5 ms·

What kind of headcount do you estimate $1MM/year can reliably support? That's like ~2 engineers at FAANG.

by birken 9mo ago

babypuncher 9mo ago
Lots of great engineers will work for way less than a FAANG salary as long as it means not having to work for FAANG. $1m/year still won't get you all that much though.
- zeroCalories 9mo ago
  Realistically if you can work on a small and high profile project like tailwind you're gonna be snatched up by someone willing to pay you at or near FAANG levels
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mcny 9mo ago
    That's good. We can tell people that so they will submit us patches for free. Maybe we could even have a neat website with a leaderboard of sorts where we honor top contributors like some kind of gamification. I think we would really need about five highly opinionated people with good technical and people skills to volunteer as paid maintainers for tailwind or any oss project to succeed.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- SXX 9mo ago
  Lots and lots of people work for much less or for free on whatever they like. Problem is that doing "boring" parts of open source project maintenance is not very exciting for many top tier developers so it should pay at least competetively for experience or people will just burn out. And while you can obviously fund a team of 20 on $1M/year outside of US whatever said team will manage to keep up to the level of quality is another question.
eek2121 9mo ago
FAANG isn't the world. Salaries for developers are well under $150k in most of the United States, for example, and that is for senior engineers. Most startups are paying $90k-$140k for senior devs, for example (I haven't done the math, but from my own experience, $100-$120k is the general sweet spot). Larger companies pay a bit more, but move beyond that and you are talking management.
- estearum 9mo ago
  Most “senior devs” are actually bad.
- narmiouh 9mo ago
  I am really curious about metro areas that are paying 100-120k for senior(in the real sense) devs. Could you please share some metro areas you are familiar with?
  - shimman 9mo ago
    Sure. Boston, NYC, Seattle, basically any city in the US you will find senior devs being hired at that price range. You do realize not every company pays well right?
  - FridgeSeal 9mo ago
    120k USD ~= 180k AUD, which is a rate I have _definitely_ seen advertised for Seniors in Sydney + Melbourne.
    - selcuka 9mo ago
      I'm in Brisbane, but salaries are wildly different between US and AU. The exchange rate is not a good approximation. We don't see many US$275K (AU$410K) remote jobs [1] advertised in Australia either. [1] https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-staff-engineer https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-st...
  - zdragnar 9mo ago
    Most metro areas in the Midwest, I think. Certainly the ones near me, at least.
trollbridge 9mo ago
There are plenty of software firms out there (including the one I work for) whose entire budget is less than $1MM, and who have a headcount of developers that's more than 2. Not every software company is busy writing software to target you with ads.
knowitnone3 9mo ago
Tailwind is not a FAANG, they are glorified frontend CSS devs
- siquick 9mo ago
  Running one of the world’s leading UI libraries is far more impactful than anything 99% of FAANG engineers have or will ever work on.
- likium 9mo ago
  Tailwind requires a compiler to work.
cardanome 9mo ago
Or like 10 senior engineers in mid sized companies in Europe. I wish every engineer were paid FAANG money.
raincole 9mo ago
Blender pays their developers ~ $3M/year. [0] I'm having a very hard time to believe you need one third of that to maintain a library that does "shorter names for standard CSS." Of course I might be underestimating Tailwind a lot. [0] https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-Annual-Report-2024.pdf https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-A... [1] But given the unit is euro in this report, I guess the solution is to not hire developers in the US.
- sebmellen 9mo ago
  That is truly incredible and an ode to what can be done with a relatively small budget. You’re right that Tailwind is nowhere near Blender’s complexity… but it’s also trying to be a business and not a foundation.
- tpmoney 9mo ago
  According to that document, they spent ~1.5M eur (1.75 USD) on developer salaries. If we count up all the people in the "Development Team" section (other than the ones paid by grant, which I excluded from the number above), we have 22 full time developer listed. That's ~$80k (USD) / developer for the all in costs, so the actual salary is probably lower than that. US News tells us[1] that the median US developer is getting ~$132k / year. To put that into a bit of perspective, the local gas station by me is paying staff $15 / hour. That's ~30k / year. As a side note, what the heck is with all the griping about costs in this discussion? So what if it's "just a big CSS library". Don't we want people to be paid good salaries? I swear software developers are one of the only groups of people I've ever met who actively complain about being paid too much money. [1]: https://careers.usnews.com/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://careers.usnews.com/best-jobs/software-developer/sala...
- hennell 9mo ago
  Tailwind (like most things) is way more complex than it first appears. Sure the main thing was originally 'just' mapping `.p-4` to `padding: 1rem`. But it's also about grepping the code to see if `p-4` is used so it only builds needed classes. It also needs to work with things like their responsive and state classes so `md:p-4` or `hover:p-4` add the padding only on medium or larger screens, or when hovered etc. All of which increased to support more and more css features and arbitrary values so `not-supports-[display:grid]:p-[5px]` generates the required code to check if grid is supported and add 5px padding or whatever other values you put in the []. You can question if that's really a sensible idea, but it is undeniably a pretty complex challenge. Not sure it compares to blender, I imagine that has a lot more maths involved - put probably less edge cases and weird displays odd in X browser bugs.
geodel 9mo ago
Huh, FAANG salary comes at FAANG level revenue / profitability generated. That salary is not some kind of human right.
buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago
Failwind? Alewind? Nailwind? Galewind? I’m struggling to figure out which letter in FAANG represents Tailwind. Not sure why they need to be paying FAANG salaries.
rwyinuse 9mo ago
One million a year would easily buy you 10 experienced full-time engineers in most of Europe.
ryanSrich 9mo ago
That's barely two low level faang engineers after full load.

What kind of headcount do you estimate $1MM/year can reliably support? That's like ~2 engineers at FAANG.

by birken 9mo ago

What kind of headcount do you estimate $1MM/year can reliably support? That's like ~2 engineers at FAANG.

Lots of great engineers will work for way less than a FAANG salary as long as it means not having to work for FAANG. $1m/year still won't get you all that much though.

zeroCalories 9mo ago
Realistically if you can work on a small and high profile project like tailwind you're gonna be snatched up by someone willing to pay you at or near FAANG levels
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- mcny 9mo ago
  That's good. We can tell people that so they will submit us patches for free. Maybe we could even have a neat website with a leaderboard of sorts where we honor top contributors like some kind of gamification. I think we would really need about five highly opinionated people with good technical and people skills to volunteer as paid maintainers for tailwind or any oss project to succeed.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
SXX 9mo ago
Lots and lots of people work for much less or for free on whatever they like. Problem is that doing "boring" parts of open source project maintenance is not very exciting for many top tier developers so it should pay at least competetively for experience or people will just burn out. And while you can obviously fund a team of 20 on $1M/year outside of US whatever said team will manage to keep up to the level of quality is another question.

eek2121 9mo ago

FAANG isn't the world. Salaries for developers are well under $150k in most of the United States, for example, and that is for senior engineers. Most startups are paying $90k-$140k for senior devs, for example (I haven't done the math, but from my own experience, $100-$120k is the general sweet spot). Larger companies pay a bit more, but move beyond that and you are talking management.

estearum 9mo ago
Most “senior devs” are actually bad.
narmiouh 9mo ago
I am really curious about metro areas that are paying 100-120k for senior(in the real sense) devs. Could you please share some metro areas you are familiar with?
- shimman 9mo ago
  Sure. Boston, NYC, Seattle, basically any city in the US you will find senior devs being hired at that price range. You do realize not every company pays well right?
- FridgeSeal 9mo ago
  120k USD ~= 180k AUD, which is a rate I have _definitely_ seen advertised for Seniors in Sydney + Melbourne.
  - selcuka 9mo ago
    I'm in Brisbane, but salaries are wildly different between US and AU. The exchange rate is not a good approximation. We don't see many US$275K (AU$410K) remote jobs [1] advertised in Australia either. [1] https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-staff-engineer https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-st...
- zdragnar 9mo ago
  Most metro areas in the Midwest, I think. Certainly the ones near me, at least.

trollbridge 9mo ago

There are plenty of software firms out there (including the one I work for) whose entire budget is less than $1MM, and who have a headcount of developers that's more than 2. Not every software company is busy writing software to target you with ads.

knowitnone3 9mo ago

Tailwind is not a FAANG, they are glorified frontend CSS devs

siquick 9mo ago
Running one of the world’s leading UI libraries is far more impactful than anything 99% of FAANG engineers have or will ever work on.
likium 9mo ago
Tailwind requires a compiler to work.

cardanome 9mo ago

Or like 10 senior engineers in mid sized companies in Europe. I wish every engineer were paid FAANG money.

raincole 9mo ago

Blender pays their developers ~ $3M/year. [0] I'm having a very hard time to believe you need one third of that to maintain a library that does "shorter names for standard CSS." Of course I might be underestimating Tailwind a lot. [0] https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-Annual-Report-2024.pdf https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-A... [1] But given the unit is euro in this report, I guess the solution is to not hire developers in the US.

sebmellen 9mo ago
That is truly incredible and an ode to what can be done with a relatively small budget. You’re right that Tailwind is nowhere near Blender’s complexity… but it’s also trying to be a business and not a foundation.
tpmoney 9mo ago
According to that document, they spent ~1.5M eur (1.75 USD) on developer salaries. If we count up all the people in the "Development Team" section (other than the ones paid by grant, which I excluded from the number above), we have 22 full time developer listed. That's ~$80k (USD) / developer for the all in costs, so the actual salary is probably lower than that. US News tells us[1] that the median US developer is getting ~$132k / year. To put that into a bit of perspective, the local gas station by me is paying staff $15 / hour. That's ~30k / year. As a side note, what the heck is with all the griping about costs in this discussion? So what if it's "just a big CSS library". Don't we want people to be paid good salaries? I swear software developers are one of the only groups of people I've ever met who actively complain about being paid too much money. [1]: https://careers.usnews.com/best-jobs/software-developer/salary https://careers.usnews.com/best-jobs/software-developer/sala...
hennell 9mo ago
Tailwind (like most things) is way more complex than it first appears. Sure the main thing was originally 'just' mapping `.p-4` to `padding: 1rem`. But it's also about grepping the code to see if `p-4` is used so it only builds needed classes. It also needs to work with things like their responsive and state classes so `md:p-4` or `hover:p-4` add the padding only on medium or larger screens, or when hovered etc. All of which increased to support more and more css features and arbitrary values so `not-supports-[display:grid]:p-[5px]` generates the required code to check if grid is supported and add 5px padding or whatever other values you put in the []. You can question if that's really a sensible idea, but it is undeniably a pretty complex challenge. Not sure it compares to blender, I imagine that has a lot more maths involved - put probably less edge cases and weird displays odd in X browser bugs.

geodel 9mo ago

Huh, FAANG salary comes at FAANG level revenue / profitability generated. That salary is not some kind of human right.

buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago

Failwind? Alewind? Nailwind? Galewind? I’m struggling to figure out which letter in FAANG represents Tailwind. Not sure why they need to be paying FAANG salaries.

rwyinuse 9mo ago

One million a year would easily buy you 10 experienced full-time engineers in most of Europe.

ryanSrich 9mo ago

That's barely two low level faang engineers after full load.