5 ms·

> Why not set a bounty to improve Prettier instead of building a competing project just to increase the motivation to improve Prettier? There are three reasons

by wentin 3y ago

> Why not set a bounty to improve Prettier instead of building a competing project just to increase the motivation to improve Prettier? There are three reasons, I think: 1. Writing a rust compiler is separate from prettier project because of its nature. Prettier is not written in Rust, and Rust has proven to be a robust option to write a formatter, so the goal really is to write a formatter in Rust itself, and it can't be replaced with improving prettier within its current codebase 2. Asking someone to write a Prettier-branded and owned Rust compiler for $20k is not enticing enough. It is essentially equivalent to contracting someone to write some code for Prettier, with an open bid. It would cost a lot more to hire someone to write these code. Great programmer who has the skill to answer this bounty get paid at least $200 an hour (extremely conservative estimate), $20k is enough for 100 hours of work for one person, not enough to finish the project. But getting rewarded for $20k for stuff you write and will own is enticing! 3. Good ecosystem going forward. If prettier owns the winner project, prettier is responsible to maintaining and improving it. The good that the bounty did ends when the project is handed over. Prettier team get burdened with a project that they didn't write themselves, and the original team (the best people for the job) is not incentivized to keep maintaining it. There is no ongoing competition to keep this field active.

andai 3y ago
>Great programmer who has the skill to answer this bounty get paid at least $200 an hour (extremely conservative estimate) Dang! What do you base this estimate on? The Rust aspect, or parsing aspect, or intersection of both?
- etruong42 3y ago
  I imagine someone who has this skill has a shot at being L4 or L5 at Google. levels.fyi estimates a year salary of an L5 engineer at Google to be 362,248. If we naively divide that by 50 (weeks in a year) * 40 (hours of work a week), we'd get $181.12 an hour. Googlers also get health insurance, free food, other perks that may push the effective hourly compensation even closer to $200. Googlers also get equipment to do the coding, whereas this competition does not provide a workstation, so another possible line item to consider. It's not a perfect comparison/analogy, so I'd rather not get nitpicked, as the overall thrust of my argument is that $200/hr is not outlandish imho.
- butterlesstoast 3y ago
  Adding this for data. I charge $500 an hour for contracting. It's gotta be at least that as it's costing time I would otherwise spend with my family. Family time / time away from my core job is incredibly valuable.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    For said data... does anyone actually pay that? I mean if you don't get hired for that amount you've got tons of family time so I guess it works? What I'm trying to say, I don't see the correlation between having a huge hourly rate vs family time. 40 hours a week of work is still 40 hours regardless of how much you're paid.
    - ncallaway 3y ago
      I mean, if you work 20 hours a week, then you don't have 40 hours a week of work
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  A freelance developer can easily ask $250/hour, similar for a contract agency, and that is kind of a low amount. It sounds like a lot for a single developer but if one considers all of the non-billed time of chasing leads and bills it's maybe a different picture.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TylerE 3y ago
  Keep in mind as a freelancer you have to make about for $2.50 for every $1 a salaried person makes, as you're on the hook for 100% of taxes, health care, business expenses, etc.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    That sounds about right. On the other hand it does mean that you are producing this kind of work for big FAANG companies you should expect to earn $80/hour. This is around the low end of a senior software engineer or the higher end of a junior software engineer.
    - wmidwestranger 3y ago
      I have heard of a database "engineer" paid $250 an hour to spend weeks creating what is basically a connection string to a database in a corporate virtual lan. The people paying him were never concerned about the cost, just how long it was taking. This was in Nebraska.
      - chefandy 3y ago
        In the right locations, developers can benefit from a profound lack of competition, especially if they have some enterprise software bullshit on their resume and some less savvy company nearby refuses to hire someone to do it remotely.
  - EricMausler 3y ago
    Is the 2.50:1 just a broad estimate or based on something? When I was doing pricing for service contracts it was usually around 1.50:1 burdened billing rate vs direct labor (income)
    - bosie 3y ago
      how did you factor in when you can't work (sickness, holiday, increasing your skill, finding the next job etc)?
- hectormalot 3y ago
  Depends on the geography and/or whether the knowledge is highly specific. As a datapoint, the average Dutch contracting rates I see for IT development (think: Java, Swift, Kotlin) range somewhere from €75 - €150/h. Higher is possible, but then you're talking very specific expertise and typically shorter projects. I'm on the hiring side, this is a figure across some 20 external devs. I think it's representative of the middle of the market.
  - pas 3y ago
    but those are for at least a few weeks of engagement, no? 8h/day, right?
    - hectormalot 3y ago
      yes, likely months of engagement at 36-40h per week
    - 946789987649 3y ago
      In London contracting rates of £700+/day are not abnormal and those are usually minimum 6 month full time.
  - JustLurking2022 3y ago
    I think most people on here are citing US based conditions, particularly with respect to healthcare costs and various taxes.
twodave 3y ago
I came here to say that $200/hour is only "extremely conservative" in very few and small geographic parts of the world. Where I'm from (in a large city in the US) this number would be described as extravagant. I've charged $200 or more on only one occasion myself, and it was a very short-term arrangement.
- varispeed 3y ago
  The problem is that many individual freelancers look at their work from an employee perspective, not from a business perspective. From an employee perspective $200/hour may seem extravagant, but from business perspective it is nothing. So if you hire an agency to perform a contract, they'll bill you $2000 per day and send you their employee who makes $100 an hour. Agency pockets the $1200 (it's a simplification, but should paint the picture). Freelancer and agency both run the same business model. If you think like employee and charge extravagantly less, you will never grow. You should typically charge enough, so that for any given project you could hire an employee to do the work, while you look for new leads or you can keep the money in the company and do the work yourself until you amass enough capital to move up the business ladder.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  > very few and small geographic parts of the world There's reasonably good data about this that contradicts this? $1000 as a day rate isn't unusual or unreasonable for a specialist IT contractor; and I don't say that idly; I say it from both experience and you know; aggregated data: - https://www.hays.com.au/documents/276732/1102429/Hays+Technology+Contractor+Rates+Guide.pdf https://www.hays.com.au/documents/276732/1102429/Hays+Techno... - https://www.itcontracting.com/rate-checker/ https://www.itcontracting.com/rate-checker/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606348 Yes, if you want someone to slap a php website together (or javascript, or many other entry level frameworks), you can pay less. ...but that's not what they were asking; they were asking for a technically sophisticated analysis of an existing project and a performant re-implementation in rust. They got a bargain.
  - twodave 3y ago

by wentin 3y ago

andai 3y ago

>Great programmer who has the skill to answer this bounty get paid at least $200 an hour (extremely conservative estimate) Dang! What do you base this estimate on? The Rust aspect, or parsing aspect, or intersection of both?

etruong42 3y ago
I imagine someone who has this skill has a shot at being L4 or L5 at Google. levels.fyi estimates a year salary of an L5 engineer at Google to be 362,248. If we naively divide that by 50 (weeks in a year) * 40 (hours of work a week), we'd get $181.12 an hour. Googlers also get health insurance, free food, other perks that may push the effective hourly compensation even closer to $200. Googlers also get equipment to do the coding, whereas this competition does not provide a workstation, so another possible line item to consider. It's not a perfect comparison/analogy, so I'd rather not get nitpicked, as the overall thrust of my argument is that $200/hr is not outlandish imho.
butterlesstoast 3y ago
Adding this for data. I charge $500 an hour for contracting. It's gotta be at least that as it's costing time I would otherwise spend with my family. Family time / time away from my core job is incredibly valuable.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  For said data... does anyone actually pay that? I mean if you don't get hired for that amount you've got tons of family time so I guess it works? What I'm trying to say, I don't see the correlation between having a huge hourly rate vs family time. 40 hours a week of work is still 40 hours regardless of how much you're paid.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    I mean, if you work 20 hours a week, then you don't have 40 hours a week of work
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
A freelance developer can easily ask $250/hour, similar for a contract agency, and that is kind of a low amount. It sounds like a lot for a single developer but if one considers all of the non-billed time of chasing leads and bills it's maybe a different picture.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TylerE 3y ago
Keep in mind as a freelancer you have to make about for $2.50 for every $1 a salaried person makes, as you're on the hook for 100% of taxes, health care, business expenses, etc.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  That sounds about right. On the other hand it does mean that you are producing this kind of work for big FAANG companies you should expect to earn $80/hour. This is around the low end of a senior software engineer or the higher end of a junior software engineer.
  - wmidwestranger 3y ago
    I have heard of a database "engineer" paid $250 an hour to spend weeks creating what is basically a connection string to a database in a corporate virtual lan. The people paying him were never concerned about the cost, just how long it was taking. This was in Nebraska.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      In the right locations, developers can benefit from a profound lack of competition, especially if they have some enterprise software bullshit on their resume and some less savvy company nearby refuses to hire someone to do it remotely.
- EricMausler 3y ago
  Is the 2.50:1 just a broad estimate or based on something? When I was doing pricing for service contracts it was usually around 1.50:1 burdened billing rate vs direct labor (income)
  - bosie 3y ago
    how did you factor in when you can't work (sickness, holiday, increasing your skill, finding the next job etc)?
hectormalot 3y ago
Depends on the geography and/or whether the knowledge is highly specific. As a datapoint, the average Dutch contracting rates I see for IT development (think: Java, Swift, Kotlin) range somewhere from €75 - €150/h. Higher is possible, but then you're talking very specific expertise and typically shorter projects. I'm on the hiring side, this is a figure across some 20 external devs. I think it's representative of the middle of the market.
- pas 3y ago
  but those are for at least a few weeks of engagement, no? 8h/day, right?
  - hectormalot 3y ago
    yes, likely months of engagement at 36-40h per week
  - 946789987649 3y ago
    In London contracting rates of £700+/day are not abnormal and those are usually minimum 6 month full time.
- JustLurking2022 3y ago
  I think most people on here are citing US based conditions, particularly with respect to healthcare costs and various taxes.

twodave 3y ago

I came here to say that $200/hour is only "extremely conservative" in very few and small geographic parts of the world. Where I'm from (in a large city in the US) this number would be described as extravagant. I've charged $200 or more on only one occasion myself, and it was a very short-term arrangement.

varispeed 3y ago
The problem is that many individual freelancers look at their work from an employee perspective, not from a business perspective. From an employee perspective $200/hour may seem extravagant, but from business perspective it is nothing. So if you hire an agency to perform a contract, they'll bill you $2000 per day and send you their employee who makes $100 an hour. Agency pockets the $1200 (it's a simplification, but should paint the picture). Freelancer and agency both run the same business model. If you think like employee and charge extravagantly less, you will never grow. You should typically charge enough, so that for any given project you could hire an employee to do the work, while you look for new leads or you can keep the money in the company and do the work yourself until you amass enough capital to move up the business ladder.
wokwokwok 3y ago
> very few and small geographic parts of the world There's reasonably good data about this that contradicts this? $1000 as a day rate isn't unusual or unreasonable for a specialist IT contractor; and I don't say that idly; I say it from both experience and you know; aggregated data: - https://www.hays.com.au/documents/276732/1102429/Hays+Technology+Contractor+Rates+Guide.pdf https://www.hays.com.au/documents/276732/1102429/Hays+Techno... - https://www.itcontracting.com/rate-checker/ https://www.itcontracting.com/rate-checker/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606348 Yes, if you want someone to slap a php website together (or javascript, or many other entry level frameworks), you can pay less. ...but that's not what they were asking; they were asking for a technically sophisticated analysis of an existing project and a performant re-implementation in rust. They got a bargain.
- twodave 3y ago