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> I'm forever grateful that I actually get FAANG salary to do this -- I wouldn't keep it up if I was getting the little-to-noting many FOSS contributors get. I

by grecy 6y ago

> I'm forever grateful that I actually get FAANG salary to do this -- I wouldn't keep it up if I was getting the little-to-noting many FOSS contributors get. I wonder if you have any tips or advice for other people out there maintaining FOSS projects who are struggling to get paid for their work. How can a person in that scenario move closer to what you've got going on?

stingraycharles 6y ago
I suspect the project was started by a FAANG business, eg React or something like that.
- heyoni 6y ago
  React isn’t something we all use, as OP implied...on the other hand, OP might be maintaining a left padding package!
  - bigiain 6y ago
    I'm now imagining a stream of hysterical entitled feature request demands from users of leftpad.js... "This dumb library doesn't left pad correctly when I'm standing on my head. FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY or I'll change to an alternative library and leave a 1 star Yelp review! What kind of clueless amateurs are you? You call yourself 'developers'???"
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    He implied that we all heard of it, but it’s besides the point I was trying to make — rather than starting an OSS project in the hopes some FAANG company may sponsor it, it may very well be a project started by such a company instead. Ie its not likely something you can “grow” a project into.
dodobirdlord 6y ago
I suspect that what meetups323 means is that they work for a FAANG company on a piece of software that company uses that is also open-source, not that it's their own FOSS project and it draws them a FAANG-equivalent salary.
TheDong 6y ago
One possible path here is to build something so close to a company that you're likely to end up getting hired to maintain it. One notable example is the author of the "boto" aws SDK (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/big-news-regarding-python-boto-and-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/big-news-regarding-python-b...), who was hired by amazon to keep working on it. It still took 6 years for him to get hired. The majority of projects like this end up not resulting in hires to work on that project (though they can result in hires pretty easily to do other work at the company). A second path is to join a faang company that does OSS work, specifically on a team that does so. You could join facebook on the react team, google on the chromium/android/go team, etc etc. In all of those teams, you'll probably be a small cog in the machine for a while, but if you persevere, it's possible to create an adjacent project that you own. It's much easier to split out into your own company-paid-for OSS work from a team that already does OSS work. This option is unquestionably the easiest path. It's still not easy. A third path is to build something that is valuable enough to be acquired, but coincidentally is open source, and then make it remaining open source a condition of being acquired. Zulip managed this route when dropbox acquired them, and there's a few other examples, but this is a very hard route. Notice that none of these examples are great for most open source projects. Those options mostly require you to change the OSS projects you work on from what you want to something a faang wants you to work on. To get paid a faang salary working on your own project of your own invention is practically impossible without incredible luck, or being a principal engineer (i.e. guido getting paid by google to work on python, rob pike to create go, other examples certainly exist). My recommendation? If you want a faang salary to do oss work, but are okay compromising on the project, pick the faang company with a project closest to what you want to do and get hired for that oss project specifically. If you'd rather work on your oss project than have a faang salary to work on someone else's project, then that's great! You have the passion to work on your foss thing, and that's a good sign. Keep working on it, and understand that your chance of making any money is almost nil.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
In my case, it took about 20 years. I don't make the FAANG money because I prefer to pay other contributors, but the project raises that much. I was willing and able to sit back and enjoy the ride. YMMV.
pabs3 6y ago
There are a number of resources for getting paid to work on FOSS on the FOSSjobs wiki: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
umanwizard 6y ago
The realistic answer is to abandon your personal project and get hired to work on one of the many open source teams within Google or Facebook.

by grecy 6y ago

stingraycharles 6y ago

I suspect the project was started by a FAANG business, eg React or something like that.

heyoni 6y ago
React isn’t something we all use, as OP implied...on the other hand, OP might be maintaining a left padding package!
- bigiain 6y ago
  I'm now imagining a stream of hysterical entitled feature request demands from users of leftpad.js... "This dumb library doesn't left pad correctly when I'm standing on my head. FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY or I'll change to an alternative library and leave a 1 star Yelp review! What kind of clueless amateurs are you? You call yourself 'developers'???"
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  He implied that we all heard of it, but it’s besides the point I was trying to make — rather than starting an OSS project in the hopes some FAANG company may sponsor it, it may very well be a project started by such a company instead. Ie its not likely something you can “grow” a project into.

dodobirdlord 6y ago

I suspect that what meetups323 means is that they work for a FAANG company on a piece of software that company uses that is also open-source, not that it's their own FOSS project and it draws them a FAANG-equivalent salary.

TheDong 6y ago

One possible path here is to build something so close to a company that you're likely to end up getting hired to maintain it. One notable example is the author of the "boto" aws SDK (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/big-news-regarding-python-boto-and-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/big-news-regarding-python-b...), who was hired by amazon to keep working on it. It still took 6 years for him to get hired. The majority of projects like this end up not resulting in hires to work on that project (though they can result in hires pretty easily to do other work at the company). A second path is to join a faang company that does OSS work, specifically on a team that does so. You could join facebook on the react team, google on the chromium/android/go team, etc etc. In all of those teams, you'll probably be a small cog in the machine for a while, but if you persevere, it's possible to create an adjacent project that you own. It's much easier to split out into your own company-paid-for OSS work from a team that already does OSS work. This option is unquestionably the easiest path. It's still not easy. A third path is to build something that is valuable enough to be acquired, but coincidentally is open source, and then make it remaining open source a condition of being acquired. Zulip managed this route when dropbox acquired them, and there's a few other examples, but this is a very hard route. Notice that none of these examples are great for most open source projects. Those options mostly require you to change the OSS projects you work on from what you want to something a faang wants you to work on. To get paid a faang salary working on your own project of your own invention is practically impossible without incredible luck, or being a principal engineer (i.e. guido getting paid by google to work on python, rob pike to create go, other examples certainly exist). My recommendation? If you want a faang salary to do oss work, but are okay compromising on the project, pick the faang company with a project closest to what you want to do and get hired for that oss project specifically. If you'd rather work on your oss project than have a faang salary to work on someone else's project, then that's great! You have the passion to work on your foss thing, and that's a good sign. Keep working on it, and understand that your chance of making any money is almost nil.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

In my case, it took about 20 years. I don't make the FAANG money because I prefer to pay other contributors, but the project raises that much. I was willing and able to sit back and enjoy the ride. YMMV.

pabs3 6y ago

There are a number of resources for getting paid to work on FOSS on the FOSSjobs wiki: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

umanwizard 6y ago

The realistic answer is to abandon your personal project and get hired to work on one of the many open source teams within Google or Facebook.