4 ms·

The country he mentions is Romania. Well, bureaucracy is high, but like other said, no need to setup a company in advance. But, he saved anyway way to little m

by ccozan 9y ago

The country he mentions is Romania. Well, bureaucracy is high, but like other said, no need to setup a company in advance. But, he saved anyway way to little money ( I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON ) to be able to sustain him and an apartment. Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. However, since he's in Romania, he will get a job in no time, there's a chronic shortage of good developers.

rplnt 9y ago
I use USD when talking about "money things" on the Internet as well. Translates better to others, even those who don't use USD. Since you can see USD prices on every HW release, software, etc... most people have general idea of its value.
- anc84 9y ago
  Life costs are quite different in Romania though.
icelancer 9y ago
>>Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. Don't quit your job until your side gig is fully self-sufficient and you are being paid enough to cover bills/food/necessities and you have a few months saved up for emergencies and such. If you can't work 40 hours per week at a basic job (and squeeze in a few hours of at least thinking/reading about your side project, if not actually coding/writing) and work another 20-60 on your side gig, you probably don't like it enough or have enough passion for it to sustain it even if you hit your stride.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Depends on why you can't, no? If it's lack of interest, sure, but it may simply be that you have other obligations (e.g. familial). Plus, as others have said, releasing the game while employed may expose you to the risk of having your employer claim IP ownership.
  - leksak 9y ago
    Always read the contract very thoroughly, there can be a lot of gotcha's preventing you from striking out on your own on the side. IP, non-compete, and directly prohibiting working on the side as --- according to some --- this distracts you from their business.
- eptcyka 9y ago
  > you probably don't like it enough or have enough passion for it to sustain it even if you hit your stride. With all due respect, I am obliged to invite you to ingest excrement. Whilst there might be some people out there who have everything they need to spend another 20 to 60 hours a week on a side gig besides passion, I believe that one needs to have a set of not so common circumstances to be able to devote 40-60 hours a week to something other than a job.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >> I believe that one needs to have a set of not so common circumstances to be able to devote 40-60 hours a week to something other than a job. I worked 50 hrs/week at my main job and another 40 until this one took off. All it took was not having much of a social life outside of it. There's nothing that difficult about it.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  100 hours a week is an insane amount to work. Depending on how much you sleep each day (and working this much is going to mean you'll end up sleeping longer) that's probably going to leave you less than than 3 hours each day to travel to/from work and eat. It doesn't matter how much passion you have for something, the majority of the population is not going to be to do this without slowly killing themselves. 60 hours per week is far more feasible (if you have few obligations outside of work), but I think that once that number starts increasing the number of people physically capable of working that long is going to drop very sharply.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    I average 80 hrs/week currently; married with two kids. When I was married, no kids, I was working 92 hrs/wk on average (have it tracked), 50 at my main, 42 on the side. I work three 16 hour days and three ~10 hour days (sometimes I take two days off and work another 16 hour day). One full day with my oldest child, and the other days I wake up very early and get home to do dinner and evening activities. >>the majority of the population is not going to be to do this without slowly killing themselves. We're talking about entrepreneurs, aren't we? People who want to make stuff? Yeah, they aren't the majority. I never said they were.
photonios 9y ago
That highly depends on which city you are in Romania. If you're in one of the bigger cities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi or Oradea) then it's going to be ok. If not, then you're screwed, unless you can work remote. At least, that has been my experience. There's also the thing that the average developer salaries are surprisingly low. They are well above the national average, but it's only the top 1-5% who really pulls in the money. The latest numbers I have seen is an average of 5300 RON net (1185 EUR). While the national average is at 2100 RON (485 EUR). The top 1-5% pulls in more than double the average: 10000 RON (2170 EUR), if not more. You're gonna need a salary like that to live comfortably. It makes sense for him to count in US dollars because even though prices for apartments and cars are expressed in euros in Romania, the rest off the world is still very much US dollar centric.
- oblio 9y ago
  You can live quite comfortably, even in Bucharest, with $1200, as a dev. No need to be in the top 10%.
- teniutza 9y ago
  Do you have any (online) references available for the average salaries? I'm quite interested in this but can't seem to find decent sources...
  - photonios 9y ago
    I work for a start-up and when we started we bought research on this. Let me see if I can share the report we got. I'll report back in a couple of hours.
- eb0la 9y ago
  I was in Cluj last year and was surprised to see an ad in the street saying "Are you a coder? Living in Floresti (a neigbothood)? Come send us a resume!". Salaries are low compared to the rest of Europe (and the US). But it sounds easy to get a tech job there.
  - 9y ago
coldtea 9y ago
>I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON The majority of his sales would be in USD (with EUR second, except if he especially marketed to European customers). And $ gives a standard reference across the world. For EUR many people around the world need to do the conversion first, but even someone in rural Nigeria or Polynesia would have a good grasp of the value of the $ compared to their local currency.
dagw 9y ago
I found strange that he is counting in USD He probably used USD for the same reason he wrote in english. 'everybody' outside the US knows, roughly, the value of a USD. Few people in the US knows the value of a a Euro.

by ccozan 9y ago

rplnt 9y ago

I use USD when talking about "money things" on the Internet as well. Translates better to others, even those who don't use USD. Since you can see USD prices on every HW release, software, etc... most people have general idea of its value.

anc84 9y ago
Life costs are quite different in Romania though.

icelancer 9y ago

>>Lessons learn: don't quit your job until you have some sale volume. Don't quit your job until your side gig is fully self-sufficient and you are being paid enough to cover bills/food/necessities and you have a few months saved up for emergencies and such. If you can't work 40 hours per week at a basic job (and squeeze in a few hours of at least thinking/reading about your side project, if not actually coding/writing) and work another 20-60 on your side gig, you probably don't like it enough or have enough passion for it to sustain it even if you hit your stride.

icebraining 9y ago
Depends on why you can't, no? If it's lack of interest, sure, but it may simply be that you have other obligations (e.g. familial). Plus, as others have said, releasing the game while employed may expose you to the risk of having your employer claim IP ownership.
- leksak 9y ago
  Always read the contract very thoroughly, there can be a lot of gotcha's preventing you from striking out on your own on the side. IP, non-compete, and directly prohibiting working on the side as --- according to some --- this distracts you from their business.
eptcyka 9y ago
> you probably don't like it enough or have enough passion for it to sustain it even if you hit your stride. With all due respect, I am obliged to invite you to ingest excrement. Whilst there might be some people out there who have everything they need to spend another 20 to 60 hours a week on a side gig besides passion, I believe that one needs to have a set of not so common circumstances to be able to devote 40-60 hours a week to something other than a job.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >> I believe that one needs to have a set of not so common circumstances to be able to devote 40-60 hours a week to something other than a job. I worked 50 hrs/week at my main job and another 40 until this one took off. All it took was not having much of a social life outside of it. There's nothing that difficult about it.
Sean1708 9y ago
100 hours a week is an insane amount to work. Depending on how much you sleep each day (and working this much is going to mean you'll end up sleeping longer) that's probably going to leave you less than than 3 hours each day to travel to/from work and eat. It doesn't matter how much passion you have for something, the majority of the population is not going to be to do this without slowly killing themselves. 60 hours per week is far more feasible (if you have few obligations outside of work), but I think that once that number starts increasing the number of people physically capable of working that long is going to drop very sharply.
- icelancer 9y ago
  I average 80 hrs/week currently; married with two kids. When I was married, no kids, I was working 92 hrs/wk on average (have it tracked), 50 at my main, 42 on the side. I work three 16 hour days and three ~10 hour days (sometimes I take two days off and work another 16 hour day). One full day with my oldest child, and the other days I wake up very early and get home to do dinner and evening activities. >>the majority of the population is not going to be to do this without slowly killing themselves. We're talking about entrepreneurs, aren't we? People who want to make stuff? Yeah, they aren't the majority. I never said they were.

photonios 9y ago

That highly depends on which city you are in Romania. If you're in one of the bigger cities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi or Oradea) then it's going to be ok. If not, then you're screwed, unless you can work remote. At least, that has been my experience. There's also the thing that the average developer salaries are surprisingly low. They are well above the national average, but it's only the top 1-5% who really pulls in the money. The latest numbers I have seen is an average of 5300 RON net (1185 EUR). While the national average is at 2100 RON (485 EUR). The top 1-5% pulls in more than double the average: 10000 RON (2170 EUR), if not more. You're gonna need a salary like that to live comfortably. It makes sense for him to count in US dollars because even though prices for apartments and cars are expressed in euros in Romania, the rest off the world is still very much US dollar centric.

oblio 9y ago
You can live quite comfortably, even in Bucharest, with $1200, as a dev. No need to be in the top 10%.
teniutza 9y ago
Do you have any (online) references available for the average salaries? I'm quite interested in this but can't seem to find decent sources...
- photonios 9y ago
  I work for a start-up and when we started we bought research on this. Let me see if I can share the report we got. I'll report back in a couple of hours.
eb0la 9y ago
I was in Cluj last year and was surprised to see an ad in the street saying "Are you a coder? Living in Floresti (a neigbothood)? Come send us a resume!". Salaries are low compared to the rest of Europe (and the US). But it sounds easy to get a tech job there.
- 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

>I found strange that he is counting in USD, since euro is de facto currency, besides the RON The majority of his sales would be in USD (with EUR second, except if he especially marketed to European customers). And $ gives a standard reference across the world. For EUR many people around the world need to do the conversion first, but even someone in rural Nigeria or Polynesia would have a good grasp of the value of the $ compared to their local currency.

dagw 9y ago

I found strange that he is counting in USD He probably used USD for the same reason he wrote in english. 'everybody' outside the US knows, roughly, the value of a USD. Few people in the US knows the value of a a Euro.