I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors(calebporzio.com) |
I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors(calebporzio.com) |
Been following you and your progress on twitter for a while
This is really inspiring and motivating for doing OSS work.
I'm trying not to make this sound as a generic LinkedIn business advice, but get a better profile picture. Maybe a picture of you in front of one of the art pieces. Something that gives me an impression of who you are and what kind of art you collaborate in.
It may sound stupid, but first impressions do really matter, even on Github. A dark, blurry picture of you drinking beer does not give a good impression.
it definitely does not haha, I put a better pic. Thanks !
Of course it's anecdotal and YMMV but to dismiss all the hard work and clear demand (people are paying) for the work by saying timing is a "big factor"? That seems unfair.
Of course timing matters in all things, but all the timing in the world won't help if you don't put in the work, or build something that people want.
Before someone points out an exception to the above, of course there are exceptions and people who get luckier than most, but this doesn't come across that way to me at all, and sharing the journey and the learnings is not something they had to do.
1) Writing some software people need
2) Being very entrepreneurial / thinking of and trying different tactics to get people to sponsor him
There‘a a bit of luck in the equation, but not a lot.
Hopefully this story will help tone deaf people to make the right decision next time.
https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-...
It's been about 2 years of GitHub sponsors and they haven't shared any data on how well people are doing.
There really needs to be an open data for business otherwise GDPR is pointless. Code is somehow not where the money is.
What is peculiar about software is maintenance cost which puts it somewhere between crowdfunding and subscriptions.
The gig economy makes sense if the person doing the gig is able to set the price otherwise it's not really fair.
Wouldn't it be awesome if developer talent was judged on the impact of one's open source projects / contributions versus leetcode competency?
Yeah, I know - it'll never happen.
Impact of one open source project measure slightly more than developer talent. It is a combination of a lot of skills, development skill just one among other like marketing, business sense, ability to make video, ... Extreme example would be Zuckerberg: is he the best developer in the world and wouldn't you waste a bit his potential if you hired him as a PHP dev?
And in any case, impact is always going to be a star system. You are going to have a tiny percentage of developers (like a few thousands in the world) that have impact and all the other that have 0. You are back to square one at trying to find a way to differentiate between a loser that can code and another loser that cannot.
The problem is that developers like this are very very rare. They are superstars who can code and build communities.
It doesn't happen because there aren't enough candidates.
I've been sitting on GitHub sponsorship setup for htmx, but this motivates me to get that done. It would be amazing to work on a passion project and get paid for it.
I think a lot depends on luck, and the kind of repositories you manage/create. Some projects are obviously more commercially useful than others, and those are the easier ones to receive income from.
The secret sauce is selling a product (in this case courses/training), and using GitHub sponsors as a payment gateway.
It’s great, but it’s not really sponsorship.
If you’re a dev with a popular open source project, you can profit by selling related training/courses. A lot of devs are probably leaving money on the table.
I also have a slight concern about the author’s sales tax liability in territories such as the US and the EU. Economic nexus is real, take a look at paddle.com if you want to know more. GitHub doesn’t collect sales tax - so you shouldn’t be selling any taxable benefits FWIW.
My strategy so far has to turn the program into a weekly Insiders Update on the OSS projects I maintain along with regular feature length content on the industry and software.
There’s around 130-140 individuals, I’d like to see that get to double the number. As for companies that use OpenFaaS in production, they do not pay any form of sponsorship or support.
He argued that the best way to monetize libre software is to sell training/education and 80% of OP's income come from the educational screen-casts.
Maybe the lesson here is that if you want to earn money from libre software you have to learn how to create and sell training. I think this model is really beautiful — everyone wins: good software, good training material, strong communities and respect everyone's freedoms!
Also you've mentioned github sponsors. Did not know about that program. It is severely restricted by small list of countries. Seems unfair as so many people contribute through github but looks like large chunk is unable to apply for this type of sponsorship because of location. Frankly I am quite disappointed with such policy.
Second is that I haven’t heard of livewire because I work in a different area. This suggests that more folks will be able to do the same (admittedly livewire is in a popular space — which makes meeting this threshold harder, so congrats again)
I've been doing OSS for twenty years, and never made a dime.
Qualifier: Never wanted to. It's always been a labor of love.
Even when I have done a bit of commercial work (outside of what I did as a 9-5), I open-source that work, as well.
I like doing OSS. I take pride in my craft, and like having it out there.
[ screenshot of a video being restricted to sponsors only ]
THIS is the secret sauce."
About the project: is it basically a PHP library?
How do you only release to people on your sponsor list?
That's interesting - for the longest time, for me Github wasn't anything related to the professional world, just a website to put the hobby OSS projects or uni group projects on. Things have obviously changed - it's nice to get a reality check regarding it.
We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities.
So this means that if you see a donation/sponsorship button on a software project where the money goes to a Finnish person, it is illegal (unless they have obtained a permit, which is highly unlikely). If you see a patreon/sponsorship with rewards, it's a grey area. The only clearly legal way is by selling actual things, and of course then you quickly need to set up a business.
I host a free project myself and I've had to set up a business (sole proprietorship) and sell things in order to get money for server costs. Even though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally.
What you can do is to "sell" something in lieu of donations:
E.g. - To support me please buy this wallpaper image file of my project logo. Or one-day email support etc.
You can always add a note that Finland laws prevent you from accepting donation, and this is the only way you can accept money from patrons, and even provide a link to the law in question.
(Note that depending on the laws in your country you may have to register as a freelancer / small business and pay taxes. In most countries this will be free or near free, and you probably won't get enough money to reach the threshold aftwer which you have to pay taxes).
It's so much easier in the US. If you're an individual it's going to be taxable income, but there's no up-front paperwork to do (for that matter, you don't have to "set up" a sole proprietorship here either -- that's just what the tax code calls "some rando doing business by themself"). I've done contract work for years, have a bit of my income coming in through GitHub sponsors now.
Now, if we could only get health care covered for folks who don't have an employer...
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> I host a free project myself and I've had to set up a business (sole proprietorship) and sell things in order to get money for server costs.
What's your side project? Speaking of Sandstorm, I'm wondering if it might be relevant; dealing with the problem of developers needing to monetize things in order to cover hosting costs was one of the motivations for the project:
https://sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-re...
It's mainly for fun and I want to keep it free, but of course I wouldn't mind if there was some money coming in to pay for the costs and motivate to work on it more. Currently I'm selling stickers and in the future I will implement some kind of paid accounts which will have some minor features that free accounts don't have – the dilemma is to keep it balanced so that free users don't feel second class.
In the UK it's even simpler if you are recieving less than £1,000 a year in donations or similar. HMRC have basically decided taxing people's side hustles would costs more than it returned. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-...
$7 = 700 random bytes
$15 = 1500 random bytes + 500 bytes free!
$99 = lifetime* subscription for 25k random bytes per year
* your lifetime or my lifetime, whichever terminates earlier
Truth in advertising and all that.
If you're not allowed to sell copyright licenses in Finland, then your whole software business is screwed.
I have seen some gamers in India asking for donations and giving direct account details(UPI[1] details), but I am very cautious against this. I am just waiting(selfishly) for Income Tax dept to serve notice to someone and get this clarified via court case.
Like my work?
DONATE
* all donations automatically receive (whatever)The software (Or service in your case?) is the product.
Currently our air carrier Finnair is under investigation because they offered a climate compensation payment for flights. They say the payment went towards biofuel and other compensation methods but it's being investigated if it was considered a donation.[1]
[1] https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/business/17392-finnair-discards...
Also OPs explanation is not so straightforward, the money collection act is being contested all the time and many succeed in collecting money here.
Seems like there would be a clear value exchange here.
Surely gettings lots of monetary gifts from foreign friends would probably not hold during a tax audit (they'd accuse you of trying to evade taxes unless you could provide a plausible reason why all these people would be sending you gifts) but it's an interesting counter-example nevertheless.
Not something to be impressed by; gifts are tax free in the US under $15,000 per one year.
Another would be to regard such a construct as income. Report your income. Pay your taxes and be happy.
It only becomes "gray" areas when people think it is possible to have non-taxed revenue streams.
This may be true in some countries, but it's definitively not an universal truth. Some business models are not allowed even if you pay taxes on the income. This is what the user is describing, and reading the (English translation) of the text of the Act, I'd be worried too.
That you would need to open a business is probably something most countries require though.
Finland is probably too far the opposite direction, but the whole sector could use a lot more scrutiny over here.
It's extremely frowned upon to begin with, but at least the laws make it illegal.
(Not that it necessarily hinders those that really want to scam someone. Some of these BS "organizations" just contract their work to foreign call-centers. Every year a lot of young European people are lured to some low-cost country in southern Europe, where they'll have to work for some call-center at below minimum wage - and these centers will sometimes work for anyone...)
The platforms help style all the payments as "donations" or "sponsorships" or "patronage". That avoids harshing the project vibe with overtly commercial overtones that turn off the financially immature and preternaturally entitled. But in reality, they're often really payments for products, services, access, and so on. Some people do simply donate, usually small dollars, and don't receive or care about "perks". Others buy the perks on offer specifically, as a simple exchange. Somewhere in between, people and companies may be inspired by donation-like feelings, but use the benefits to get their payments approved and expensed.
It's hard to draw any broad conclusion from outliers. But it all points to there being strange value in muddying the concept of paying developers with a lot of ambiguity, on both the buy side and the sell side. It's like one of those statues that looks like one thing from one angle, and something completely different from another.
Why are we calling this 'sponsoring'? It just factually is selling a product to people for a specific amount. Sponsoring/donating is more like people giving money for something that would otherwise be free. Otherwise Microsoft could also require a 500 usd 'sponsorship or donation' for a Surface Go. And requiring it monthly is just plain subscription service payment.
Also, one of the dictionary definitions for sponsor is: "provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out)."
So it seems accurate enough of a term to me.
So does a subscription or purchase. So not sure what you are trying to imply with this.
He gives access to stuff if you pay him money, with a promise of more stuff in the future. This just sounds like an subscription to me.
While I do agree there is a disconnect between open source dev payment and business, I don't think mislabeling a subscription as a donation does anyone any good.
He's selling courses using a freemium model.
The software is the inbound content.
> You can set sponsor tiers with different prices and rewards
Caleb hasn't discovered some secret means of convincing people to pay for OSS they can download for free. What he's done is create a commodity (the open source package) and then once it's popular, make a tidy profit off its complimentary product (training videos).
Unfortunately it's still true that people generally won't pay for software they can download for free, but if you're willing to dip into some other types of work (e.g. consulting, creating training videos) then you can make more than enough profit top keep going indefinitely.
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
Here is more viable freelancing:
- create framework/library that everyone needs
- for feature requests/bug fixes, prioritize sponsors
- do office hours for sponsors
- invite sponsors/allow them to vote for future road map
- offer consulting credit to sponsors
On the other hand, his amounts are going up, so I'm interested to see how high they will go, and what it will consistently level out at.
Nice work, I should think about having paid only videos as well, I believe I can do that pretty easily on Patreon. Good tips in here.
> Create a cool piece of software
> Make it exclusive to people who sponsor you until you reach a certain number of sponsors
> Then open source the project to the world
This is how ICOs worked, for the teams that actually delivered anything. Without any other monetization path they resorted to taking presales of tokens shoehorned in convulated ways into products that didn't need them, but frequently involved open source code for a community. This resulted in many misaligned interests for people that eseentially were sponsors.
It's nice to see the same sentiment reflected in other parts of the tech industry in a way that more people respect and can relate to.
If you're interested in the issue, however, you might start by reading a little about "money transmitter" regulations. An early payments platform for open projects shut down at least partly on account of it. I suspect the concept of "perks" became widespread in part to differentiate fundraising platforms from money transmitters.
- add sponsors as collaborators in the project
- give sponsors access to all versions from the get-go
- set a $ limit, when reached, will trigger full open-sourcing of the project
- have public sponsor income page where people can follow the progress
Is there a website out there where I can find content I can sponsor?
Also, keep in mind that when you are self employed you need to make 20-30% more than your salary as an employee if you want the same take home pay. That covers the extra self-employment tax you have to pay, health insurance, business insurance, etc. If you charge by the hour, you might find this article on how to calculate an hourly rate helpful: https://help.facetdev.com/docs/how-do-i-calculate-my-hourly-...
[1] Shameless plug: www.facetdev.com
The thing that struck me most was the podcast appearance. I was distantly affiliated with the music industry at one point and I saw over and over the value of being in the right place at the right time. Great bands languish because they just weren't seen.
I don't mean to diminish the work, either the technological or the effort of finding sponsors. I just want to caution about extrapolating success stories to utopianism. Success is more random than we'd like to believe, and there is a risk when failure leads to victim blaming.
I left feedback the moment it entered "feature preview", left feedback on all the accessibility it lacked (mainly reducing contrast everywhere), and well, looks like they just rolled it out anyways.
Really wish they would take things like people being able to see their product without difficulty seriously.
I just want to say congratulations. I think the sponsorware concept is very cool and could be good for the community. I’m glad someone has found a way to make money in open source.
If my costs for writing a piece of software are initially X, I'd hope to make at least X back before I open source it. (Ignore loss-leaders for now)
If I'm counting number of sponsors, do I calculate them as if they will stick around for a year? 100% retention seems unlikely. Do I only open source after I've had Y sponsors for Z time such that sum(Y.donations) * Z == X?
Then after I open source it I have ongoing costs. His experience seems to imply that educational content (paid) then also pays for ongoing maintenance costs. Is that correct?
What if I later decide to stop supporting a project? Is there any mechanism to stop a stream of income from a group of sponsors, or will I have to assume they will "naturally" stop sponsoring when I kill new education content and updates to the project? This seems problematic as inertia will cause some people to keep paying despite not getting further value, which will cause some of them to be angry and demand "refunds."
What if my project really takes off? What would be a possible path to scale from say 1-5 paid collaborators?
Wow, Good job!
Not really understanding the comparison to SV salaries. This opens up many doors for the author, something that money wouldn't be able to do.
We've seen a similar effect with YouTube - by providing a monetization path for creators, it attracts talent, and allows them to finance a lifestyle around it. And it's a self-accelerating cycle - the growth in quality and quantity increases demand for the content which increases the quality and quantity.
I thought as well (and still keep thinking) that if I'll ever manage to create something successful which generates $, then I'll share a part of the revenue with the (open-source) parts that my <whatever: app/website/etc...> uses/needs.
Would be neat to see more sites adopt the web monetization standard via coil or other sites like it that enable content creators to offer paid content and get paid passively as more people discovered their content.
This reminds me of Steve Martin's, "You Can Be a Millionaire ... and Never Pay Taxes":
“You say, ‘Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?’”
“OK first,” he explains, “get a million dollars.”
Here is OP's repo - https://github.com/livewire/livewire
https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source...
Obviously in the beginning, power law will take into effect where a few people will have enough income to thrive in these platforms. I do think that these platforms will eventually have more features like pooled donation, say you could donate to a collective of creators that you care about, will lead to significant portion of the economy to more meaningful work.
Its basically the same thing credit cards do, but are more egregious because they also try to platform the creators. So you integrate them into one proprietary space you wholly control and can thus dominate industries by managing the purse.
Its what almost every successful business nowadays does. Capture an audience and then shake down whatever they are coming to your platform for while holding the market ransom. Facebook and Google do this with advertisers, app / game stores with their 30% cuts, etc.
My non-Scandinavian girlfriend never understood why people pay for the bus there if they never get checked. Or why people bother to leave money in a little box at an unmanned coffee/waffle/etc stand in the middle of nowhere. But most do as it is the right thing to do, guilt free.
And if there is a slight chance the tax authorities might contact him the guilt/embarrassment is worse than any token fine.
They aren't the same from an ethical perspective.
You understand that you enjoy living in a system that you can trust. You understand that being able to trust the system means that the system has to trust you. You value a working system more than a petty dollar or some other short-sighted piece of self-interest, because you get more benefit from having the system work in your favor than taking a little for yourself but eroding/ruining the system in the same go. If most people do the right thing, the system works and everyone benefits.
Simple as that! It's the opposite of the tragedy of the commons.
In non-utopian countries, you have to make an advance deposit into the system and may never do enough to make it universally trusted. People may never stop jaywalking, or taking a free coffee/waffle/etc. from the unmanned stand, or cheating your taxes with family income and business expenses. But I'm doing well for myself, so what am I really losing by doing the right thing? Life already put me ahead. I'd rather contribute a small part to a working system I can trust, than to grab another small pie just for myself.
This only works if you never piss anyone off, have no enemies and the government only stands to look bad from going after you.
Obviously accepting donations in an illegal manner is a stupidly low hanging fruit for someone who wants to screw you over. Sure you'd probably only have to pay back taxes (or whatever) in the end but it's a massive hassle and better to just keep it on the down low.
...which they probably wouldn't.
Also, if you receive more than a few hundred dollars, perhaps the Finnish IRS will start noticing.
I don't think I personally will ever know if this is just an accident of the system (being happily exploited), planned, or a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.
Enough notable success stories satisfies the Availability heuristic in your brain, but that often tricks you into thinking things are quite different than they actually are.
Same for startups, by the by.
I don't think it's necessary to personalize the rules, odds, and constraints that reinforce these outcomes. We could find individuals who see how it works and like it. But I haven't seen evidence to show they add up to any kind of conscious conspiracy. I'm more concerned about the smaller players who aren't winning and haven't seen how the game is skewed.
The spirit of open source isn't so sacred. In most cases it is hundreds or thousands of businesses benefiting financially from the work you've done.
Implying his approach is not viable is weird, given that what he's doing is demonstrably working (at least at the moment). He's making free software and then selling subscriptions to training content, which is where he seems to be making something like 80% of his revenue. It's like Railscast, Laracast, Egghead.io (originally just angular tutorials!) etc.
The main difference to railscast, egghead.io etc. is that he's using Github as a payment processor & to manage subscriptions.
- Consulting, usually means the project is too complex and hard to use without help. Changes to make the project easier to configure are often not even considered...
- Donations, not sustainable for the developer (no users need to pay anything).
- Open-core, one of the worst strategies, as the developer's motivations are almost completely opposed to the open-source community. The developer wants people to upgrade to premium, so the premium features are always prioritised over community features, and people can't extend the software themselves...
- Hosting, not a bad strategy, but is slowly becoming less relevant as deployment of services is becoming increasingly easy.
I'm not sure how sponsorware is the opposite to the spirit of open source but your proposal would essentially allow someone to buy out the product roadmap which seems worse.
The truth is that many developers have taken the high road, and done the right thing, and they have been unable to make a living out of their open source efforts.
I hate that the ecosystem is so weak the OP has to resort to this model, but I have nothing but sympathy for the OP.
The whole entitlement that devs and companies have around open source drives me crazy.
- Thanks/gratitude: $5
- Prioritise issues raised by sponsors: $25
- Sponsor influence/vote on project roadmap: $300
- 1hr/month video-call/consult with sponsor's company/team[2]: $600
- Add sponsor's logo on the project's home page[2] (say for 1 year) - in a fun and engaging way, of course: $1000
[1] - I've done this, except for the bit where I convince everyone that they really, really need to use the library.
[2] - I've not yet seen a way on GHSponsors to limit the number of people who can sponsor a given tier. Which puts me off offering this sort of tier as over-subscription could quickly steal all my time and ruin my project's home page.
I'd also argue that this is one of the most ethical ways to pay developers fairly for their work, even if the author wasn't able to make that much money from it. The product the developer creates is FOSS, available to everyone after some time, and they still get paid for it (bonus; they're paid by the open source community for their work, rather than from one person/corporation that dictates their salary).
If it is trully open-source from start then anyone can freely dostribute the copy outside of the elite group.
It doesn't seem to be working great though, at least on the page. I end up making a living through ad-hoc client work, which sometimes supports the open-source side as well.
I am a little bit heartbroken it is not working out yet. Hoping you the best of luck.
Isn't this equivalent to "keep code secret until someone sponsors you?" Except in his case, the work is done before you're sponsored, and in yours, the work is done after?
Because there is always a infinite amount of work to do.
Usually you do the most rewarding work.
With no money involved, then it is usually the most fun part.
And with money, it is what other people want. That can be the same, but does not need to.
So he is nearly there, but not yet.
I think you're confusing it with personal projects.
Additionally, GitHub is just so much closer to the actual open source work and more easily discoverable for users of your product.
As a supporter, I'll pick GitHub over Patreon anytime.
[1] https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source... [2] https://www.patreon.com/product/pricing
Do calling it "work" it is too little. Won't pay the time spent on a job.
At the same time it is an amount of money, causing responsibility. Giving the feeling that one has to return something for it ...
So how does at affect your fun-level?
If anything the fun-level has gone way up because a community has formed around one of my projects, which has been great.
I had started another company before that I spent over a year on and I made $0. Not fun.
Not really serving industry, self-hosters and home-labbers.
An excellent sentiment, if less common these days than it should be. Reminds me of a quotation from Chapter XXV[0] of Machiavelli's The Prince: "Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."
[0]: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2H...
Sometimes I can spend days or more polishing a blog post or video and making it really good—and it falls flat.
Other times I'll write up a post in an hour or so and it front pages on HN, gets traction on Reddit, etc.
It seems more random than anything, though the fact that I've put in lots of hours on other content means I'm not starting from zero here.
For GitHub sponsors, I didn't get any real traction until I explicitly started asking people to be a sponsor. I don't even have 'rewards' or anything... maybe that would help, maybe not. But it's still hard to get people to commit money to my cause, and I think the same skills are required for this that would be useful in nonprofits and charities soliciting donations.
I didn't realize you had such a large YouTube presence. I'm curious how you got started. You seem to be quite interested in Ansible so I imagine you just started there and it grew organically?
FWIW -- I'm looking to start making YouTube videos on full-stack web development. I used to be a high school teacher before teaching myself programming well enough to do it professionally so I think I'd be pretty good at this topic/market (entry-mid level). I'm just not sure exactly where to start, how to make myself standout compared to others doing the same thing, etc.
Maybe you've written a blog post on this topic before you could direct me to? Is entry level full-stack web dev too broad? Thanks in advance, keep up the good work!
I recently bought a mic and a nice webcam (March) to do recordings and live streams, but got hung up on recording processing, etc.
Don’t know if it makes sense for you to do a meta video on that, or just share your thoughts on the OBS software and post processing, or if that’d be something worth reaching out to you on.
Like you, I’m very engaged in OSS, so I’m happy you’re seeing success!
Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that they should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this, though).
Another approach is to do everything you can (podcast appearances, for example!) to increase your "luck surface area".
I'm curious as to why you think that? It could be cultural differences but I have never seen that behaviour except from those that are already depressed and have given up.
IMO the simplest analogy for success is poker. You make the best decisions you can given the information you have. You adjust as new information is revealed. Ultimately, success or failure is less relevant than the process.
Luck is arguably the most important variable, so optimize for it. It's less like buying lottery tickets and more like betting on horses but with outsized returns.
If you bet on one horse, in one race, you'll probably lose and blame luck. But if you keep on betting, you're going to get lucky.
5% chance of success on a given attempt just means try 50 times. Which is also why it's important to test ideas fast and cheap, killing bad ideas quickly.
Practically speaking, who you know, who knows you, where you are, and when seem to be the external factors, and the number of distinct attempts seems to be the internal factor.
Do you have any other insights to add?
As patreon got more successful over time and youtubers make part of their content payed, I would be surprised if many open source engineers without other revenue didn't adopt more of the sponsorware business model.
Second, there's more to life than working at, say, Facebook/Netflix/etc for money. The pure happiness of working on something you care about is worth a lot of money to some people.
Third, if this person ever wants to get a real job, the $100k won't go away, and they'll easily add $50k to their starting offer for running a prolific open source project.
Lastly, look at that graph. It's going up. Zero to $100k is really good for 6 months, and in another 6 months it'll potentially double. Most startups don't get to $100k this quick. More people will use this as time goes on, they can start new projects, they can do high-end freelancing for companies using it, etc.
It's true the $100k doesn't immediately disappear, but it seems safe to assume that taking on a full time job would leave a lot less time to do OSS work and would probably result in a non-trivial loss of sponsorship.
I will let you decide if 3.5x - 5x is "not even close".
I could sell this side project for $1M easily.
I could grow it if I want to and make $500k next year.
I could write a blog and grow my personal brand on how I made this side project.
There are lots of opportunities this side project has opened up that working at my SV eng job can't provide.
I am in the same situation as you in your first 18 months. Got a product, need to get eyeballs and customers!
But then I moved. I'm here to tell you, the Bay Area has a quality of life problem that far exceeds the cost of living difference.
After moving, my monthly _mortgage_ payment is almost $1k less than the rent I was paying for a not-so-nice house in San Jose. When I run the numbers on my current house (considering only the property and not the HOA), trying to find something comparable around San Jose, I come up with around $10 million at a minimum. When you consider the HOA I live in - we have 20 miles of maintained trails and an HOA park almost every mile - the quality of the schools, the quality and cost of restaurants... the list goes on... this quality of life literally can't be purchased in the Bay Area for a software engineers salary, no matter what they do. And here is the thing: after moving I could take an 80% pay cut over my Bay Area salary and maintain this quality of living changing _nothing_ about my spending habits.
But money aside, I'm actually happy after moving. In the Bay Area I binged, ate, drank, and smoked every night. I put on weight, my mental and physical health was deteriorating. I was depressed. I felt like every time I left the house someone was trying to trick me out of my money. I saw societal decay at every corner, homelessness, unmaintained property, crumbling infrastructure. I felt it was the least progressive place I've ever lived and it made me feel guilty that I could afford to stay slightly above the decay. The Bay Area is a place that required significant effort for me to be happy and that wasn't possible when investing significant effort into maintaining my high salary job.
My advice to folks living in the Bay Area: take stock of why you are there. If the answer is a paycheck, I find it very hard to believe it's worth it after my experience.
Oh, well then fuck this idiot, right? What a dumbass loser - doesn't even realize they can be a s i l i c o n v a l l e y e n g i n e e r and make a lot of money.
Jesus it's so exhausting reading the knee-jerk "SV engineers make more money" reaction to everything. You know what this person has that 99.999% of all SV engineers will never have? Complete freedom. You know what else this person has that 99% of all SV engineers will never have? The option not to have live in San Francisco, a dismal place that very few people want to actually be in anymore.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
... since the parent comment already made the same point, in the part you didn't bother to quote.
Also, please don't post in the flamewar style to HN generally. It's not what this site is for.
Dismal? Lol I love it here. People are moving out of cities all over the country because of coronavirus, sure, but only because most of the perks of city living are non-existent right now. I know a couple people moving and they're not going far, because of the nearby available amenities, that being excellent cycling and motorcycling roads, great mountain biking trails, climbing rocks, whatever water sports you could want...
Never quite got the hate. It's good weather and a great region.
Yeah I think 100k a year would go a little farther in one of these places than the other...
In most parts of the world, $100k/year allows you to live very comfortably indeed.
1: https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
I am sure the HN crowd is probably aware of compensation at tech companies in general, especially in SV>
Even at FAANGS, the salary for the same role at the same level can be significantly lower outside of California ... not just a couple of percent, but I've heard reports of 60% difference between e.g. San Francisco and London for just someone moving offices.
[*] Digital artwork = project logo in png format, free to use however they please. You can license the publicly-available logo with any minimally-restrictive license (e.g. CC-BY); this should still count that "you gave them additional rights, in exchange for payment".
The obvious workaround here is to paywall some tiny feature with choose-your-own-price, or perhaps offer something akin to Reddit Gold. I presume the law already thought of that?
The authors tactic of paywalling things behind a "donation" seems legally much more dubious.
A single member LLC provides some benefits but those benefits often require a lawyer to invoke (i.e. you're getting sued, gotta file things and work the legal system). If you have insurance you just tell the insurance company and they hire the lawyers.
But it's a one-time fee, so you're probably still right in general, but for the moment I'm mostly coasting on savings & sponsorships, focusing on the stuff I care about while I have the breathing room. I might consider being a bit more organized if/when I ramp up business again and am considering looking for new clients.
In other words, they are not given in exchange for something; the something is freely given without the donation.
Of course there is the question of whether something is truly a donation. But charities have to deal with that question, so there are formulaic approaches to it, and advisors. Sometimes the wording that accompanies a donation must be written carefully, to clarify what is and is not expected for it, because donations can be directed to a purpose, which isn't (apparently) the same as paying for something.
I assume it's similar elsewhere?
Finnish peoples problem isnt the laws, but the fact that they are total pussies when it comes intrepreting the law.
The IRS doesn’t seem to give these orgs much scrutiny unless they’re egregiously bad or become a big news story.
He implies nothing, he states that sponsor definition covers the OP use case. Having more than one word to describe the same thing is not surprising.
You imply that your definition of sponsor exclude OP use case and there is mislabeling.
The interesting point is the revenue issue in open-source business. This guy solved it for him and present for all how he did it, with no lies and no hypocrisy.
That someone got hung up on a correct word usage shed an interesting light on where this disconnect between open source dev payment and money really lies.
The broader point still remains, for a business (a 1099 is considered a sole-proprietorship) generally net income is taxed, and as a W2, your taxes are witheld per pay period.
Gross Income: $112k
- SEP IRA 25%: -$28k
- Owner Health Insurance: -$15k
- 199-A Deduction (20%): -$12k
Total business income for taxes: $47k
- Married Filing Jointly Deduction: -$24k
- Total taxable income: $23k
Tax on $23k (10% of first $20k, 12% of next $3k): $2360
Another gem many people don't know about is "Increasing Research Activities", for certain industries this essentially translates to 5-10% of your total payroll becoming a credit. That's huge.
WTF? Who pays $15k PER YEAR for health insurance? That's nuts. In most countries USD$15k would pay for healthcare for 2 or 3 people for their entire lives.
So sure $15k is ridiculous to pay for health insurance, but in the US, its the cheap option for a family.
For a brief period I lived in Virginia and had no medical coverage through my employer. The legal minimum coverage was $1,400 / month for my family of four... and it was basically worthless; I would have had to have paid out something like $40k in a single year for medical services before I would have broken even.
is more than they make in their entire lives.
Trying to compare US COL to "most countries"
And if you wanna only look at western countries that's obviously demonstrably false.
Whatever people pay as part of the healthcare tax is gonna come out to about $15K for someone who is making $100K in most EU countries.
And still none of that considers things like Simplified Employee Pension Plan (SEP), health insurance, home maintenance, etc, etc.
The list can go on and on depending on the type of your business, jurisdiction, and supporting documentation.
* Talk to someone about your local tax rules before taking action.
There is nuance in that statement. The IRS has a test for whether a person is an employee or a contractor.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...
That seems superior to basically every single platform out there. It's an instant win for GitHub Sponsors.
Say you are a marketer and you bring hundreds of paying users to a platform, 5k is cheap.
I started live streaming one project pre-COVID. Then when lockdowns started, I used the experience I gained there to do my Ansible 101 series, and it kind of snowballed a bit from there.
I also have a media production and communications background (from college / post-college days), which helps a lot, because even if the tech changes, the techniques don't.
I started out doing video with a mini VHS camera that I put into an old Performa Mac through a TV capture card and I forget what NLE I used at that time. Then I jumped to MiniDV with some nice Canon SD equipment and got some good audio gear and worked from a G3/G4 with Final Cut Express for a while, before I stopped doing much video work for a decade.
Skip forward a few years and now the whole world's 1080p minimum/4K often, and lighting and technique is way more important—but knowing the basics from back in the day means I can still make decent quality video with the equipment I have available.
That is why socioeconomic status is so important with respect to success. There's a difference when you can play a thousand hands vs. ten.
But I'm considering doing a little more in the realm of 'how its made' type videos, because you can do most of the things 'professional' video producers do on a budget, depending on how many nice things you want to do in a video.
- Chicago, IL: The L reaches a lot more neighborhoods, is a single integrated transit system. - Columbus, OH: Great bike lanes and dedicated paths, bus system that covers the entire city. - New York, NY: By far the most walkable city in the US. - Philadelphia, PA: Decent subway system, good connection to NJ and NY via NJ Transit. Very walkable core and neighborhoods. - Washington, DC: Far superior version of BART with a lot more coverage.
Unless I've just happened across a half dozen of the best cities in the US, SF isn't all that remarkable.
There are bound to be some pretty cool places in AZ, NM, TX, and the southeast. I've been casually researching this topic for a while, and I've found it to be incredibly difficult to find a useful, non-biased index of walkable and interesting neighborhoods from all corners of the US.
Good luck!
Have you tried to apply for a job? Don't underestimate yourself. I had the same thoughts about myself, then I tried an interview just for fun. Now I'm working for a FAANG company, moved to Canada, and having the best year of my life.
Here's a March 2019 article from CBS bay area (based on data from the rental site Zumper):
"Median 1-Bedroom Rent In San Francisco Soars To Nearly $3,700 A Month"
"Elsewhere in the Bay Area, San Jose’s median rent for a one-bedroom was $2,540 (5th highest in the country), while in Oakland it was $2,320 (9th highest)."
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/05/median-1-bedroo...
[0] https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries/Sil...
A senior at google makes 170kish in salary and another 130-150k in stock.
This is the problem with level.fyi; it's good information but too many people point at it and say "look how much software engineers make in the valley". This isn't even close to representative.
It's a bit like looking at biglaw salaries in NYC and saying "look how much lawyers make".
That figure or the number you edited it to at $141k, is on the low side. The median software developer in the US is at ~$110,000. The top 10% bracket starts at around $165,000.
Emphasis that $110k figure is median, average is higher. The average software developer in SV with 10 years of experience is going to be a lot closer to $200k or over.
Where did you get that 110k figure, by the way? That sounds very high for me for a median across all US software. Maybe California specific?
That said, isn't median a better measure in this context, though? There can be a set of salaries that skews the average by a significant amounts, but most receive ~110k$
On the other hand various types of corporate insurance cover you for particular risks. Depending where and how you operate you may have to have them by statute or by practicality. So you may have to carry liability insurance by law if you have an office where people visit, or a contract may require that you hold E&O insurance up to a certain amount. In a way the latter is actually your customer protecting themselves from your use of a LLC. Without it, in the case of a settlement against you, you could easily just turn around and say "fine, the corporate account has $5 in it, here you go" and then fold up the company leaving them with no recourse. With E&O coverage for certain types of errors, they know they can get covered in a settlement up to a certain amount.
E&O covers you for particular failures in providing the service you are contract for. Say you were an electrician and did some work on a new building. They sue you claiming your work wasn't to code and caused them $100k in trouble with the city - you disagree. E&O insurance covers your court costs and potentially your settlement if it goes that way. It isn't going to cover you if you get sued for libel because of things you said about them, etc.
This is also why, for example, it may be hard/impossible to get underwriters for some software consulting. Because there are not professional standards groups that are well recognized and because potential damages from software can be difficult to asses (your script change cost us $10mm in AWS fees) insurance companies may not want anything to do with it.
So that leads to a third prong of protections which you didn't mention, which is you need to pay attention to your contract terms (and set them as much as you can). Depending on your situation this can range from easy to impossible, but can have a huge impact. For example, I've successfully added clauses to limit all liability to actual spend on previous 6 mo.
[1] this is hugely dependent on jurisdiction, particularly with single member variants.
As I understand it, NHS comes from general taxation.
Obviously there is no actual "fee" to use the NHS at the point of use - it is all free apart from prescriptions which are the same price regardless of what you get (and you might get it for free anyway depending on your circumstances)
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/how-...
Isn't that enough to fund the programs you are speaking of?
https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-ta...
Some outliers are home office and utilities and things like that.
The IRS has rules (typically unenforced) regarding this. You are supposed to draw a salary that matches your job in your local area. So if you are based in Tinyton, Flyover State, you could probably get away with paying yourself $30k/yr, but in NYC (where I'm based), my accountant told me $70/hr is basically as low as I can safely go. So I do $70/hr and then $14/hr in my retirement account.
The $70 turns into ~$78 after all the employer taxes add into it, and I take home only $52 after employee side of taxes are taken out of it.
What's the risk - audit? And if so, what's the risk from the audit? A fine for tax fraud? Jail time?
I'm freelancing currently myself, and available deductions are honestly miniscule and well-defined.
It's actually a very interesting little booklet.
I only pay my accountant around $2000 to handle a bunch of housekeeping at the end of the year that I'm to lazy to do during, and to file my taxes. For years I did my own taxes using Turbo Tax Self Employed and Turbo Tax Business Editions, but in 2016 I decided to outsource all of that headache, the first year, my taxes were half of what they were the year before with similar income. Then after the TCJA in 2017, my taxes were only 1/5th what they had been before the accountant, with close to double the raw income.
The biggest changes from doing it myself: I got an accountant; I incorporated (s-corp) instead of doing self-employment income; I draw W2 income now (using Gusto); I set up a SEP-IRA and put 20% of my W2 earnings as an automatic debit from my business account (in Vanguard); TCJA chops off 20% of my distributions on my K1; and I'll state again, I hired an accountant.
I feel like I'm doing 90% of the work already, having organized all my expenses and income. What are they doing other than typing it into their own Turbo-Tax-equivalent?
It’s pretty easy find an accountant but they might not be good and it’s hard to tell, especially in advance.
somewhat relevant reading on what can be done if you're well versed with tax laws: https://scottestill.com/buy-new-used-car-2018-get-100-tax-de...
Surprisingly, this dealer has an entire page dedicated to it this, and why you should buy one of their SUVs: https://www.landroverhuntvalley.com/business-tax-advantage.h...
Medicare and social security alone account for nearly half of the US fed govt spend.
Taxes do not support billionaires. The lack of them does.
Then there's a technical issue at launch and orders are being rejected left and right.
They could be out basically the whole value of the marketing campaign which is 10x your salary. You might owe them compensation for that, unless of course you got paid through an LLC and only have the $100 in your account.
(ps. With some careful lawyer drafting to exempt things which can't be limited in that way (negligence etc.), while carefully wording the exemption so any part voided doesn't take the whole limitation with it.)
Simple scenarios:
- immigrants/refugees moving to a different country
- getting visas in what is largely a lottery system
- injury luck with respect to athleticism
- access to equipment and instruments with respect to musical talent
- slavery and generational poverty
The idea that _capability_ is anywhere close to as important as luck fails so many simple tests (let alone empirical studies) that your statement offends me a little bit.
It kind of grinds my gears when some people give lessons on how to be successful and don't acknowledge that luck was a part of it.
I find it hard to believe that birth year is strongly correlated with capabilities.
The article it was created for is at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...
100k in pretty much anywhere but the east or west coast may as well be 300k.
Just for the context,that's what I could afford back home in the capital: https://m.aruodas.lt/namu-nuoma-vilniuje-antakalnyje-bistryc...
on edit: actually looking at wages in Denmark I see I am somehow doing a lot better than I thought, which is pretty much amazing to me considering how badly I thought I was doing. Since I am making about that amount after taxes. hmm.
Whether all people do it or not is another question, but that is what is required by the law.
I doubt the cost of living in Denmark is that much higher than Sweden, so I'd say you're living beyond your means if you can't make it work on 329K DKK after tax...
If you go out to eat there at a normal place, it'll be more like 300-400 SEK (~280 DKK) per person including 1-2 alcoholic beverages.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
Looking at life as a massive state machine, I think it’s clear that some parts of the state machine are much more beneficial than others. Luck often pushes people into a bad area or good area, and it can be quite difficult to transition out of that area of the state machine, for better or worse.
Competency and hard work are obviously very important, but luck is an enormous factor as well. And luck, along with its compounding effects, is not uniformly distributed across all individuals.
I’m amazed at how many comments piled up insisting that luck is a major or possibly the most significant factor. Even if true, what a self-defeating outlook. Every accusation is a confession.
My last rent in Houston for an actual cool place to live (downtown Westheimer area) was a solid 1.3k, or 15k a year. So after taxes rough estimate 70k - 15k = 55k into your savings account, before expenses etc.
I have the best apartment I've ever had in my life practically on top of 16th mission station right now for 2.1k. I'm not making 300k but if I was, let's see: 210k - 25k = 185k into savings each year, not including expenses. That's 3x the amount of money for investment, savings, playtime in places where the money goes the same distance no matter where your permanent address is.
State and city income tax aren't going to eliminate that 3x difference. Brunch costing 50$ vs 20$ isn't going to make up that difference.
We can talk about quality of life as well but that'll be a much, much longer comment from me, and feels like a pointless conversation (city folk gonna city).
I don't believe that's a correct assumption. It's been a while but: https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-do...
Personally I can think of a plenty of other places I'd rather live in where you could truly live well on that kind of money.
Source: I live in the first of those on a similar salary.
In the UK that pre-tax income would put you well in the 95th percentile.
Post-tax the 97th percentile.
What you might need a company for is to pay sales taxes you charge for physical goods, or get insurance appropriate for your line of work. That's likely to be state-by-state. You just get the convenience of an EIN by registering and some additional legal protections by being a distinct entity (i.e. I could sell the company or assign IP to it or hire employees).
I have certainly gotten contractor income to me personally that I just had to account for. In the USA for small businesses you'd have to send the same documentation, so it doesn't even save paperwork. As a sole proprietorship I get the same tax documents from my clients as I would if I were operating directly under my name.
Edit: Also, if this were true in the USA, it implies that all those Uber drivers each have a sole-proprietorship set up. I'm pretty sure that companies can hire contractors as individuals without them becoming businesses.
No it isn't... In Canada, you can happily accept money from people and just stick it in the "other income" box on your tax return, where it'll get income-taxed appropriately.
If you're trying to do business deductions or want to pay business taxes instead, yes you need a business. If you're trying to set up a physical location, yes you need a business license from your city. But if you don't care about the pennies and your work is digital there's absolutely no requirement.
This is not the case in the USA. There is no general federal legal requirement to register a business or obtain a business license in order to sell things. However, there are specific industries for which business licenses are required (at any of the federal, state and local levels) and forming an LLC might help personal assets if you are sued.
When I moved to London I was surprised how low salaries were, even after factoring in social services like the NHS. 100K USD (80,000GBP) is a very good salary there.
Current and former gifted students are likely overrepresented on HN. Underachievement (whether real or perceived) is a source of stress or depression for this population[0], and defense mechanisms[1] are a common coping strategy. In [1], the authors define quadrants based on high or low success orientation and fear of failure.
1. Optimists - high success orientation, low fear of failure: low sense of helplessness
2. Overstrivers - high success orientation, high fear of failure: risk of burnout, tend to have high “defensive pessimism”
3. Acceptors - low success orientation, low fear of failure: tend to have low self esteem and high helplessness
4. Self-protectors - low success orientation, high fear of failure: tend to have high defensive pessimism and self-handicapping
They define defensive pessimism as “artificially lowering expectations of performance when a performance will be evaluated in order to lessen the hurt of failure and turn success into an unexpected surprise” and self-handicapping as “generating conditions that will produce an excuse for failure through actions such as procrastination, task avoidance, withholding effort, and other strategies.” They label both harmful.[0]
To this optimist, assigning everything to luck looks like all of helplessness, defensive pessimism, and self-handicapping: “I’m smarter than that bum, so his success must be due to dumb luck.”
[0]: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...
On the one hand, I think this may be conflating different senses of luck. On the other hand, yes, luck played a big role in the winner of the election ending up in that position, but not because the election itself was akin to a coin flip (hyperbole), but because luck has a small impact innumerable times in the goings on of that individual's life leading up to that point.
> Where’s the safety net for the unfortunate also-rans?
Thinking about this, it's actually a good question. If the goal of an election is to select the person most able to perform the role of the elected position most satisfactorily, then providing a mechanism by which those without access to traditional campaigning resources and capital to participate could allow more qualified individuals to participate in the election who otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
And this is, I think, precisely the point of saying that luck is a bigger factor than people acknowledge because in order to be elected today, you need to have the connections and capital necessary to execute a successful campaign while continuing to fulfill any other obligations you have during the time leading up to the election, and you need to have something in place to deal with not being elected, something to fall back on. That's a whole bunch of moving parts that need to align before it makes sense to participate in an election.
Moving to any other major European city would require me to at least double the income to maintain my standards.
1950 called, they want their mononuclear family stereotypes back.
What specifically the parent was referring to I'm not sure, but that would be why it is consistent to describe a company as both "in compliance with tax law" and also as "using loopholes". If they weren't in compliance with tax law they'd just be breaking the law. No one is accusing the companies of breaking the law, they're accusing the tax system of being biased and corrupt.
Which games don't have edge cases, loopholes, exploits?
Of the games which can be "gamed", are they more or less complex than any given tax code?
https://ie.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php Says take home on $100k in ireland is ballpark €55,000 ($62k), and living costs are here - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Dublin -
This one isnt really HN alone. Mostly just extremely privileged developers without much perspective.
Won't protect one guy or a small team in case of legal disputes, it's called piercing the corporate veil. I wonder if the EU has something similar.
In any case, my numbers hold up for bay area startup salaries as well - if they didn't, I wouldn't live here lol.
And the numbers don't really work out for founders for the first couple years in terms of any salary so I think again we view money differently. I'm not really disputing that your numbers work for being an employee but they don't really hold out for people working to start their own thing, at least in the short term. As I'm sure the OP is aware there's intangible benefits that don't take the form of a retirement account associated with running your own thing.
Edit: I'll also say we may be at a point where we're starting to talk passed each other, your math checks out for sure I just don't value the benefits associated as much.
I think we don't disagree for reasons other than raw money about why working somewhere other than FAANG would be good. Probably reasons similar to why I don't work at FAANG ;P
“TurboTax will take what I did last year and minimize my taxes. My accountant will tell me what to do differently this year to minimize my taxes next year.”
In other words a good accountant is a forward-looking advisor, not just a calculator.
Almost every accountant out there will be better than an H&R Block or Turbo Tax.