6 ms·

$7000/mo for his expenses, data center expenses and all the other associated costs...

by rxt 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dingaling 12y ago
He spends one week per month staying in San Jose ( where the servers are hosted for free ) to be... closer to the servers? It's hard to sympathize when there are such frivolous expenses. There's what, a thousand bucks at least on travel and accommodation per month. Going on-site is understandable when updates need to be performed that are too risky to do remotely. On-site on a fixed schedule, however, would quickly be over-ruled in any commercial operation.
- moe 12y ago
  It's hard to sympathize I agree. If the article is a misrepresentation then they should correct that asap, it leaves a rather bad taste in the mouth. It feels like this guy saw how well the sob-story fundraiser worked for GnuPG[1] and figured he'd give it a shot, too. That's all good and well, but not while you already have a sponsor as generous as the Linux Foundation seems to be here. [1] https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960 https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960
- NeutronBoy 12y ago
  "With the Linux Foundation's $7,000 in monthly cash flow, Stenn finances his movement between his home lab, in Talent, Ore., and the NTP servers located in San Jose, Calif. In Oregon, Stenn lives with his wife and does most of his patch inspection, code writing, and release building three weeks a month. The fourth week, he stays in San Jose, close to two co-location data center providers that host NTP computers. He rents a room there to work on server and network administration, maintain the email list, and check on server backups."
- vidarh 12y ago
  You couldn't get most people capable of doing the work to take on that responsibility for a flat out salary twice that amount, so how he spends the money is frankly relatively uninteresting - consider it a salary, and that even if you see it as a salary and ignore his costs it's way below market. There does not exactly appear to be a queue of people wanting to take over the reigns.
  - acqq 12y ago
    Yes, it's far from trivial to even learn what's already implemented in the software. PHK got money to fix the bugs in it and instead he started to spend the money in "writing from the scratch" which certainly throws away a lot of what's already solved, tested and debugged through the decades. See the other comments here about that.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - gambiter 12y ago
    I wouldn't call $84k/year "well below" market. Especially considering that the project isn't under heavy development. Also, I have to echo what other comments have said... he seems to be spending it oddly. He's choosing to live somewhere else, even though he seems to think monthly physical proximity to the servers is important. I currently live near work... it would be like me choosing to move 1000 miles away and then complaining that my salary won't cover my travel expenses. There are at least 4 simple fixes I can think of: 1) Move him and his family closer to the data center (Perhaps difficult) 2) Move the servers to a data center that's closer to his home (Not as difficult) 3) He could start using VMs like the rest of the world... physical access really isn't needed except for physical security (making sure the rack is locked and access is controlled), which data center employees can manage (Fairly easy) 4) Fire him and find someone else who would like a $7k/month stipend to do bugfixes (Fairly easy)
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      You can't always treat humans as resources. Some fields are so complicated that you need superheroes, or else you need to build an organization to do the work. NTP is that complicated. What it's doing is relatively simple, but the surrounding infrastructure you need is ridiculous, and the security concerns enormous. If there's a vulnerability it affects the entire world. So you can't just find someone to replace him. If you go with a superhero, then you have to deal with him. You can't just say, "Sorry bud, we need to uproot you and move you in-town." Even if he doesn't say no, which he very well could, leaving you and your plans fucked and the world unprotected, driving all the enjoyment out of the job will make him eventually say "fuck it, I'm retiring." Okay, let's go with an organization. Who is going to build it? You still need the superhero. The critical nature of the infrastructure demands you use the guy whose been covering your ass all this time, because most anybody else you're going to find is going to fuck it up, and there can be no possibility of a fuck-up. And you can't buy a superhero for any amount of money. There just aren't that many of them.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
Maybe his datacenter is a furnished SF house...
- RyJones 12y ago
  It's in the ISC data center.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Some of it is. He also rents space with Hurricane Electric.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Downvotes: weak. not my fault SF is expensive.

$7000/mo for his expenses, data center expenses and all the other associated costs...

by rxt 12y ago

$7000/mo for his expenses, data center expenses and all the other associated costs...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dingaling 12y ago

He spends one week per month staying in San Jose ( where the servers are hosted for free ) to be... closer to the servers? It's hard to sympathize when there are such frivolous expenses. There's what, a thousand bucks at least on travel and accommodation per month. Going on-site is understandable when updates need to be performed that are too risky to do remotely. On-site on a fixed schedule, however, would quickly be over-ruled in any commercial operation.

moe 12y ago
It's hard to sympathize I agree. If the article is a misrepresentation then they should correct that asap, it leaves a rather bad taste in the mouth. It feels like this guy saw how well the sob-story fundraiser worked for GnuPG[1] and figured he'd give it a shot, too. That's all good and well, but not while you already have a sponsor as generous as the Linux Foundation seems to be here. [1] https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960 https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960
NeutronBoy 12y ago
"With the Linux Foundation's $7,000 in monthly cash flow, Stenn finances his movement between his home lab, in Talent, Ore., and the NTP servers located in San Jose, Calif. In Oregon, Stenn lives with his wife and does most of his patch inspection, code writing, and release building three weeks a month. The fourth week, he stays in San Jose, close to two co-location data center providers that host NTP computers. He rents a room there to work on server and network administration, maintain the email list, and check on server backups."
vidarh 12y ago
You couldn't get most people capable of doing the work to take on that responsibility for a flat out salary twice that amount, so how he spends the money is frankly relatively uninteresting - consider it a salary, and that even if you see it as a salary and ignore his costs it's way below market. There does not exactly appear to be a queue of people wanting to take over the reigns.
- acqq 12y ago
  Yes, it's far from trivial to even learn what's already implemented in the software. PHK got money to fix the bugs in it and instead he started to spend the money in "writing from the scratch" which certainly throws away a lot of what's already solved, tested and debugged through the decades. See the other comments here about that.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- gambiter 12y ago
  I wouldn't call $84k/year "well below" market. Especially considering that the project isn't under heavy development. Also, I have to echo what other comments have said... he seems to be spending it oddly. He's choosing to live somewhere else, even though he seems to think monthly physical proximity to the servers is important. I currently live near work... it would be like me choosing to move 1000 miles away and then complaining that my salary won't cover my travel expenses. There are at least 4 simple fixes I can think of: 1) Move him and his family closer to the data center (Perhaps difficult) 2) Move the servers to a data center that's closer to his home (Not as difficult) 3) He could start using VMs like the rest of the world... physical access really isn't needed except for physical security (making sure the rack is locked and access is controlled), which data center employees can manage (Fairly easy) 4) Fire him and find someone else who would like a $7k/month stipend to do bugfixes (Fairly easy)
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    You can't always treat humans as resources. Some fields are so complicated that you need superheroes, or else you need to build an organization to do the work. NTP is that complicated. What it's doing is relatively simple, but the surrounding infrastructure you need is ridiculous, and the security concerns enormous. If there's a vulnerability it affects the entire world. So you can't just find someone to replace him. If you go with a superhero, then you have to deal with him. You can't just say, "Sorry bud, we need to uproot you and move you in-town." Even if he doesn't say no, which he very well could, leaving you and your plans fucked and the world unprotected, driving all the enjoyment out of the job will make him eventually say "fuck it, I'm retiring." Okay, let's go with an organization. Who is going to build it? You still need the superhero. The critical nature of the infrastructure demands you use the guy whose been covering your ass all this time, because most anybody else you're going to find is going to fuck it up, and there can be no possibility of a fuck-up. And you can't buy a superhero for any amount of money. There just aren't that many of them.

spacemanmatt 12y ago

Maybe his datacenter is a furnished SF house...

RyJones 12y ago
It's in the ISC data center.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Some of it is. He also rents space with Hurricane Electric.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
Downvotes: weak. not my fault SF is expensive.