<story><title>Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?</title><url>https://babeljs.io/blog/2021/05/10/funding-update.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>capableweb</author><text>&amp;gt; we settled on $11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For now, Nicolò, Henry, and Jùnliàng will all be paid a temporary rate of $6,000 per month. This doesn&amp;#x27;t solve the problem,&lt;p&gt;I used to donate to Babel, before they made it apparent they are just interested in funneling the money to one developer. 11K per month?! That is absolutely bananas and same reaction I had the last time this came up, but this time I cannot do anything as a reaction as I&amp;#x27;ve already pulled my funding.&lt;p&gt;But my guess is that a lot of people feel the same way, as the donations seems to be going down. 11K per month could pay for many developers if you hire people outside of Sillicon Valley, which since you&amp;#x27;re doing open source, you should really really consider.&lt;p&gt;Open source is not &amp;quot;VC fueled develoment&amp;quot; and I don&amp;#x27;t think we should go that way either. Make your operation nimble and survive on little, otherwise you&amp;#x27;ll soon disappear. Optimize for sustainability, not for paying the one of the highest salary in the world (minus SV bubble of course).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not wonder Babel is going the way it&amp;#x27;s going, as the economy you&amp;#x27;ve setup for yourself is nowhere near sustainable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ianbutler</author><text>On the flip side, Silicon Valley isn&amp;#x27;t the only expensive place and 132k was well below my full time salary in New York as a senior eng before I jumped into my own work. Actually I don&amp;#x27;t think I know any full time engineers right now in my personal network making lower than 150k and they&amp;#x27;re all very talented people who wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to hop on something like this for various reasons related to that being too low.&lt;p&gt;My point is without high pay a whole class of very good engineers is unavailable to you.</text></comment>
<story><title>Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?</title><url>https://babeljs.io/blog/2021/05/10/funding-update.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>capableweb</author><text>&amp;gt; we settled on $11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For now, Nicolò, Henry, and Jùnliàng will all be paid a temporary rate of $6,000 per month. This doesn&amp;#x27;t solve the problem,&lt;p&gt;I used to donate to Babel, before they made it apparent they are just interested in funneling the money to one developer. 11K per month?! That is absolutely bananas and same reaction I had the last time this came up, but this time I cannot do anything as a reaction as I&amp;#x27;ve already pulled my funding.&lt;p&gt;But my guess is that a lot of people feel the same way, as the donations seems to be going down. 11K per month could pay for many developers if you hire people outside of Sillicon Valley, which since you&amp;#x27;re doing open source, you should really really consider.&lt;p&gt;Open source is not &amp;quot;VC fueled develoment&amp;quot; and I don&amp;#x27;t think we should go that way either. Make your operation nimble and survive on little, otherwise you&amp;#x27;ll soon disappear. Optimize for sustainability, not for paying the one of the highest salary in the world (minus SV bubble of course).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not wonder Babel is going the way it&amp;#x27;s going, as the economy you&amp;#x27;ve setup for yourself is nowhere near sustainable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChrisRR</author><text>Exactly, I thought the reason that US developers are so highly paid compared to everywhere else in the world was to offset the high cost of living in silicon valley.&lt;p&gt;$132,000 is almost double my salary is the UK. They could easily get 2 full time UK devs for that, or even more in many EU countries with lower cost of living</text></comment>