Comment by godelski
7 days ago
I don't think Xena is going to promote themselves but I looked at their GitHub sponsor's page. They have a monthly goal of $5k but haven't even hit $1.5k. Combined with their Pateron they get a whopping $2k/mo.
There's a lot of love for Anubis alone, but this doesn't translate to a third of what a junior dev makes. How do we expect to turn these highly beneficial open source products when people cannot pass off a small portion of their savings to those that make the tools.
I hope you figure it out Xena. Even though I'm only on the user side of things I've liked Anubis more than other solutions like cloudflare.
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Median looks to be higher, though skewed, so let's say 60k? That would be $5k/mo. Not to mention that a standard job includes things your hardware and things like insurance (yeah, I know, CA not US). The donations don't just cover salary but also all operating costs.
But what's your point? That Anubis creates less value because it's made in Canada? That Xena should be paid like an entry level engineer because it's open source? That there's people who make less so be happy? (Starving kids in Africa) How would you respond if your employer made the same argument to you? Or that Xena should work two jobs because one of the above options?
I really don't understand what you're arguing.
My comparison to an entry level engineer's salary was because it is a very low bar.
https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada
Or look at just entry level: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/entry-leve...
US for comparison: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...
Fwiw currently I make the equivalent of CAD$22,150 per month at my job doing marketing for an object storage company (where ironically enough I tell people how to use generative AI). US$5,000 is my goal because it means I can reach the point of indefinite sustainability (as in the money velocity in my checking account stays flat instead of trending downwards); however that leaves no room for things going wrong, life expenses, or the ability to purchase a house like I want to. My full goal is closer to USD$15,000 per month, which is probably achievable when including subscription sales with corporate customers, contract work to implement features in Anubis, and more.
However, not gonna lie, I feel a lot less risk tolerant given that my husband is currently unemployed and as much as this is the worst possible place to do this, I really would love if he got a job somewhere. It would make things so much logistically simpler.
Thank you for your kind words though! Really, it made my day better.
I've also set up LiberaPay after getting many complaints about my choice of funding platforms: https://liberapay.com/Xe/.
Generally I don't feel comfortable doing self-promotion for financial things on Hacker News. I don't want to piss in the pool that we all swim in. I've also been considering making a Y Combinator application, if only because money would let me afford to be able to take a risk.
Sorry if this is overly ranty, it's really annoying to be one of those load-bearing dependency pegs that everyone complains about but relatively few people contribute to financially. It's making me wonder if making this liberally open source was a mistake.
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