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I totally understand this move, but I would rather find a way to subsidize open source development that at least comes close to being able to pay FANG level sal

I totally understand this move, but I would rather find a way to subsidize open source development that at least comes close to being able to pay FANG level salaries. It sucks to put a decision in front of someone that they can work on open source, but they'll have to take a massive pay cut and be more selective about where they live. I love NYC. I want to do open source and I want to live in comfort in this city.

ghaff 8y ago
Many people at large employers do work on open source. Including some with large Manhattan offices. But living in comfort in NYC is a high bar and your options are fairly limited to work in open source, especially if you want to do so exclusively.
ForHackernews 8y ago
In most cases, choosing to do creative or socially worthwhile work will result in lower pay. Corporate jobs pay a premium to get employees because the work they offer is boring, harmful to others, or otherwise unpleasant. I would not expect writing open source software to be an exception to this general rule.
- woah 8y ago
  There are a lot of open source projects that are boring and harmful to others but that doesn’t mean that they pay well
pavlov 8y ago
The FANGs employ a lot of engineers to work on open source — and so do many other companies, from IBM to Walmart. That's enormous corporate subsidy of open source development. The opportunities today to get paid for writing free software are amazing compared to twenty years ago.
- pauldix 8y ago
  Of course, but those opportunities within those companies are few and far between comparatively. Engineers that get to work on OSS full time probably represent less than a fraction of a percent of their engineering workforce. I think Wes was talking more about places where more/most developers work on OSS full time, which was what I was talking about. The vast majority of code produced by FANG is closed and proprietary.
- xcppp 8y ago
  And the actual output is pretty embarrassing compared to true open source. It's either churning around an existing code base or some strategic lock-in scheme.
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  Corporate open source is often an attempt to take or crush competition rather than give. When's the last time you've heard anything credible about Linux on the Desktop? IBM doesn't care about it. Google doesn't care about it. Android is a zombie operating system that keeps Apple from having a viable competitor. Companies will block bot access via http and then hire a PR agency to congratulate them for providing an API that lets you access 10% of what you can do with the web site with much more complex code. (eg. this is the authentication process) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ObCoCm61s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ObCoCm61s Read between the lines and you'll see that Google is pushing Tensorflow because they'd rather you upload your data to their cloud to run on their processors and they'd rather you not take advantage of the latest NVIDIA drivers because they hate the idea that you'd buy NVIDIA chips or own your own computer for that matter. It also is not fair to say that open source development is "subsidized", if anything it is the exact opposite. Open source software creates billions and billions of dollars of value that is not being captured by the people who create it. Open source software subsidizes IBM, Google, ... Why do people do it? It might seem irrational, it certainly is from a dollar and cents perspective, but I think a lot of people reach the point where they realize that working at a place like Jane Street makes you a Negative Net Productivity Programmer no matter how hard or how smart you work and that if you want to be anything more than an 0.1x developer you have to get out from under the thumb of the "cult of product" and the scum-sucking lying rat bastards who sell enterprise software. Thus you have people like Wes who should be billionaires (or at least tenured) in terms of the value they give to society, and then you have "useful idiots" like Sheryl Steinberg who are allegedly intelligent, but would have run the first moment they heard anything about George Soros but no... She should have been fired for that, but no, we'll just have to wait another 10 years for Facebook to become the next Yahoo and get bought by some phone company like Frontier.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    >When's the last time you've heard anything credible about Linux on the Desktop? IBM doesn't care about it. Google doesn't care about it. Why would two companies who don't build desktops care about a desktop OS?
    - 8y ago
mlinksva 8y ago
> I love NYC. I want to do open source and I want to live in comfort in this city. Godspeed. I'm all for subsidizing open source development, at a level that can probably only come from taxes. One _tiny_ step in this direction was recently proposed by https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1065278677649432576 https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1065278677649432576 (let federal research grants fund open source). Still the above quote really exemplifies for me what the last several years have struck me as the artist-ification of a segment of developers: expectation of creative control and compensation, at once, with very low barriers to entry. At the same time we seem to have a bifurcation of developer compensation, not as extreme as with artists (though maybe even more extreme if FANG founders counted as developers), perhaps more like lawyers, though the evidence I guess is unclear https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ I doubt subsidy of open source development is going to produce a large number of FANG level compensated positions, unless that is an explicit policy choice, with high barriers to entry for such funding. But it could produce a large number of "living wage" positions. Also have to look at the living cost side, which in elite cities is exacerbated by subsidies to property owners and elite industries such as finance. For "living wage" positions occupied by subsidized artists, developers, or a host of less desirable jobs, to be comfortable in elite cities, subsidies to elites have to be cut and/or elites have to be taxed so that their demand goes down. Also of course allow cheap housing.

ghaff 8y ago

Many people at large employers do work on open source. Including some with large Manhattan offices. But living in comfort in NYC is a high bar and your options are fairly limited to work in open source, especially if you want to do so exclusively.

ForHackernews 8y ago

In most cases, choosing to do creative or socially worthwhile work will result in lower pay. Corporate jobs pay a premium to get employees because the work they offer is boring, harmful to others, or otherwise unpleasant. I would not expect writing open source software to be an exception to this general rule.

woah 8y ago
There are a lot of open source projects that are boring and harmful to others but that doesn’t mean that they pay well

pavlov 8y ago

The FANGs employ a lot of engineers to work on open source — and so do many other companies, from IBM to Walmart. That's enormous corporate subsidy of open source development. The opportunities today to get paid for writing free software are amazing compared to twenty years ago.

pauldix 8y ago
Of course, but those opportunities within those companies are few and far between comparatively. Engineers that get to work on OSS full time probably represent less than a fraction of a percent of their engineering workforce. I think Wes was talking more about places where more/most developers work on OSS full time, which was what I was talking about. The vast majority of code produced by FANG is closed and proprietary.
xcppp 8y ago
And the actual output is pretty embarrassing compared to true open source. It's either churning around an existing code base or some strategic lock-in scheme.
PaulHoule 8y ago
Corporate open source is often an attempt to take or crush competition rather than give. When's the last time you've heard anything credible about Linux on the Desktop? IBM doesn't care about it. Google doesn't care about it. Android is a zombie operating system that keeps Apple from having a viable competitor. Companies will block bot access via http and then hire a PR agency to congratulate them for providing an API that lets you access 10% of what you can do with the web site with much more complex code. (eg. this is the authentication process) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ObCoCm61s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ObCoCm61s Read between the lines and you'll see that Google is pushing Tensorflow because they'd rather you upload your data to their cloud to run on their processors and they'd rather you not take advantage of the latest NVIDIA drivers because they hate the idea that you'd buy NVIDIA chips or own your own computer for that matter. It also is not fair to say that open source development is "subsidized", if anything it is the exact opposite. Open source software creates billions and billions of dollars of value that is not being captured by the people who create it. Open source software subsidizes IBM, Google, ... Why do people do it? It might seem irrational, it certainly is from a dollar and cents perspective, but I think a lot of people reach the point where they realize that working at a place like Jane Street makes you a Negative Net Productivity Programmer no matter how hard or how smart you work and that if you want to be anything more than an 0.1x developer you have to get out from under the thumb of the "cult of product" and the scum-sucking lying rat bastards who sell enterprise software. Thus you have people like Wes who should be billionaires (or at least tenured) in terms of the value they give to society, and then you have "useful idiots" like Sheryl Steinberg who are allegedly intelligent, but would have run the first moment they heard anything about George Soros but no... She should have been fired for that, but no, we'll just have to wait another 10 years for Facebook to become the next Yahoo and get bought by some phone company like Frontier.
- freehunter 8y ago
  >When's the last time you've heard anything credible about Linux on the Desktop? IBM doesn't care about it. Google doesn't care about it. Why would two companies who don't build desktops care about a desktop OS?
  - 8y ago

mlinksva 8y ago

> I love NYC. I want to do open source and I want to live in comfort in this city. Godspeed. I'm all for subsidizing open source development, at a level that can probably only come from taxes. One _tiny_ step in this direction was recently proposed by https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1065278677649432576 https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1065278677649432576 (let federal research grants fund open source). Still the above quote really exemplifies for me what the last several years have struck me as the artist-ification of a segment of developers: expectation of creative control and compensation, at once, with very low barriers to entry. At the same time we seem to have a bifurcation of developer compensation, not as extreme as with artists (though maybe even more extreme if FANG founders counted as developers), perhaps more like lawyers, though the evidence I guess is unclear https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ I doubt subsidy of open source development is going to produce a large number of FANG level compensated positions, unless that is an explicit policy choice, with high barriers to entry for such funding. But it could produce a large number of "living wage" positions. Also have to look at the living cost side, which in elite cities is exacerbated by subsidies to property owners and elite industries such as finance. For "living wage" positions occupied by subsidized artists, developers, or a host of less desirable jobs, to be comfortable in elite cities, subsidies to elites have to be cut and/or elites have to be taxed so that their demand goes down. Also of course allow cheap housing.