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I’m now a full-time professional open source maintainer

639 points by chmaynard 4y ago

zabzonk 4y ago
[flagged]
mastabadtomm 4y ago
That's great but his experience is totally unique. My side project is used by at least 10 companies. Some of them are tech giants. My total earnings are -300 USD and 5 years of development time.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  [dead]
- mromanuk 4y ago
  What is your project?
  - mastabadtomm 4y ago
    It's Olric: https://github.com/buraksezer/olric https://github.com/buraksezer/olric. Publicly speaking about the companies may not be a good idea but you can dig into the issues, pull requests, and Discord channel if you are curious.
robertlagrant 4y ago
TL;DR: author invents contracting; explains it.
- hypfer 4y ago
  In beloved memory of n-gate?
Avshalom 4y ago
I dunno how much of this is just low-key advertising for their sponsors but... congrats, good job, living the dream!
- dcow 4y ago
  I suspect there's a sideline wink and handshake agreement to feature associated companies and indirectly promote them as case studies, etc. as the maintainer maintains. Not that that changes anything this is still a great arrangement and hopefully a positive example for our industry, but Smallstep and Tailscale are both trying to gain an authoritative hold in the production identity space and a little name dropping here and there by <famous dev> certainly doesn't hurt (:
gerdesj 4y ago
"... I spend most of my time on maintenance, and I offer retainers to companies that benefit from my work and from access to my planning and my expertise. I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package" Well done and keep it up! I highly recommend that you find say two other individuals like yourself and form a triumvirate. An individual can have trouble taking time off, dealing with life's inevitable adversity etc. That can work well for a fledgling org because two can out vote the one who gets it "wrong". This model does require a certain amount of trust and the ability to accept being wrong. Then you take on staff ...
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  I'm so isolated. I never got a degree in this field and I don't socialize much. So I feel permanently trapped working for a company. It sucks, but not enough apparently to get me to change.
- the-rc 4y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering how his kind of arrangement could work if one needed or wanted to take weeks/months off at a time. The traditional model based on features or projects might be a better fit, unless one partners with others as you describe.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  A few people seem to agree with me, so to flesh this out a bit: Not all of us are going to fly a unicorn to a glorious multi billionaire finish. Most of us would like to be able to sleep at night, have a reasonably comfortable income and basically "get by". As this is HN, I will require a certain amount of "get up and go" but not too much! I fell into the triumvirate thing 23 years ago. I became an IT contractor at a helicopter factory in the UK around 1996. Helpdesk n that. I learned quite a lot quite quickly and by 1999 ("party like it's") I was in the NETS team - sysadmin land. 2000 - we were Facility Managed off to ... ourselves and our company was started. I was recruited by two other NETS chaps to be the MD of their idea. It wasn't my idea. So we have three blokes with equal shares of a nascent company. It works really well out of the box. Two can always gang up on one. We would have screaming arguments about direction or whatever but in the end there was always resolution. 23 years later, it still works. The three of us are quite different but we do completely trust each other. The trust thing is where my advice might become unhinged but the model is still very decent 8)
boobiemaster 4y ago
So... What's the paycheck like?
- loeg 4y ago
  In the very first paragraph of the linked article, there is this clause which may provide some clarity: > I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package He goes on to write, > My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so it varied wildly. What I’m earning now per year is: slightly less than my first year at Google (which included a significant signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in 2021 (when the signing stock grant overlapped with three stock refreshes, and $GOOG was at record highs), and more than I would have made in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting for all benefits on one side and the salary of my assistant on the other side).
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    Good info at least to know that becoming a sustainable open-source maintainer requires "even accounting for the salary of my assistant" kind of money
    - simonw 4y ago
      I don't think that's the message here. You don't /need/ that kind of money to work full-time on open source if you're happy to keep to a lower cost of living. The biggest cost involved in full time open source work is opportunity cost. If you have the skills to maintain a popular open source project, you could almost certainly be earning $250,000/year or more at one of the big tech companies.
  - davidw 4y ago
    That's good money, rather than 'starving artist' wages.
    - unity1001 4y ago
      Patreon kind of ended that 'starving artist' thing recently...
simonw 4y ago
This article is fantastic. Really great to see how Filippo is getting this to work, and in so much detail. As someone who frequently complains about all of the administrative overhead this kind of lifestyle requires I appreciated the footnote pointing out that dentists have the same problem and just get on with it. That said... as a self-employed mostly full time open source maintainer myself I do often think about how much I would appreciate some kind of agency or talent management relationship that would take a bunch of that off my hands. It works for Hollywood, why can't we have that in tech too?
- intelVISA 4y ago
  So it's kinda like a music tribute group but in the software world? Substituting for something that may be gone (the original FOSS author(s)) but for the die-hard fans who don't want to let go?
- ahmedalsudani 4y ago
  In medicine those kinds of arrangements exist, but they charge 30% (I forget if it's off the top or the bottom).
  - bongobingo1 4y ago
    > off the top or the bottom What does that mean? The difference between the two I mean.
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      If you hire them you don't have to know the answer to questions like that!
    - jaxn 4y ago
      Top line (revenue) Bottom line (profit)
    - gerdesj 4y ago
      I think it means who is charged. Top is the customer and bottom is the supplier. If you charge the "bottom" then that might be passed up to the "top" or not. It depends what the "middle" does. The middle might absorb the cost or pass it up to the end customer.
samsquire 4y ago
> Long term, I want this model to grow beyond me and become a known professional path. This experiment is both easier and harder for me than it will be for those after me: easier because I have an extensive personal network and the financial means to safely take risks; harder because it’s uncharted territory for both me and the clients and because there’s a lack of legal, administrative, and marketing tools. I hope that as things progress the barriers will lower, making the model accessible to more and more people. I feel this is attitude is honourable and should be commended for its wholesome goodness. I really like your attitude in trying to raise opportunities for software engineers and normalise paying for software maintenance. Do people really enjoy paying for software? Do people actually just pay for bespoke development when they pay for software engineers with the silent industry wide acceptance that software is custom created and not for sharing outside that company. I'm thinking of your custom development for a wordpress blog for a small business or an ERP installation for a particular large organisation. I feel the independent software vendor market for desktop software has stalled. Antivirus is supplanted by Windows Defender, except for Photoshop and some audiocreative software that everyone uses, I don't see the popularity of download websites that there was in the late 90s early 2000s when I was growing up. I feel, as a software engineer I would like to love a codebase more, to do the things how I truly want to do them, but am held back by financial obligations and for my employer to be rewarded for shipping. In my observations of internet comments, even software engineers and people don't enjoy buying software packages unless it is an application on a mobile device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com What would everyone dream's computer tech jobs be? Building web apps, desktop apps, videogames, business software, mobile apps?
- nine_k 4y ago
  Find a problem people have, especially less engineering-type people, which you would love to help them solve. (Not "solve for them"; it's always a mutual process.) Wherever people use Excel as the centerpiece of their work, there is an opportunity to help improve things, for fun and profit :) In general, most opportunities lie on the seams between well-understood areas. Knowing more than one area helps. Many of these opportunities are too small for hockey-stick growth which VCs crave, or for huge contracts which large corporations desire. They are perfectly sufficient for a mid-size sustainable business though. Specialized things, like the bespoke work on and around open-source software from the post. With any luck, that work may be pleasant.
dopylitty 4y ago
Wow, the footnote about dentists surprised me because I just found out about this company [0] (and apparently it’s one of many[1]) that just stamps out pre-built dentist offices all over the US with all the equipment and staff included. All they need is the dentist. It’s honestly super creepy how generic they all are and how many middlemen end up involved in your dental care. 0: https://heartland.com/denovo/ https://heartland.com/denovo/ 1: https://www.theadso.org/ https://www.theadso.org/
- simonw 4y ago
  Wow, TIL about the Association of Dental Support Organizations. Now I'm imagining a future where independent open source maintainers are common and successful enough that there's a conference for the Association of Open Source Maintainer Support Organizations.
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  I heard it first time too but I don't find it creepy. Actually, I want more fields run like that.
bagmong 4y ago
[flagged]
- archgoon 4y ago
  Part of being successful here is tooting one's horn.
edfletcher_t137 4y ago
> which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers Yeah, if you're Filippo Valsorda. Not sure that "proves the thesis" broadly whatsoever, though.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  The bloke has found some measure of success that HN readers might generally applaud. To be fair: he has only generated a single data point and not enough for a "thesis".
- vxNsr 4y ago
  I think the main caveat is “Senior” and he means fairly senior at that anyone less will definitely have trouble, but if you’ve been in the industry 10-15 years and are looking to be your own boss and are very competent, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to do this and make comparable compensation.
  - lhorie 4y ago
    As someone with more than 15 years of experience and who has leveraged my open source work to improve my own career, my two cents is that GP has a fairly sober view on OSS as a job: Filippo is an outlier among outliers. Most people simply don't have the opportunity to build a reputation from multi-year, full time, corporate sponsored open source work on a high visibility project to leverage when leaving a cushy job to pursue higher rungs in Maslow's pyramid. "Possible" is very different than "likely".
    - lmeyerov 4y ago
      Yes. This is a variant of building an OSS project using company funds then leaving the company to commercialize it. It's a real path, but requires taking advantage of years of corporate largess. Not impossible, but some big "if"s involved.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
dcow 4y ago
This is awesome for Filippo. I am curious what the average contract length will be (or is). 1/3/5/10yr? Essentially will there be enough time to maintain and not be searching for new contracts to cycle in? If it is indeed like enterprise sales, it takes a long time to source, negotiate, and close a contract. Hopefully we can get an update a few years down the road.
treebot 4y ago
2 out of 5 of his clients are blockchain companies/orgs. I feel this path would be quite easy in blockchain, where almost all of the projects are open source
- ausudhz 4y ago
  That's because they must be open source, what other sense of accountability could you possibly give if you're asking money to a crowd upfront based on a piece of paper?
- est31 4y ago
  From the number of logos, it's 6 clients, and I would put 4 of them into the blockchain bucket, with smallstep and tailscale being the two non-blockchain exceptions. Also note that for blockchain projects, it's important that they associate themselves with famous people to give their projects credibility. So they are willing to pay huge amounts of money to get celebrities like him on board.
  - flockonus 4y ago
    On the 2nd statement, quite curious if that's true... if so, each of the companies will have at least a blog post, or tweet thread about the affiliation. If not true, you're probably reducing who is an efficient engineer who's worth their salt for their output.
    - input_sh 4y ago
      You're thinking of it the wrong way, think of it as a banner ad. If your open source project has a homepage, a fair amount of visitors, and a public list of sponsors, blockchain companies will pay for the highest tier to be on top of that list instead of going down the usual AdSense route. From their perspective it's a link from a respectable source that reaches their target audience (those into tech) on a permanent basis that even adblocks don't block. And it only costs them up to a couple of hundreds of bucks per month, way cheaper then traditional banner ads. Doesn't matter if what you're actually building has anything to with cryptocurrencies, but of course having some touching ground works even better.
twodave 4y ago
Honestly if you have to be a reasonably-well-known public figure to pull this off then I’m not sure how accessible it really is. I’m reasonably well known in my own city, and I could maaaybe pull off this level of comp working on strictly for-profit initiatives? Very feast or famine though, to the point of not being worth the stress.
manmal 4y ago
How is this exact model different from regular freelancing? Taking on 6 clients at once is a bit much for my taste, there’s a lot of overhead involved usually. Now you not only need to manage various OSS communities, but also multiple clients and their expectations towards your contributions.
- simonw 4y ago
  They're not paying him to do custom freelance work for him. They're paying him to continue contributing to the projects that he is already maintaining. The higher tier plans also get what sounds like a few hours of custom consulting time (think calls with their team) per month.
  - manmal 4y ago
    And those paying clients won't want to influence the direction the project is taking?
    - simonw 4y ago
      That's described in the article: > it boils down to this: I go in, meet the engineers, and learn what parts of my projects they use and how; then, I keep those use cases in mind in my own planning and I reach out and involve them for feedback when there are relevant changes on the roadmap. This improves outcomes for everyone: I want my projects to work well for users (regardless of whether they are paying me) and no one wants to find out something’s wrong after the release. That model is expanded on here: https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/reciprocal/ https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/reciprocal/
      - manmal 4y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out. It's certainly more pleasant to work that way vs normal freelancing.
asim 4y ago
"I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package,[1] which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers." His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make you think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at your high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry. I was a nobody when I left my job to work on open source full time. It was a year before I found a corporate sponsor and that was only because my friend worked there and he understood the value of what I was working on. Patreon was laughable in terms of what came back. Just be fully aware as you read this. With existing brand and following you can do what he did, without it you'll struggle immensely like I did.
- pfortuny 4y ago
  The “thesis” he speaks about only needs one example to hold, and he is it. So, not much of a “thesis” but a data point. It is possible to survive a shark attack. Well, yes, but do not count on my to try.
- usr1106 4y ago
  With six clients one could think, ok it's not so expensive for them, but still sums up nicely for the developer. Still I think the situation is highly exceptional. Which employer/client would be happy with someone working for them only 1 day a week? And think about the adminstrative overhead for a single person to deal with 6 contracts all the time. With some clients the paperwork can be significant.
  - cosmodisk 4y ago
    The context switching is substantial with 6 clients, even if it's the same tech. As for 1 day per week: a very senior person can give good advice or point to the right direction. The company I work for isn't a tech company, but we do hire people to provide specialist knowledge and it doesn't require full time position to do so.
- lrvick 4y ago
  I quit my job a couple years ago and secured several small retainers over a few weeks using my network. My employer at the time generously agreed to be my first client to smooth the transition. Today I have am managing 8 active retainer clients, and regular 1-2 week audit contracts, while rarely working more than 40 hours a week. Virtually all code I write is open source, or on track to be so soon, and I only work with clients okay with that. I am making triple my previous salary, and am actually onboarding new team members as a "tier 1" to help me meet demand without overworking myself. I am a full stack security engineer with 20 years of experience, and most companies can't have access to senior security engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of $600k+ total comp, which they just can't afford. Instead I offer most companies start a retainer with my team and I for as little as 10 hours a month and we can be there when they need help with security architecture, important code reviews, risk assessments, conducting interviews, or just to help unblock people in general. This model is a win for companies that can't yet afford experienced full time security hires in house, and it is a win for me who can be in control of my time and life with higher income, and only have to focus on the most interesting problems of many different companies with minimal exposure to internal politics. I can't express how much happier I am. Best career choice I ever made. YMMV.
langsoul-com 4y ago
I wonder if one day we'd have companies that hire devs, then another company would contract them to work on specific open source packages. Seems like the easiest approach for a business. Finding a person then issuing a free lance contract is a lot of overhead.
- jpetso 4y ago
  There are a handful of these companies out there. Collabora, KDAB, D. Richard Hipp's SQLite company, and if you're lenient enough you could also include companies that productize their open source package such as NextCloud or The Qt Company. Heck, Red Hat (sorry, IBM) regularly gets pulled in to improve software across their stack, kernel or otherwise. You could also include non-profits like the Linux Foundation, Blender Foundation or (new!) Godot Foundation, which do the same thing but without having to disguise as consulting, because development of the software itself is important enough to the industry that can pool its resources by donating to the respective foundation. Still only works for important enough packages. I don't think there's a way around that. An open source project generally has to provide massively outsized value so that a handful of developers can capture a fraction of that value for paid maintenance.
  - tilladam 4y ago
    Speaking for KDAB, only a relatively small fraction of our overall revenue is paid work on open source codebases. We mostly get paid to work _with_ Free Software and to teach it to people. Living off of maintaining or improving Free Software is only sustainable for freelancers or small boutique companies. Even the big foundations don't fund all that much development, they mostly focus on governance, infrastructure and promotion. The Linux kernel is possibly an exception, in terms of feeding an appreciable number of people working on it professionally outside of a company directly selling it.

639 points by chmaynard 4y ago

[flagged]

That's great but his experience is totally unique. My side project is used by at least 10 companies. Some of them are tech giants. My total earnings are -300 USD and 5 years of development time.

yrgulation 4y ago
[dead]
mromanuk 4y ago
What is your project?
- mastabadtomm 4y ago
  It's Olric: https://github.com/buraksezer/olric https://github.com/buraksezer/olric. Publicly speaking about the companies may not be a good idea but you can dig into the issues, pull requests, and Discord channel if you are curious.

robertlagrant 4y ago

TL;DR: author invents contracting; explains it.

hypfer 4y ago
In beloved memory of n-gate?

Avshalom 4y ago

I dunno how much of this is just low-key advertising for their sponsors but... congrats, good job, living the dream!

dcow 4y ago
I suspect there's a sideline wink and handshake agreement to feature associated companies and indirectly promote them as case studies, etc. as the maintainer maintains. Not that that changes anything this is still a great arrangement and hopefully a positive example for our industry, but Smallstep and Tailscale are both trying to gain an authoritative hold in the production identity space and a little name dropping here and there by <famous dev> certainly doesn't hurt (:

gerdesj 4y ago

"... I spend most of my time on maintenance, and I offer retainers to companies that benefit from my work and from access to my planning and my expertise. I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package" Well done and keep it up! I highly recommend that you find say two other individuals like yourself and form a triumvirate. An individual can have trouble taking time off, dealing with life's inevitable adversity etc. That can work well for a fledgling org because two can out vote the one who gets it "wrong". This model does require a certain amount of trust and the ability to accept being wrong. Then you take on staff ...

flippinburgers 4y ago
I'm so isolated. I never got a degree in this field and I don't socialize much. So I feel permanently trapped working for a company. It sucks, but not enough apparently to get me to change.
the-rc 4y ago
Yeah, I was wondering how his kind of arrangement could work if one needed or wanted to take weeks/months off at a time. The traditional model based on features or projects might be a better fit, unless one partners with others as you describe.
gerdesj 4y ago
A few people seem to agree with me, so to flesh this out a bit: Not all of us are going to fly a unicorn to a glorious multi billionaire finish. Most of us would like to be able to sleep at night, have a reasonably comfortable income and basically "get by". As this is HN, I will require a certain amount of "get up and go" but not too much! I fell into the triumvirate thing 23 years ago. I became an IT contractor at a helicopter factory in the UK around 1996. Helpdesk n that. I learned quite a lot quite quickly and by 1999 ("party like it's") I was in the NETS team - sysadmin land. 2000 - we were Facility Managed off to ... ourselves and our company was started. I was recruited by two other NETS chaps to be the MD of their idea. It wasn't my idea. So we have three blokes with equal shares of a nascent company. It works really well out of the box. Two can always gang up on one. We would have screaming arguments about direction or whatever but in the end there was always resolution. 23 years later, it still works. The three of us are quite different but we do completely trust each other. The trust thing is where my advice might become unhinged but the model is still very decent 8)

boobiemaster 4y ago

So... What's the paycheck like?

loeg 4y ago
In the very first paragraph of the linked article, there is this clause which may provide some clarity: > I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package He goes on to write, > My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so it varied wildly. What I’m earning now per year is: slightly less than my first year at Google (which included a significant signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in 2021 (when the signing stock grant overlapped with three stock refreshes, and $GOOG was at record highs), and more than I would have made in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting for all benefits on one side and the salary of my assistant on the other side).
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Good info at least to know that becoming a sustainable open-source maintainer requires "even accounting for the salary of my assistant" kind of money
  - simonw 4y ago
    I don't think that's the message here. You don't /need/ that kind of money to work full-time on open source if you're happy to keep to a lower cost of living. The biggest cost involved in full time open source work is opportunity cost. If you have the skills to maintain a popular open source project, you could almost certainly be earning $250,000/year or more at one of the big tech companies.
- davidw 4y ago
  That's good money, rather than 'starving artist' wages.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Patreon kind of ended that 'starving artist' thing recently...

simonw 4y ago

This article is fantastic. Really great to see how Filippo is getting this to work, and in so much detail. As someone who frequently complains about all of the administrative overhead this kind of lifestyle requires I appreciated the footnote pointing out that dentists have the same problem and just get on with it. That said... as a self-employed mostly full time open source maintainer myself I do often think about how much I would appreciate some kind of agency or talent management relationship that would take a bunch of that off my hands. It works for Hollywood, why can't we have that in tech too?

intelVISA 4y ago
So it's kinda like a music tribute group but in the software world? Substituting for something that may be gone (the original FOSS author(s)) but for the die-hard fans who don't want to let go?
ahmedalsudani 4y ago
In medicine those kinds of arrangements exist, but they charge 30% (I forget if it's off the top or the bottom).
- bongobingo1 4y ago
  > off the top or the bottom What does that mean? The difference between the two I mean.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    If you hire them you don't have to know the answer to questions like that!
  - jaxn 4y ago
    Top line (revenue) Bottom line (profit)
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    I think it means who is charged. Top is the customer and bottom is the supplier. If you charge the "bottom" then that might be passed up to the "top" or not. It depends what the "middle" does. The middle might absorb the cost or pass it up to the end customer.

samsquire 4y ago

> Long term, I want this model to grow beyond me and become a known professional path. This experiment is both easier and harder for me than it will be for those after me: easier because I have an extensive personal network and the financial means to safely take risks; harder because it’s uncharted territory for both me and the clients and because there’s a lack of legal, administrative, and marketing tools. I hope that as things progress the barriers will lower, making the model accessible to more and more people. I feel this is attitude is honourable and should be commended for its wholesome goodness. I really like your attitude in trying to raise opportunities for software engineers and normalise paying for software maintenance. Do people really enjoy paying for software? Do people actually just pay for bespoke development when they pay for software engineers with the silent industry wide acceptance that software is custom created and not for sharing outside that company. I'm thinking of your custom development for a wordpress blog for a small business or an ERP installation for a particular large organisation. I feel the independent software vendor market for desktop software has stalled. Antivirus is supplanted by Windows Defender, except for Photoshop and some audiocreative software that everyone uses, I don't see the popularity of download websites that there was in the late 90s early 2000s when I was growing up. I feel, as a software engineer I would like to love a codebase more, to do the things how I truly want to do them, but am held back by financial obligations and for my employer to be rewarded for shipping. In my observations of internet comments, even software engineers and people don't enjoy buying software packages unless it is an application on a mobile device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com What would everyone dream's computer tech jobs be? Building web apps, desktop apps, videogames, business software, mobile apps?

nine_k 4y ago
Find a problem people have, especially less engineering-type people, which you would love to help them solve. (Not "solve for them"; it's always a mutual process.) Wherever people use Excel as the centerpiece of their work, there is an opportunity to help improve things, for fun and profit :) In general, most opportunities lie on the seams between well-understood areas. Knowing more than one area helps. Many of these opportunities are too small for hockey-stick growth which VCs crave, or for huge contracts which large corporations desire. They are perfectly sufficient for a mid-size sustainable business though. Specialized things, like the bespoke work on and around open-source software from the post. With any luck, that work may be pleasant.

dopylitty 4y ago

Wow, the footnote about dentists surprised me because I just found out about this company [0] (and apparently it’s one of many[1]) that just stamps out pre-built dentist offices all over the US with all the equipment and staff included. All they need is the dentist. It’s honestly super creepy how generic they all are and how many middlemen end up involved in your dental care. 0: https://heartland.com/denovo/ https://heartland.com/denovo/ 1: https://www.theadso.org/ https://www.theadso.org/

simonw 4y ago
Wow, TIL about the Association of Dental Support Organizations. Now I'm imagining a future where independent open source maintainers are common and successful enough that there's a conference for the Association of Open Source Maintainer Support Organizations.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
I heard it first time too but I don't find it creepy. Actually, I want more fields run like that.

bagmong 4y ago

[flagged]

archgoon 4y ago
Part of being successful here is tooting one's horn.

edfletcher_t137 4y ago

> which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers Yeah, if you're Filippo Valsorda. Not sure that "proves the thesis" broadly whatsoever, though.

gerdesj 4y ago
The bloke has found some measure of success that HN readers might generally applaud. To be fair: he has only generated a single data point and not enough for a "thesis".
vxNsr 4y ago
I think the main caveat is “Senior” and he means fairly senior at that anyone less will definitely have trouble, but if you’ve been in the industry 10-15 years and are looking to be your own boss and are very competent, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to do this and make comparable compensation.
- lhorie 4y ago
  As someone with more than 15 years of experience and who has leveraged my open source work to improve my own career, my two cents is that GP has a fairly sober view on OSS as a job: Filippo is an outlier among outliers. Most people simply don't have the opportunity to build a reputation from multi-year, full time, corporate sponsored open source work on a high visibility project to leverage when leaving a cushy job to pursue higher rungs in Maslow's pyramid. "Possible" is very different than "likely".
  - lmeyerov 4y ago
    Yes. This is a variant of building an OSS project using company funds then leaving the company to commercialize it. It's a real path, but requires taking advantage of years of corporate largess. Not impossible, but some big "if"s involved.
- withinboredom 4y ago

dcow 4y ago

This is awesome for Filippo. I am curious what the average contract length will be (or is). 1/3/5/10yr? Essentially will there be enough time to maintain and not be searching for new contracts to cycle in? If it is indeed like enterprise sales, it takes a long time to source, negotiate, and close a contract. Hopefully we can get an update a few years down the road.

treebot 4y ago

2 out of 5 of his clients are blockchain companies/orgs. I feel this path would be quite easy in blockchain, where almost all of the projects are open source

ausudhz 4y ago
That's because they must be open source, what other sense of accountability could you possibly give if you're asking money to a crowd upfront based on a piece of paper?
est31 4y ago
From the number of logos, it's 6 clients, and I would put 4 of them into the blockchain bucket, with smallstep and tailscale being the two non-blockchain exceptions. Also note that for blockchain projects, it's important that they associate themselves with famous people to give their projects credibility. So they are willing to pay huge amounts of money to get celebrities like him on board.
- flockonus 4y ago
  On the 2nd statement, quite curious if that's true... if so, each of the companies will have at least a blog post, or tweet thread about the affiliation. If not true, you're probably reducing who is an efficient engineer who's worth their salt for their output.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    You're thinking of it the wrong way, think of it as a banner ad. If your open source project has a homepage, a fair amount of visitors, and a public list of sponsors, blockchain companies will pay for the highest tier to be on top of that list instead of going down the usual AdSense route. From their perspective it's a link from a respectable source that reaches their target audience (those into tech) on a permanent basis that even adblocks don't block. And it only costs them up to a couple of hundreds of bucks per month, way cheaper then traditional banner ads. Doesn't matter if what you're actually building has anything to with cryptocurrencies, but of course having some touching ground works even better.

twodave 4y ago

Honestly if you have to be a reasonably-well-known public figure to pull this off then I’m not sure how accessible it really is. I’m reasonably well known in my own city, and I could maaaybe pull off this level of comp working on strictly for-profit initiatives? Very feast or famine though, to the point of not being worth the stress.

manmal 4y ago

How is this exact model different from regular freelancing? Taking on 6 clients at once is a bit much for my taste, there’s a lot of overhead involved usually. Now you not only need to manage various OSS communities, but also multiple clients and their expectations towards your contributions.

simonw 4y ago
They're not paying him to do custom freelance work for him. They're paying him to continue contributing to the projects that he is already maintaining. The higher tier plans also get what sounds like a few hours of custom consulting time (think calls with their team) per month.
- manmal 4y ago
  And those paying clients won't want to influence the direction the project is taking?
  - simonw 4y ago
    That's described in the article: > it boils down to this: I go in, meet the engineers, and learn what parts of my projects they use and how; then, I keep those use cases in mind in my own planning and I reach out and involve them for feedback when there are relevant changes on the roadmap. This improves outcomes for everyone: I want my projects to work well for users (regardless of whether they are paying me) and no one wants to find out something’s wrong after the release. That model is expanded on here: https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/reciprocal/ https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/reciprocal/
    - manmal 4y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. It's certainly more pleasant to work that way vs normal freelancing.

asim 4y ago

"I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package,[1] which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers." His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make you think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at your high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry. I was a nobody when I left my job to work on open source full time. It was a year before I found a corporate sponsor and that was only because my friend worked there and he understood the value of what I was working on. Patreon was laughable in terms of what came back. Just be fully aware as you read this. With existing brand and following you can do what he did, without it you'll struggle immensely like I did.

pfortuny 4y ago
The “thesis” he speaks about only needs one example to hold, and he is it. So, not much of a “thesis” but a data point. It is possible to survive a shark attack. Well, yes, but do not count on my to try.
usr1106 4y ago
With six clients one could think, ok it's not so expensive for them, but still sums up nicely for the developer. Still I think the situation is highly exceptional. Which employer/client would be happy with someone working for them only 1 day a week? And think about the adminstrative overhead for a single person to deal with 6 contracts all the time. With some clients the paperwork can be significant.
- cosmodisk 4y ago
  The context switching is substantial with 6 clients, even if it's the same tech. As for 1 day per week: a very senior person can give good advice or point to the right direction. The company I work for isn't a tech company, but we do hire people to provide specialist knowledge and it doesn't require full time position to do so.
lrvick 4y ago
I quit my job a couple years ago and secured several small retainers over a few weeks using my network. My employer at the time generously agreed to be my first client to smooth the transition. Today I have am managing 8 active retainer clients, and regular 1-2 week audit contracts, while rarely working more than 40 hours a week. Virtually all code I write is open source, or on track to be so soon, and I only work with clients okay with that. I am making triple my previous salary, and am actually onboarding new team members as a "tier 1" to help me meet demand without overworking myself. I am a full stack security engineer with 20 years of experience, and most companies can't have access to senior security engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of $600k+ total comp, which they just can't afford. Instead I offer most companies start a retainer with my team and I for as little as 10 hours a month and we can be there when they need help with security architecture, important code reviews, risk assessments, conducting interviews, or just to help unblock people in general. This model is a win for companies that can't yet afford experienced full time security hires in house, and it is a win for me who can be in control of my time and life with higher income, and only have to focus on the most interesting problems of many different companies with minimal exposure to internal politics. I can't express how much happier I am. Best career choice I ever made. YMMV.

langsoul-com 4y ago

I wonder if one day we'd have companies that hire devs, then another company would contract them to work on specific open source packages. Seems like the easiest approach for a business. Finding a person then issuing a free lance contract is a lot of overhead.

jpetso 4y ago
There are a handful of these companies out there. Collabora, KDAB, D. Richard Hipp's SQLite company, and if you're lenient enough you could also include companies that productize their open source package such as NextCloud or The Qt Company. Heck, Red Hat (sorry, IBM) regularly gets pulled in to improve software across their stack, kernel or otherwise. You could also include non-profits like the Linux Foundation, Blender Foundation or (new!) Godot Foundation, which do the same thing but without having to disguise as consulting, because development of the software itself is important enough to the industry that can pool its resources by donating to the respective foundation. Still only works for important enough packages. I don't think there's a way around that. An open source project generally has to provide massively outsized value so that a handful of developers can capture a fraction of that value for paid maintenance.
- tilladam 4y ago
  Speaking for KDAB, only a relatively small fraction of our overall revenue is paid work on open source codebases. We mostly get paid to work _with_ Free Software and to teach it to people. Living off of maintaining or improving Free Software is only sustainable for freelancers or small boutique companies. Even the big foundations don't fund all that much development, they mostly focus on governance, infrastructure and promotion. The Linux kernel is possibly an exception, in terms of feeding an appreciable number of people working on it professionally outside of a company directly selling it.