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This is a interesting topic because it exposes one of the great sins developers commit - we don’t pay each other. I’m not talking about nickel and dimeing your

This is a interesting topic because it exposes one of the great sins developers commit - we don’t pay each other. I’m not talking about nickel and dimeing your fraternity, but there is certainly a reasonable price for a lot of these packages and plug-ins we install that can create financial autonomy for a lot of people via modest efforts.

fierarul 6y ago
Developers are the toughest customers because we all think: "that's just a small script and a cron job" done in a weekend and basically worth $0. All the while staying each day in a meeting costing a cumulative $xx(x) just to announce what the job for today is.
- Veserv 6y ago
  I agree that is part of the problem, but I think the real problem is that even if you accept the premise that it would take just a weekend it is still the wrong analysis for the company. Even a job that you can complete in an hour is easily $100-200 worth of direct engineering costs. I think the real problem is that most developers naturally plug in the value of their time on a hobby project/in school (which is ~$0/hr) when deciding if a time-cost tradeoff is worthwhile. Since the answer is almost always no if you incorrectly value time at $0/hr and management usually can not do the analysis themselves, management pattern matches and determines that spending money on developer tooling is essentially never worthwhile and that sums like $5k (which few people would spend on personal projects) are outrageous. If the correct time-value analysis was done, you would get outcomes more like electrical engineers (who generally make less than high-end software developers) where companies will spend literally $50k/yr/engineer on tooling to make them 50% more productive since that actually makes perfect business sense based on the amount they are being paid. In contrast, if you went to management in a software company pushing for a $50k/yr/developer expense they would probably laugh you out of the room or require some totally outrageous improvement like 10x for everybody.
  - fierarul 6y ago
    Indeed, this is visible at personal and corporate level. I've seen companies balk at a Total Commander license which is negligible. I've also had corporate procurement waste my time on a project for a potential $200 sale which never materialized.
imhoguy 6y ago
On the other hand devs in corporation usualy have no spending budget. Going thru official management ask and procurement process is a real PITA. The last thing a dev wants is drowning in a red tape swamp. I do sometimes pay for software with my own cash. However that is mostly limited to personal productivity tools because I can't transfer licenses to the company.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. Of course, we’d have to create a marketplace that has modest price points. The marketplace isn’t supposed to be filled with enterprise grade Jira solutions that cost - I can’t even imagine what it costs. I’m not above paying a few bucks for all these things that I’ve used in my project if it was as seamless as npm install. But it’s not. Some take donations, some take bitcoin, some have a enterprise version with their own payment portal, some require you to call their sales staff, etc. There is a ton of friction here. For these things to become profitable means we as developers have more places to generate income, it’s a win win.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    > It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. +1 insightful. I wonder when we'll see the first company do that. (I must admit, though, I've never worked at a company that offered me free food, beer, budget for gear, books, or anything else. They might as well be silicon valley myths. I have worked a few places with an on-site vending machine, where you pay for the snacks.)
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      It’s a tough one for sure. We recently had a whole debate about whether we should buy a solution that charges about $450. This is a company with a lot of revenue. No point in being cheap about this. I attributed it to the friction involved, which will require a mindset change. Society, in general, is oddly cheap when it really doesn’t have to be. You won’t become millionaires by saving a few thousand bucks (at the company level) by forgoing decent things. No way to live.

fierarul 6y ago

Developers are the toughest customers because we all think: "that's just a small script and a cron job" done in a weekend and basically worth $0. All the while staying each day in a meeting costing a cumulative $xx(x) just to announce what the job for today is.

Veserv 6y ago
I agree that is part of the problem, but I think the real problem is that even if you accept the premise that it would take just a weekend it is still the wrong analysis for the company. Even a job that you can complete in an hour is easily $100-200 worth of direct engineering costs. I think the real problem is that most developers naturally plug in the value of their time on a hobby project/in school (which is ~$0/hr) when deciding if a time-cost tradeoff is worthwhile. Since the answer is almost always no if you incorrectly value time at $0/hr and management usually can not do the analysis themselves, management pattern matches and determines that spending money on developer tooling is essentially never worthwhile and that sums like $5k (which few people would spend on personal projects) are outrageous. If the correct time-value analysis was done, you would get outcomes more like electrical engineers (who generally make less than high-end software developers) where companies will spend literally $50k/yr/engineer on tooling to make them 50% more productive since that actually makes perfect business sense based on the amount they are being paid. In contrast, if you went to management in a software company pushing for a $50k/yr/developer expense they would probably laugh you out of the room or require some totally outrageous improvement like 10x for everybody.
- fierarul 6y ago
  Indeed, this is visible at personal and corporate level. I've seen companies balk at a Total Commander license which is negligible. I've also had corporate procurement waste my time on a project for a potential $200 sale which never materialized.

imhoguy 6y ago

On the other hand devs in corporation usualy have no spending budget. Going thru official management ask and procurement process is a real PITA. The last thing a dev wants is drowning in a red tape swamp. I do sometimes pay for software with my own cash. However that is mostly limited to personal productivity tools because I can't transfer licenses to the company.

runawaybottle 6y ago
It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. Of course, we’d have to create a marketplace that has modest price points. The marketplace isn’t supposed to be filled with enterprise grade Jira solutions that cost - I can’t even imagine what it costs. I’m not above paying a few bucks for all these things that I’ve used in my project if it was as seamless as npm install. But it’s not. Some take donations, some take bitcoin, some have a enterprise version with their own payment portal, some require you to call their sales staff, etc. There is a ton of friction here. For these things to become profitable means we as developers have more places to generate income, it’s a win win.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > It’ll have to be cultural shift. The same way you get free food and beer, or a budget to buy your own gear, we need to start allocating a no-nonsense dev budget to get licenses. +1 insightful. I wonder when we'll see the first company do that. (I must admit, though, I've never worked at a company that offered me free food, beer, budget for gear, books, or anything else. They might as well be silicon valley myths. I have worked a few places with an on-site vending machine, where you pay for the snacks.)
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    It’s a tough one for sure. We recently had a whole debate about whether we should buy a solution that charges about $450. This is a company with a lot of revenue. No point in being cheap about this. I attributed it to the friction involved, which will require a mindset change. Society, in general, is oddly cheap when it really doesn’t have to be. You won’t become millionaires by saving a few thousand bucks (at the company level) by forgoing decent things. No way to live.