that happens is they end up waiting
| tables.
| lrvick wrote:
| I quit my job a couple years ago and secured several small
| retainers over a few weeks using my network. My employer at the
| time generously agreed to be my first client to smooth the
| transition.
|
| Today I have am managing 8 active retainer clients, and regular
| 1-2 week audit contracts, while rarely working more than 40
| hours a week. Virtually all code I write is open source, or on
| track to be so soon, and I only work with clients okay with
| that.
|
| I am making triple my previous salary, and am actually
| onboarding new team members as a "tier 1" to help me meet
| demand without overworking myself.
|
| I am a full stack security engineer with 20 years of
| experience, and most companies can't have access to senior
| security engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of
| $600k+ total comp, which they just can't afford.
|
| Instead I offer most companies start a retainer with my team
| and I for as little as 10 hours a month and we can be there
| when they need help with security architecture, important code
| reviews, risk assessments, conducting interviews, or just to
| help unblock people in general.
|
| This model is a win for companies that can't yet afford
| experienced full time security hires in house, and it is a win
| for me who can be in control of my time and life with higher
| income, and only have to focus on the most interesting problems
| of many different companies with minimal exposure to internal
| politics.
|
| I can't express how much happier I am. Best career choice I
| ever made. YMMV.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > most companies can't have access to senior security
| engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of $600k+
| total comp
|
| It's difficult to believe that even in SV.
| lrvick wrote:
| High demand, low supply:
| https://www.axios.com/2023/01/24/cybersecurity-hiring-
| tech-l...
| jwr wrote:
| > His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make
| you think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at
| your high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry.
|
| ...and yet...
|
| I run a self-funded SaaS business. I regularly pay (sponsor)
| developers of libraries that my software depends on. These are
| not large amounts, but they slowly grow over time.
| Additionally, there are some libraries (Semantic-UI for
| example) that are critical for me, but have been unmaintained
| for a while, and I'd gladly pay significantly more, on a
| regular basis, to have them maintained.
|
| I am pretty sure I am not the only one. The money is there. The
| problem is in gathering critical mass: both for any single
| developer, to make a living, and for the entire movement, so
| that we shift from a culture of "FREE FREE EVERYTHING IS FREE"
| to a more responsible and sustainable "it's free, but if you
| depend on it, you better contribute money every month".
| asim wrote:
| I don't think current platforms make it easy for developers
| to make money from their software. Especially libraries.
| There's a total unwillingness to pay for support because it's
| easier to just open a GitHub issue and complain. I think
| you're a rare case and that really means developers can't
| make a living off stuff like this. The few exceptions are
| something like sqlite maybe. Other stuff ends up needing to
| be heavily VC funded or backed by corporate sponsorships.
|
| If GitHub actually helped developers make money this would be
| a different story. Sponsorships are a tipjar, it's not a
| sustainable path, it's not a form of employment. Grants, same
| thing, waste of time. We need the ability for developers to
| put a Pay but on their repositories. This is not about
| optional sponsorship. This is about paying to download the
| code, paying for use after a certain point. This is about
| putting a real number on the value of software. It only works
| when you define the economic model. If each Dev has yo setup
| their own website, integrate payments, do sales, etc its a
| struggle. GitHub is a big enough distribution channel where
| they could actually streamline this, App Store style. I know
| they have a marketplace but realistically who's using it?
| jwr wrote:
| > If GitHub actually helped developers make money this
| would be a different story. Sponsorships are a tipjar, it's
| not a sustainable path, it's not a form of employment.
|
| I really don't understand. GitHub _does_ help developers
| make money. Sponsorships are subscriptions, not one-time
| tips. If you can get 20 companies to pitch in with, say,
| $250 /month, you begin to look at a sustainable living.
| From a company point of view, paying, say, $1000/month for
| four most-used pieces of software that the company depends
| on, is still many times less expensive than hiring even a
| single full-time developer.
|
| I feel like rather than trying to change the mindset
| ("everything must be FREE FREE FREE"), we are trying very
| hard to find reasons not to use a perfectly good existing
| solution.
| tlocke wrote:
| With GitHub, sponsorships are either one-off payments or
| regular subscriptions. FWIW I've only ever been paid once
| through GitHub sponsors and that was a one-off payment.
| This payment ($500) was actually from GitHub itself
| because they use the software I work on.
| asim wrote:
| It's the issue with the concept of sponsorship. It's
| still associated with optional donation rather than
| payment for a service or tool you need. That mindset
| shift is huge. Until someone does it we'll continue in
| the way we're going.
| wrldos wrote:
| Quite frankly you're extremely unusual. As much as I sound
| cynical here, the only reason we use open source stuff in our
| production SaaS is because we don't have to raise a purchase
| order to get it or go through the whole onboarding process
| which is a pain in the ass. The money isn't even the issue;
| it's there and available but it's a bureaucratic shit show
| trying to give it to people. And the same is true everywhere
| I've worked for the last 20 years. Yes I know this is wrong.
|
| Business idea: If there was a single corporate intermediatory
| who would handle all this sitting somewhere we could create a
| supply agreement with and funnel the cash through to the
| right people we could probably deal with it. We currently do
| this via AWS marketplace regularly so we don't have to deal
| with the paperwork.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _the only reason we use open source stuff in our
| production SaaS is because we don 't have to raise a
| purchase order to get it_
|
| I'm sure it's not the _only_ reason to choose open-source
| tech.
|
| At least with open-source projects you can read, patch,
| clone or fork the source
| jwr wrote:
| I get your point. I'm not too keen on administrative
| overhead, either.
|
| > Business idea: If there was a single corporate
| intermediatory who would handle all this sitting somewhere
| we could create a supply agreement with and funnel the cash
| through to the right people we could probably deal with it.
|
| Isn't that exactly what Github does through its Sponsors
| program? I think I only handle two endpoints these days:
| Github Sponsors and Clojurists Together. Github works very
| well, and they will even fold/consolidate new sponsorships
| into your existing invoices as you add them over time.
|
| I don't think "overhead" is a valid excuse anymore.
| stakhanov wrote:
| > Business idea: If there was a single corporate
| intermediatory who...
|
| Isn't that what tidelift [1] is doing?
|
| [1] https://tidelift.com
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I feel like there is a business waiting to bloom here.
| Imagine a stripe like company that says "we are the unified
| B2B transaction company" who takes both sellers of software
| and buying enterprises as customers and create a easy to
| use purchase system where a software dev in the US could
| sell to a company in New Zealand without worrying about 1.
| Currency conversion 2. Local tax collection 3. Invoicing 4.
| Any other local formalities
|
| That is totally worth day 10% of the value of the product!
| nickstinemates wrote:
| These companies exist, at least domestically in varying
| regions of the world.
|
| A lot of software/B2B sales are procured through a
| channel whose primary purpose is an existing business
| relationship with the company you're trying to sell to.
|
| They take a % as a transaction fee. Anywhere from 10-30%,
| depending.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >That is totally worth day 10% of the value of the
| product!
|
| It won't work: this company will eventually crank up
| their fees to 30+% of the value.
| rgbrgb wrote:
| Sounds like Open Collective.
| samsquire wrote:
| > Long term, I want this model to grow beyond me and become a
| known professional path. This experiment is both easier and
| harder for me than it will be for those after me: easier because
| I have an extensive personal network and the financial means to
| safely take risks; harder because it's uncharted territory for
| both me and the clients and because there's a lack of legal,
| administrative, and marketing tools. I hope that as things
| progress the barriers will lower, making the model accessible to
| more and more people.
|
| I feel this is attitude is honourable and should be commended for
| its wholesome goodness. I really like your attitude in trying to
| raise opportunities for software engineers and normalise paying
| for software maintenance.
|
| Do people really enjoy paying for software? Do people actually
| just pay for bespoke development when they pay for software
| engineers with the silent industry wide acceptance that software
| is custom created and not for sharing outside that company. I'm
| thinking of your custom development for a wordpress blog for a
| small business or an ERP installation for a particular large
| organisation.
|
| I feel the independent software vendor market for desktop
| software has stalled. Antivirus is supplanted by Windows
| Defender, except for Photoshop and some audiocreative software
| that everyone uses, I don't see the popularity of download
| websites that there was in the late 90s early 2000s when I was
| growing up.
|
| I feel, as a software engineer I would like to love a codebase
| more, to do the things how I truly want to do them, but am held
| back by financial obligations and for my employer to be rewarded
| for shipping.
|
| In my observations of internet comments, even software engineers
| and people don't enjoy buying software packages unless it is an
| application on a mobile device.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com
|
| What would everyone dream's computer tech jobs be? Building web
| apps, desktop apps, videogames, business software, mobile apps?
| nine_k wrote:
| Find a problem people have, especially less engineering-type
| people, which you would love to help them solve. (Not "solve
| for them"; it's always a mutual process.)
|
| Wherever people use Excel as the centerpiece of their work,
| there is an opportunity to help improve things, for fun and
| profit :)
|
| In general, most opportunities lie on the seams between well-
| understood areas. Knowing more than one area helps. Many of
| these opportunities are too small for hockey-stick growth which
| VCs crave, or for huge contracts which large corporations
| desire. They are perfectly sufficient for a mid-size
| sustainable business though. Specialized things, like the
| bespoke work on and around open-source software from the post.
|
| With any luck, that work may be pleasant.
| ozim wrote:
| So now he will start selling books and courses how he did one
| off thing. Because he did it once he somehow thinks that now he
| has all the answers.
|
| Fairly typical as I see same with traders or rentiers.
|
| Either they know it is one time trick and they have to milk it
| out before it goes bad or they are really clueless and think
| they have all the answers.
|
| I don't know which one is worse but I lean on milking strategy
| to be worse because they become snake oil salesmen by choice.
| zabzonk wrote:
| [flagged]
| manmal wrote:
| How is this exact model different from regular freelancing?
| Taking on 6 clients at once is a bit much for my taste, there's a
| lot of overhead involved usually. Now you not only need to manage
| various OSS communities, but also multiple clients and their
| expectations towards your contributions.
| simonw wrote:
| They're not paying him to do custom freelance work for him.
| They're paying him to continue contributing to the projects
| that he is already maintaining.
|
| The higher tier plans also get what sounds like a few hours of
| custom consulting time (think calls with their team) per month.
| manmal wrote:
| And those paying clients won't want to influence the
| direction the project is taking?
| simonw wrote:
| That's described in the article:
|
| > it boils down to this: I go in, meet the engineers, and
| learn what parts of my projects they use and how; then, I
| keep those use cases in mind in my own planning and I reach
| out and involve them for feedback when there are relevant
| changes on the roadmap. This improves outcomes for
| everyone: I want my projects to work well for users
| (regardless of whether they are paying me) and no one wants
| to find out something's wrong after the release.
|
| That model is expanded on here:
| https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/reciprocal/
| manmal wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. It's certainly more
| pleasant to work that way vs normal freelancing.
| mastabadtomm wrote:
| That's great but his experience is totally unique. My side
| project is used by at least 10 companies. Some of them are tech
| giants. My total earnings are -300 USD and 5 years of development
| time.
| mromanuk wrote:
| What is your project?
| mastabadtomm wrote:
| It's Olric: https://github.com/buraksezer/olric. Publicly
| speaking about the companies may not be a good idea but you
| can dig into the issues, pull requests, and Discord channel
| if you are curious.
| yrgulation wrote:
| [dead]
| boobiemaster wrote:
| So...
|
| What's the paycheck like?
| loeg wrote:
| In the very first paragraph of the linked article, there is
| this clause which may provide some clarity:
|
| > I'm making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total
| compensation package
|
| He goes on to write,
|
| > My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so it
| varied wildly. What I'm earning now per year is: slightly less
| than my first year at Google (which included a significant
| signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in 2021 (when
| the signing stock grant overlapped with three stock refreshes,
| and $GOOG was at record highs), and more than I would have made
| in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting for all benefits on one
| side and the salary of my assistant on the other side).
| trynewideas wrote:
| Good info at least to know that becoming a sustainable open-
| source maintainer requires "even accounting for the salary of
| my assistant" kind of money
| simonw wrote:
| I don't think that's the message here. You don't /need/
| that kind of money to work full-time on open source if
| you're happy to keep to a lower cost of living.
|
| The biggest cost involved in full time open source work is
| opportunity cost.
|
| If you have the skills to maintain a popular open source
| project, you could almost certainly be earning
| $250,000/year or more at one of the big tech companies.
| davidw wrote:
| That's good money, rather than 'starving artist' wages.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Patreon kind of ended that 'starving artist' thing
| recently...
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so
| it varied wildly. What I'm earning now per year is: slightly
| less than my first year at Google (which included a
| significant signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in
| 2021 (when the signing stock grant overlapped with three
| stock refreshes, and $GOOG was at record highs), and more
| than I would have made in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting
| for all benefits on one side and the salary of my assistant
| on the other side)._
|
| That is vague. A specific number would have been much better.
|
| According to levels.fyi [1] as of Feb 2023, a Senior Software
| Engineer at Google (L5) could negotiate a compensation
| package around USD $193k (base) + $119k (RSU) + (one-time)
| $26k signing bonus.
|
| I have talked to Filippo in person and I have the impression
| that he was a Staff Software Engineer (aka. Google L6), which
| are supposedly able to negotiate around USD $244k (base) +
| $187k (RSU) + (one-time) $35k signing bonus.
|
| These numbers are averages based on verified offer letters
| and RSU grant documents that Google employees have submitted
| to that website during the last couple of years, but I think
| the numbers do not account for annual RSU refreshers,
| performance bonus, or stock performance. That is what Filippo
| is referring to as _"it varied wildly"_. I still would have
| liked to see a comparison with real numbers, at least the
| base salary.
|
| [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google
| orliesaurus wrote:
| So is he making "slightly" less than $244k + $35k as a
| fulltime open source maintainer? That's awesome, wow, not
| everyone can pull it off so this is pretty impressive!
| loeg wrote:
| No, RSUs are included in "total compensation." Slightly
| less than $244k + $187k + $35k, to use GP's figures.
| scottlamb wrote:
| > These numbers are averages based on verified offer
| letters and RSU grant documents that Google employees have
| submitted to that website during the last couple of years,
| but I think the numbers do not account for annual RSU
| refreshers, performance bonus, or stock performance.
|
| It's complicated, but I think they account for it in a way
| that gives a reasonably accurate picture in the steady
| state. levels.fyi for L6 says salary $244k, stock
| $187k/year, bonus $35k. Every year as a Google L6, I got a
| compensation letter with roughly that salary, equity
| refresh, and annual bonus. Each equity refresh vested
| monthly over the next four years. That means 4+ years in,
| you receive over the course of a year stock which was
| valued (at various times in the last four years) at about
| that equity refresh in total. Actual value when you receive
| it varies much more because that's what stocks do. And
| letters can vary more from year to year based on
| performance multiplier, you can get spot bonuses in
| addition to the annual bonus described in the letter, you
| may get promoted to level n+1 (or leave) before reaching
| level n's steady state, etc. On the flip side, it seems
| likely that along with the layoffs this year they didn't
| give anyone big annual bonuses or equity refreshes. I moved
| on a while ago so haven't asked.
|
| Anyway, it's good money, and I'm really happy to see
| someone able to match it as a full-time open source
| maintainer. Filippo seems pretty exceptional though; I hope
| good open source compensation becomes normal.
| twodave wrote:
| Honestly if you have to be a reasonably-well-known public figure
| to pull this off then I'm not sure how accessible it really is.
| I'm reasonably well known in my own city, and I could maaaybe
| pull off this level of comp working on strictly for-profit
| initiatives? Very feast or famine though, to the point of not
| being worth the stress.
| bagmong wrote:
| [flagged]
| archgoon wrote:
| Part of being successful here is tooting one's horn.
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| > which proves the thesis that it's possible to be a professional
| maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for
| senior software engineers
|
| Yeah, _if_ you 're Filippo Valsorda. Not sure that "proves the
| thesis" broadly whatsoever, though.
| gerdesj wrote:
| The bloke has found some measure of success that HN readers
| might generally applaud.
|
| To be fair: he has only generated a single data point and not
| enough for a "thesis".
| vxNsr wrote:
| I think the main caveat is "Senior" and he means fairly senior
| at that anyone less will definitely have trouble, but if you've
| been in the industry 10-15 years and are looking to be your own
| boss and are very competent, I don't think it's unreasonable to
| do this and make comparable compensation.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Hahaha. Not every engineer is a salesman who can close a
| deal. Contracting is a cutthroat business as well where the
| competition is fierce. It's global competition too!
|
| I wouldn't recommend this route to any random senior
| engineer.
| lhorie wrote:
| As someone with more than 15 years of experience and who has
| leveraged my open source work to improve my own career, my
| two cents is that GP has a fairly sober view on OSS as a job:
| Filippo is an outlier among outliers. Most people simply
| don't have the opportunity to build a reputation from multi-
| year, full time, corporate sponsored open source work on a
| high visibility project to leverage when leaving a cushy job
| to pursue higher rungs in Maslow's pyramid.
|
| "Possible" is very different than "likely".
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Yes. This is a variant of building an OSS project using
| company funds then leaving the company to commercialize it.
| It's a real path, but requires taking advantage of years of
| corporate largess. Not impossible, but some big "if"s
| involved.
| Avshalom wrote:
| I dunno how much of this is just low-key advertising for their
| sponsors but... congrats, good job, living the dream!
| dcow wrote:
| I suspect there's a sideline wink and handshake agreement to
| feature associated companies and indirectly promote them as
| case studies, etc. as the maintainer maintains. Not that that
| changes anything this is still a great arrangement and
| hopefully a positive example for our industry, but Smallstep
| and Tailscale are both trying to gain an authoritative hold in
| the production identity space and a little name dropping here
| and there by <famous dev> certainly doesn't hurt (:
| simonw wrote:
| This article is fantastic. Really great to see how Filippo is
| getting this to work, and in so much detail.
|
| As someone who frequently complains about all of the
| administrative overhead this kind of lifestyle requires I
| appreciated the footnote pointing out that dentists have the same
| problem and just get on with it.
|
| That said... as a self-employed mostly full time open source
| maintainer myself I do often think about how much I would
| appreciate some kind of agency or talent management relationship
| that would take a bunch of that off my hands. It works for
| Hollywood, why can't we have that in tech too?
| intelVISA wrote:
| So it's kinda like a music tribute group but in the software
| world? Substituting for something that may be gone (the
| original FOSS author(s)) but for the die-hard fans who don't
| want to let go?
| hudon wrote:
| Isn't that what orgs like the Apache Software foundation do?
| simonw wrote:
| Not really: https://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html
|
| They provide hardware, mailing lists and legal support. They
| don't help match-make maintainers with sources of consulting
| income (which is the kind of admin I'd most like help with!)
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| In medicine those kinds of arrangements exist, but they charge
| 30% (I forget if it's off the top or the bottom).
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| > off the top or the bottom
|
| What does that mean? The difference between the two I mean.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If you hire them you don't have to know the answer to
| questions like that!
| jaxn wrote:
| Top line (revenue) Bottom line (profit)
| gerdesj wrote:
| I think it means who is charged. Top is the customer and
| bottom is the supplier.
|
| If you charge the "bottom" then that might be passed up to
| the "top" or not. It depends what the "middle" does. The
| middle might absorb the cost or pass it up to the end
| customer.
| treebot wrote:
| 2 out of 5 of his clients are blockchain companies/orgs. I feel
| this path would be quite easy in blockchain, where almost all of
| the projects are open source
| est31 wrote:
| From the number of logos, it's 6 clients, and I would put 4 of
| them into the blockchain bucket, with smallstep and tailscale
| being the two non-blockchain exceptions.
|
| Also note that for blockchain projects, it's important that
| they associate themselves with famous people to give their
| projects credibility. So they are willing to pay huge amounts
| of money to get celebrities like him on board.
| flockonus wrote:
| On the 2nd statement, quite curious if that's true... if so,
| each of the companies will have at least a blog post, or
| tweet thread about the affiliation. If not true, you're
| probably reducing who is an efficient engineer who's worth
| their salt for their output.
| input_sh wrote:
| You're thinking of it the wrong way, think of it as a
| banner ad.
|
| If your open source project has a homepage, a fair amount
| of visitors, and a public list of sponsors, blockchain
| companies will pay for the highest tier to be on top of
| that list instead of going down the usual AdSense route.
|
| From their perspective it's a link from a respectable
| source that reaches their target audience (those into tech)
| on a permanent basis that even adblocks don't block. And it
| only costs them up to a couple of hundreds of bucks per
| month, way cheaper then traditional banner ads. Doesn't
| matter if what you're actually building has anything to
| with cryptocurrencies, but of course having some touching
| ground works even better.
| est31 wrote:
| Whether this has happened for him in particular, I don't
| know. He at least has made a blog post with the links of
| the companies in it, but of course this is only indication,
| not proof. The trend is certainly a thing. Blockchain
| companies / NFT projects / etc _live_ from attention. They
| need it for their growth.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Latacora may have blockchain customers, but they're certainly
| not a blockchain shop.
| est31 wrote:
| Fair point, 3 out of 6 it is.
| ausudhz wrote:
| That's because they must be open source, what other sense of
| accountability could you possibly give if you're asking money
| to a crowd upfront based on a piece of paper?
| dopylitty wrote:
| Wow, the footnote about dentists surprised me because I just
| found out about this company [0] (and apparently it's one of
| many[1]) that just stamps out pre-built dentist offices all over
| the US with all the equipment and staff included.
|
| All they need is the dentist. It's honestly super creepy how
| generic they all are and how many middlemen end up involved in
| your dental care.
|
| 0: https://heartland.com/denovo/
|
| 1: https://www.theadso.org/
| simonw wrote:
| Wow, TIL about the Association of Dental Support Organizations.
|
| Now I'm imagining a future where independent open source
| maintainers are common and successful enough that there's a
| conference for the Association of Open Source Maintainer
| Support Organizations.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I heard it first time too but I don't find it creepy. Actually,
| I want more fields run like that.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| TL;DR: author invents contracting; explains it.
| hypfer wrote:
| In beloved memory of n-gate?
| gerdesj wrote:
| "... I spend most of my time on maintenance, and I offer
| retainers to companies that benefit from my work and from access
| to my planning and my expertise. I now have six amazing clients,
| and I'm making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total
| compensation package"
|
| Well done and keep it up! I highly recommend that you find say
| two other individuals like yourself and form a triumvirate. An
| individual can have trouble taking time off, dealing with life's
| inevitable adversity etc.
|
| That can work well for a fledgling org because two can out vote
| the one who gets it "wrong". This model does require a certain
| amount of trust and the ability to accept being wrong.
|
| Then you take on staff ...
| the-rc wrote:
| Yeah, I was wondering how his kind of arrangement could work if
| one needed or wanted to take weeks/months off at a time. The
| traditional model based on features or projects might be a
| better fit, unless one partners with others as you describe.
| gerdesj wrote:
| A few people seem to agree with me, so to flesh this out a bit:
|
| Not all of us are going to fly a unicorn to a glorious multi
| billionaire finish. Most of us would like to be able to sleep
| at night, have a reasonably comfortable income and basically
| "get by". As this is HN, I will require a certain amount of
| "get up and go" but not too much!
|
| I fell into the triumvirate thing 23 years ago. I became an IT
| contractor at a helicopter factory in the UK around 1996.
| Helpdesk n that. I learned quite a lot quite quickly and by
| 1999 ("party like it's") I was in the NETS team - sysadmin
| land. 2000 - we were Facility Managed off to ... ourselves and
| our company was started. I was recruited by two other NETS
| chaps to be the MD of their idea. It wasn't my idea.
|
| So we have three blokes with equal shares of a nascent company.
| It works really well out of the box. Two can always gang up on
| one. We would have screaming arguments about direction or
| whatever but in the end there was always resolution.
|
| 23 years later, it still works. The three of us are quite
| different but we do completely trust each other. The trust
| thing is where my advice might become unhinged but the model is
| still very decent 8)
| Avshalom wrote:
| >triumvirate thing
|
| There's a saying, I don't know if its actually old or not,
| along the lines of: _go to sea with one watch or three_
|
| the point being that with one watch you just accept whatever
| it says, with three you pick the closest two, but if you have
| two... fuck it man who knows: coin flip
| bravura wrote:
| Digging old quotes is actually one of the perfect ChatGPT
| use-cases:
|
| me: Quote along the lines of "go to sea with one watch or
| three"
|
| bot: "Take one watch or three, but always be on time."
|
| me: Origin?
|
| bot: This quote is often attributed to British admiral and
| explorer, Horatio Nelson. However, there is no definitive
| evidence to support this claim. It is possible that this
| phrase has evolved over time and has been adopted as a
| quote attributed to Nelson due to his association with
| naval and maritime history.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| This comment is the only Google hit I get for "take one
| watch or three". I suspect that quote should be
| attributed to ChatGPT.
| totetsu wrote:
| If it's old, could it be about watches in the sense of a
| period of time that one person keeps watch on the ship. So
| the meaning is go by yourself or as three people. Not about
| teling the time.
| Avshalom wrote:
| It's about using clocks to compare local noon to
| Greenwich noon in order to calculate longitude. Thing is
| that about 50% of all English expressions relate to the
| British navy and the other 50% are falsely attributed to
| the British navy so it's hard to say if 1-or-3 was
| actually real advice.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Navy sailor here. Trained in celestial navigation. The 3
| clocks thing is for real. On my first ship we still had
| mechanical clocks, on the theory that an EMP wouldn't
| bother them.
| cperciva wrote:
| Is there any point knowing exactly where you are if the
| ship is dead in the water because all the electronics are
| fried?
| defrost wrote:
| That's an odd take.
|
| Captains have navigated oceans in rowboats to fetch
| rescue and survive mutiny.
|
| It all starts with knowing where you are and where you
| intend to go.
|
| Also: Ships aren't neccesarily killed by EMP - mechanical
| engines still work, they can be tuned by hand, rudders
| are operated by levers and hydraulics, these can be
| manually moved, etc.
| cperciva wrote:
| Yes, but the scenario where you're relying on a
| mechanical clock because it survived an EMP attack is the
| scenario where _you 're getting attacked with nuclear
| weapons_. Which... I dunno, the idea of rowing to safety
| seems a bit implausible in that scenario?
|
| As for mechanical engines still working -- I would assume
| there's electronics in any modern hydrocarbon engines,
| for efficiency reasons (adjusting engine timing etc),
| never mind nuclear powered ships.
| defrost wrote:
| Well, EMP bursts going off overhead is not the same as
| being _attacked_ by such weapons - the scenario planned
| for would be maximal operation after an EMP burst.
|
| Dunno about you but I still have my working early model
| Sun workstation (pizza box years) rated to survive EMP
| with shielded casing, monitor, etc.
|
| > I would assume there's electronics in any modern
| hydrocarbon engines
|
| _assume_ .. so, you 've never worked on a container ship
| as a mech engineer babysitting a Wartsila RT-flex96C and
| you think the navy has a lot of nuclear powered ships
| then?
|
| Have a deep think on this - do you think the US military
| designs ships to be useless when the electronics go?
|
| No capability for manual weapons aiming, no ability to
| operate the engines or steer?
|
| We've got a navy person commenting upthread here about
| having three mechanical clocks for longitude estimation
| in the event of no GPS .. what do you think that's all
| about?
| cperciva wrote:
| _early model Sun workstation (pizza box years) rated to
| survive EMP with shielded casing, monitor, etc._
|
| Obviously, while it might survive _some_ EMP, there 's a
| limit to the efficacy of the shielding. Anything your Sun
| workstation would survive is trivially survivable by a
| quartz watch sitting in a shielded box.
|
| _you think the navy has a lot of nuclear powered ships
| then?_
|
| My understanding is that the entire submarine and
| aircraft carrier fleets are nuclear powered, yes.
|
| _Have a deep think on this - do you think the US
| military designs ships to be useless when the electronics
| go?_
|
| I think in a nuclear war scenario, surface ships are
| already useless (and most likely vaporized) so maximizing
| the efficacy of their navigation systems in such a
| scenario is probably not a priority.
|
| _We 've got a navy person commenting upthread here about
| having three mechanical clocks for longitude estimation
| in the event of no GPS .. what do you think that's all
| about?_
|
| My guess is that the three mechanical clocks was more a
| matter of tradition than efficacy in modern warfare.
| defrost wrote:
| > Obviously, while it might survive some EMP, there's a
| limit to the efficacy of the shielding.
|
| It was EMP rated by US nuclear agencies and used for
| nuclear test monitoring and radiometric surveys.
|
| > the entire submarine and aircraft carrier fleets are
| nuclear powered
|
| which leaves a lot of other ships .. and avoids the
| puzzle of _why_ they wouldn 't be able to function after
| an EMP burst - do you think you're the first to think of
| such a thing and no one has modelled about such an event?
|
| > surface ships are already useless (and most likely
| vaporized)
|
| You're assuming that an EMP burst high in the skay also
| vaporises all ships (or other weapons do), the design of
| military ships is to assume that they still need to
| function when damaged to a degree.
|
| > My guess is that the three mechanical clocks was more a
| matter of tradition than efficacy in modern warfare.
|
| You're hung up on _warfare_ .. navigation may fail for
| all manner of reasons and three clocks for reference in
| determining latitude (after allowing for mechanical
| error) is a matter of sound numerics rather than crusty
| tradition.
|
| _Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved
| the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time_ by Dava
| Sobel is decent introductory read if you 'd care to guess
| less and learn more.
| dmreedy wrote:
| I like this one. The variant I'm familiar with is a little
| more open-ended, but I think about a lot.
|
| "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two
| watches is never quite sure"
| flippinburgers wrote:
| I'm so isolated. I never got a degree in this field and I don't
| socialize much. So I feel permanently trapped working for a
| company. It sucks, but not enough apparently to get me to
| change.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| I wonder if one day we'd have companies that hire devs, then
| another company would contract them to work on specific open
| source packages.
|
| Seems like the easiest approach for a business. Finding a person
| then issuing a free lance contract is a lot of overhead.
| jpetso wrote:
| There are a handful of these companies out there. Collabora,
| KDAB, D. Richard Hipp's SQLite company, and if you're lenient
| enough you could also include companies that productize their
| open source package such as NextCloud or The Qt Company. Heck,
| Red Hat (sorry, IBM) regularly gets pulled in to improve
| software across their stack, kernel or otherwise.
|
| You could also include non-profits like the Linux Foundation,
| Blender Foundation or (new!) Godot Foundation, which do the
| same thing but without having to disguise as consulting,
| because development of the software itself is important enough
| to the industry that can pool its resources by donating to the
| respective foundation.
|
| Still only works for important enough packages. I don't think
| there's a way around that. An open source project generally has
| to provide massively outsized value so that a handful of
| developers can capture a fraction of that value for paid
| maintenance.
| dcow wrote:
| This is awesome for Filippo. I am curious what the average
| contract length will be (or is). 1/3/5/10yr? Essentially will
| there be enough time to maintain and not be searching for new
| contracts to cycle in? If it is indeed like enterprise sales, it
| takes a long time to source, negotiate, and close a contract.
| Hopefully we can get an update a few years down the road.
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