I’m now a full-time professional open source maintainer

https://words.filippo.io/full-time-maintainer/

by chmaynard • 3 years ago

639 124 3 years ago

words.filippo.io

Avshalom3• 3 years ago

I dunno how much of this is just low-key advertising for their sponsors but... congrats, good job, living the dream!

dcow2• 3 years ago

I suspect there's a sideline wink and handshake agreement to feature associated companies and indirectly promote them as case studies, etc. as the maintainer maintains. Not that that changes anything this is still a great arrangement and hopefully a positive example for our industry, but Smallstep and Tailscale are both trying to gain an authoritative hold in the production identity space and a little name dropping here and there by <famous dev> certainly doesn't hurt (:

gerdesj4• 3 years ago

"... I spend most of my time on maintenance, and I offer retainers to companies that benefit from my work and from access to my planning and my expertise. I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package"

Well done and keep it up! I highly recommend that you find say two other individuals like yourself and form a triumvirate. An individual can have trouble taking time off, dealing with life's inevitable adversity etc.

That can work well for a fledgling org because two can out vote the one who gets it "wrong". This model does require a certain amount of trust and the ability to accept being wrong.

Then you take on staff ...

gerdesj4• 3 years ago

A few people seem to agree with me, so to flesh this out a bit:

Not all of us are going to fly a unicorn to a glorious multi billionaire finish. Most of us would like to be able to sleep at night, have a reasonably comfortable income and basically "get by". As this is HN, I will require a certain amount of "get up and go" but not too much!

I fell into the triumvirate thing 23 years ago. I became an IT contractor at a helicopter factory in the UK around 1996. Helpdesk n that. I learned quite a lot quite quickly and by 1999 ("party like it's") I was in the NETS team - sysadmin land. 2000 - we were Facility Managed off to ... ourselves and our company was started. I was recruited by two other NETS chaps to be the MD of their idea. It wasn't my idea.

So we have three blokes with equal shares of a nascent company. It works really well out of the box. Two can always gang up on one. We would have screaming arguments about direction or whatever but in the end there was always resolution.

23 years later, it still works. The three of us are quite different but we do completely trust each other. The trust thing is where my advice might become unhinged but the model is still very decent 8)

Avshalom3• 3 years ago

triumvirate thing

There's a saying, I don't know if its actually old or not, along the lines of: go to sea with one watch or three

the point being that with one watch you just accept whatever it says, with three you pick the closest two, but if you have two... fuck it man who knows: coin flip

flippinburgers• 3 years ago

I'm so isolated. I never got a degree in this field and I don't socialize much. So I feel permanently trapped working for a company. It sucks, but not enough apparently to get me to change.

the-rc• 3 years ago

Yeah, I was wondering how his kind of arrangement could work if one needed or wanted to take weeks/months off at a time. The traditional model based on features or projects might be a better fit, unless one partners with others as you describe.

boobiemaster• 3 years ago

So...

What's the paycheck like?

loeg2• 3 years ago

In the very first paragraph of the linked article, there is this clause which may provide some clarity:

I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package

He goes on to write,

My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so it varied wildly. What I’m earning now per year is: slightly less than my first year at Google (which included a significant signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in 2021 (when the signing stock grant overlapped with three stock refreshes, and $GOOG was at record highs), and more than I would have made in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting for all benefits on one side and the salary of my assistant on the other side).

trynewideas• 3 years ago

Good info at least to know that becoming a sustainable open-source maintainer requires "even accounting for the salary of my assistant" kind of money

davidw• 3 years ago

That's good money, rather than 'starving artist' wages.

guessmyname• 3 years ago

My Google compensation was dominated by stock grants, so it varied wildly. What I’m earning now per year is: slightly less than my first year at Google (which included a significant signing bonus), drastically less than I earned in 2021 (when the signing stock grant overlapped with three stock refreshes, and $GOOG was at record highs), and more than I would have made in 2022 had I stayed (even accounting for all benefits on one side and the salary of my assistant on the other side).

That is vague. A specific number would have been much better.

According to levels.fyi [1] as of Feb 2023, a Senior Software Engineer at Google (L5) could negotiate a compensation package around USD $193k (base) + $119k (RSU) + (one-time) $26k signing bonus.

I have talked to Filippo in person and I have the impression that he was a Staff Software Engineer (aka. Google L6), which are supposedly able to negotiate around USD $244k (base) + $187k (RSU) + (one-time) $35k signing bonus.

These numbers are averages based on verified offer letters and RSU grant documents that Google employees have submitted to that website during the last couple of years, but I think the numbers do not account for annual RSU refreshers, performance bonus, or stock performance. That is what Filippo is referring to as “it varied wildly”. I still would have liked to see a comparison with real numbers, at least the base salary.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google

simonw6• 3 years ago

This article is fantastic. Really great to see how Filippo is getting this to work, and in so much detail.

As someone who frequently complains about all of the administrative overhead this kind of lifestyle requires I appreciated the footnote pointing out that dentists have the same problem and just get on with it.

That said... as a self-employed mostly full time open source maintainer myself I do often think about how much I would appreciate some kind of agency or talent management relationship that would take a bunch of that off my hands. It works for Hollywood, why can't we have that in tech too?

ahmedalsudani• 3 years ago

In medicine those kinds of arrangements exist, but they charge 30% (I forget if it's off the top or the bottom).

bongobingo1• 3 years ago

off the top or the bottom

What does that mean? The difference between the two I mean.

intelVISA• 3 years ago

So it's kinda like a music tribute group but in the software world? Substituting for something that may be gone (the original FOSS author(s)) but for the die-hard fans who don't want to let go?

hudon• 3 years ago

Isn’t that what orgs like the Apache Software foundation do?

simonw6• 3 years ago

Not really: https://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html

They provide hardware, mailing lists and legal support. They don't help match-make maintainers with sources of consulting income (which is the kind of admin I'd most like help with!)

samsquire• 3 years ago

Long term, I want this model to grow beyond me and become a known professional path. This experiment is both easier and harder for me than it will be for those after me: easier because I have an extensive personal network and the financial means to safely take risks; harder because it’s uncharted territory for both me and the clients and because there’s a lack of legal, administrative, and marketing tools. I hope that as things progress the barriers will lower, making the model accessible to more and more people.

I feel this is attitude is honourable and should be commended for its wholesome goodness. I really like your attitude in trying to raise opportunities for software engineers and normalise paying for software maintenance.

Do people really enjoy paying for software? Do people actually just pay for bespoke development when they pay for software engineers with the silent industry wide acceptance that software is custom created and not for sharing outside that company. I'm thinking of your custom development for a wordpress blog for a small business or an ERP installation for a particular large organisation.

I feel the independent software vendor market for desktop software has stalled. Antivirus is supplanted by Windows Defender, except for Photoshop and some audiocreative software that everyone uses, I don't see the popularity of download websites that there was in the late 90s early 2000s when I was growing up.

I feel, as a software engineer I would like to love a codebase more, to do the things how I truly want to do them, but am held back by financial obligations and for my employer to be rewarded for shipping.

In my observations of internet comments, even software engineers and people don't enjoy buying software packages unless it is an application on a mobile device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com

What would everyone dream's computer tech jobs be? Building web apps, desktop apps, videogames, business software, mobile apps?

nine_k• 3 years ago

Find a problem people have, especially less engineering-type people, which you would love to help them solve. (Not "solve for them"; it's always a mutual process.)

Wherever people use Excel as the centerpiece of their work, there is an opportunity to help improve things, for fun and profit :)

In general, most opportunities lie on the seams between well-understood areas. Knowing more than one area helps. Many of these opportunities are too small for hockey-stick growth which VCs crave, or for huge contracts which large corporations desire. They are perfectly sufficient for a mid-size sustainable business though. Specialized things, like the bespoke work on and around open-source software from the post.

With any luck, that work may be pleasant.

ozim• 3 years ago

So now he will start selling books and courses how he did one off thing. Because he did it once he somehow thinks that now he has all the answers.

Fairly typical as I see same with traders or rentiers.

Either they know it is one time trick and they have to milk it out before it goes bad or they are really clueless and think they have all the answers.

I don’t know which one is worse but I lean on milking strategy to be worse because they become snake oil salesmen by choice.

dopylitty• 3 years ago

Wow, the footnote about dentists surprised me because I just found out about this company [0] (and apparently it’s one of many[1]) that just stamps out pre-built dentist offices all over the US with all the equipment and staff included.

All they need is the dentist. It’s honestly super creepy how generic they all are and how many middlemen end up involved in your dental care.

0: https://heartland.com/denovo/

1: https://www.theadso.org/

simonw6• 3 years ago

Wow, TIL about the Association of Dental Support Organizations.

Now I'm imagining a future where independent open source maintainers are common and successful enough that there's a conference for the Association of Open Source Maintainer Support Organizations.

thrdbndndn• 3 years ago

I heard it first time too but I don't find it creepy. Actually, I want more fields run like that.

edfletcher_t137• 3 years ago

which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers

Yeah, if you're Filippo Valsorda. Not sure that "proves the thesis" broadly whatsoever, though.

gerdesj4• 3 years ago

The bloke has found some measure of success that HN readers might generally applaud.

To be fair: he has only generated a single data point and not enough for a "thesis".

vxNsr• 3 years ago

I think the main caveat is “Senior” and he means fairly senior at that anyone less will definitely have trouble, but if you’ve been in the industry 10-15 years and are looking to be your own boss and are very competent, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to do this and make comparable compensation.

lhorie• 3 years ago

As someone with more than 15 years of experience and who has leveraged my open source work to improve my own career, my two cents is that GP has a fairly sober view on OSS as a job: Filippo is an outlier among outliers. Most people simply don't have the opportunity to build a reputation from multi-year, full time, corporate sponsored open source work on a high visibility project to leverage when leaving a cushy job to pursue higher rungs in Maslow's pyramid.

"Possible" is very different than "likely".

withinboredom• 3 years ago

Hahaha. Not every engineer is a salesman who can close a deal. Contracting is a cutthroat business as well where the competition is fierce. It’s global competition too!

I wouldn’t recommend this route to any random senior engineer.

dcow2• 3 years ago

This is awesome for Filippo. I am curious what the average contract length will be (or is). 1/3/5/10yr? Essentially will there be enough time to maintain and not be searching for new contracts to cycle in? If it is indeed like enterprise sales, it takes a long time to source, negotiate, and close a contract. Hopefully we can get an update a few years down the road.

treebot• 3 years ago

2 out of 5 of his clients are blockchain companies/orgs. I feel this path would be quite easy in blockchain, where almost all of the projects are open source

ausudhz• 3 years ago

That's because they must be open source, what other sense of accountability could you possibly give if you're asking money to a crowd upfront based on a piece of paper?

est313• 3 years ago

From the number of logos, it's 6 clients, and I would put 4 of them into the blockchain bucket, with smallstep and tailscale being the two non-blockchain exceptions.

Also note that for blockchain projects, it's important that they associate themselves with famous people to give their projects credibility. So they are willing to pay huge amounts of money to get celebrities like him on board.

flockonus• 3 years ago

On the 2nd statement, quite curious if that's true... if so, each of the companies will have at least a blog post, or tweet thread about the affiliation. If not true, you're probably reducing who is an efficient engineer who's worth their salt for their output.

snotrockets• 3 years ago

Latacora may have blockchain customers, but they're certainly not a blockchain shop.

twodave• 3 years ago

Honestly if you have to be a reasonably-well-known public figure to pull this off then I’m not sure how accessible it really is. I’m reasonably well known in my own city, and I could maaaybe pull off this level of comp working on strictly for-profit initiatives? Very feast or famine though, to the point of not being worth the stress.

manmal3• 3 years ago

How is this exact model different from regular freelancing? Taking on 6 clients at once is a bit much for my taste, there’s a lot of overhead involved usually. Now you not only need to manage various OSS communities, but also multiple clients and their expectations towards your contributions.

simonw6• 3 years ago

They're not paying him to do custom freelance work for him. They're paying him to continue contributing to the projects that he is already maintaining.

The higher tier plans also get what sounds like a few hours of custom consulting time (think calls with their team) per month.

manmal3• 3 years ago

And those paying clients won't want to influence the direction the project is taking?

asim3• 3 years ago

"I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package,[1] which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers."

His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make you think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at your high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry. I was a nobody when I left my job to work on open source full time. It was a year before I found a corporate sponsor and that was only because my friend worked there and he understood the value of what I was working on. Patreon was laughable in terms of what came back. Just be fully aware as you read this. With existing brand and following you can do what he did, without it you'll struggle immensely like I did.

stakhanov7• 3 years ago

He's an outlier in the industry.

...even more than that. He's an outlier in the industry and has chosen an industry with access to pyramid scheme money.

Neither the investment bubble surrounding FAANG, nor the job market bubble surrounding the talent pool that FAANG recruits from (namely SE talent that happens to be localized in the Bay Area) were sustainable.

Now that the market seems to finally be correcting away from that unsustainable local equilibrium, he's hopping right into the next one by becoming an open source crypto bro.

"proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers."

"Prove" is a strong word but "possible" weakens the statement.

"It's possible to earn 95th-percentile compensation." True, by definition, for 5% of all people. Nothing to see here. "There's more than one way of getting there." True. "Honest pay for honest work will get you there." Probably not. "Just seek out the bubbles and jump right in is a reproducible way of getting there." Probably not, you'd have to get the timing right, and that's mostly luck.

kettleballroll• 3 years ago

"Prove" is a strong word but "possible" weakens the statement.

Prove is the technically correct word here, in the sense of mathematical proofs: the existence of an example proves that it's not impossible.

jossclimb2• 3 years ago

For anyone reading this, don't be misled by "open source crypto bro." into thinking the author is a web3 "crypto" developer, he is the maintainer of the go crypto library. Also what do you mean by 'Bro'?, it sounds demeaning. I have met filippo and he is far from being how you're insinuating him to be.

laech• 3 years ago

has chosen an industry with access to pyramid scheme money.

Seems you can confusing cryptography with cryptocurrency, this guys is a cryptographer, that's a proper expert level security guy, nothing to do with pyramid scheme money.

xorcist• 3 years ago

I read that comment as referring to the Bay Area startup bubble.

I myself don't refer to anything that isn't paying new customers with old customers money as a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, because I think that trivializes actual pyramid schemes.

But a lot of people do, apparently, and it's completely understandable that a self perpetuating scheme where startups losing money at their core business at a varying rate are constantly sold at higher and higher valuations to see who holds the last hand, is regarded with the same skepticism.

jwr3• 3 years ago

His experience is totally unique. Please don't let this make you think you can quit your job and earn the same you did at your high paying FANG job. He's an outlier in the industry.

…and yet…

I run a self-funded SaaS business. I regularly pay (sponsor) developers of libraries that my software depends on. These are not large amounts, but they slowly grow over time. Additionally, there are some libraries (Semantic-UI for example) that are critical for me, but have been unmaintained for a while, and I'd gladly pay significantly more, on a regular basis, to have them maintained.

I am pretty sure I am not the only one. The money is there. The problem is in gathering critical mass: both for any single developer, to make a living, and for the entire movement, so that we shift from a culture of "FREE FREE EVERYTHING IS FREE" to a more responsible and sustainable "it's free, but if you depend on it, you better contribute money every month".

wrldos• 3 years ago

Quite frankly you're extremely unusual. As much as I sound cynical here, the only reason we use open source stuff in our production SaaS is because we don't have to raise a purchase order to get it or go through the whole onboarding process which is a pain in the ass. The money isn't even the issue; it's there and available but it's a bureaucratic shit show trying to give it to people. And the same is true everywhere I've worked for the last 20 years. Yes I know this is wrong.

Business idea: If there was a single corporate intermediatory who would handle all this sitting somewhere we could create a supply agreement with and funnel the cash through to the right people we could probably deal with it. We currently do this via AWS marketplace regularly so we don't have to deal with the paperwork.

asim3• 3 years ago

I don't think current platforms make it easy for developers to make money from their software. Especially libraries. There's a total unwillingness to pay for support because it's easier to just open a GitHub issue and complain. I think you're a rare case and that really means developers can't make a living off stuff like this. The few exceptions are something like sqlite maybe. Other stuff ends up needing to be heavily VC funded or backed by corporate sponsorships.

If GitHub actually helped developers make money this would be a different story. Sponsorships are a tipjar, it's not a sustainable path, it's not a form of employment. Grants, same thing, waste of time. We need the ability for developers to put a Pay but on their repositories. This is not about optional sponsorship. This is about paying to download the code, paying for use after a certain point. This is about putting a real number on the value of software. It only works when you define the economic model. If each Dev has yo setup their own website, integrate payments, do sales, etc its a struggle. GitHub is a big enough distribution channel where they could actually streamline this, App Store style. I know they have a marketplace but realistically who's using it?

pfortuny• 3 years ago

The “thesis” he speaks about only needs one example to hold, and he is it. So, not much of a “thesis” but a data point.

It is possible to survive a shark attack. Well, yes, but do not count on my to try.

usr1106• 3 years ago

With six clients one could think, ok it's not so expensive for them, but still sums up nicely for the developer.

Still I think the situation is highly exceptional. Which employer/client would be happy with someone working for them only 1 day a week? And think about the adminstrative overhead for a single person to deal with 6 contracts all the time. With some clients the paperwork can be significant.

cosmodisk• 3 years ago

The context switching is substantial with 6 clients, even if it's the same tech. As for 1 day per week: a very senior person can give good advice or point to the right direction. The company I work for isn't a tech company, but we do hire people to provide specialist knowledge and it doesn't require full time position to do so.

lrvick2• 3 years ago

I quit my job a couple years ago and secured several small retainers over a few weeks using my network. My employer at the time generously agreed to be my first client to smooth the transition.

Today I have am managing 8 active retainer clients, and regular 1-2 week audit contracts, while rarely working more than 40 hours a week. Virtually all code I write is open source, or on track to be so soon, and I only work with clients okay with that.

I am making triple my previous salary, and am actually onboarding new team members as a "tier 1" to help me meet demand without overworking myself.

I am a full stack security engineer with 20 years of experience, and most companies can't have access to senior security engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of $600k+ total comp, which they just can't afford.

Instead I offer most companies start a retainer with my team and I for as little as 10 hours a month and we can be there when they need help with security architecture, important code reviews, risk assessments, conducting interviews, or just to help unblock people in general.

This model is a win for companies that can't yet afford experienced full time security hires in house, and it is a win for me who can be in control of my time and life with higher income, and only have to focus on the most interesting problems of many different companies with minimal exposure to internal politics.

I can't express how much happier I am. Best career choice I ever made. YMMV.

goodpoint2• 3 years ago

most companies can't have access to senior security engineers without paying GAFAM money in the range of $600k+ total comp

It's difficult to believe that even in SV.

neilv• 3 years ago

I’m sharing details about my progress to hopefully popularize the model, and eventually help other maintainers adopt it,

Hopefully this won't inspire people who don't meet the right conditions and whatever luck contributed to this existence proof.

I've known a lot of poor people trying to make it as independents in open source. I once sent a laptop to a homeless kernel hacker (and, earlier, sent them food), and had to find a laptop specifically to be small and discreet, because they feared being stabbed for anything flashy-looking. Another, who has done talks on their novel work at major hacker-as-in-HN conference, as well as other accomplishments, I had to tell them about Medicaid, because they couldn't afford to go to the doctor when they really needed to. One who accomplished something major that most HNers have used or heard of, was living in a trailer, and died. I've also known plenty of people in open source who had modest day jobs and were pretty stressed and depressed from money problems, and the cascading effects of that, despite being at least as tech-skilled as people making FAANG money.

If you happen to find yourself as the official maintainer of multiple open source components that are recognized as key by numerous enterprises (and cryptobro ventures) that are flush with cash, and you have ins at some of those, and you have a safety net warchest from years of FAANG, and enough reputation you could probably go back if the whole indie open source consultant thing didn't work out... sure, consider a consultancy like this post describes, as a lifestyle move.

Otherwise, it's like the movie star child of a Hollywood producer evangelizing this great career success formula they've found, prompting a bunch of aspiring actors to buy one-way Greyhound bus tickets from Kansas to LA, where most of them will be lucky if the worst that happens is they end up waiting tables.

rurban• 3 years ago

I'm making about €30/month from Github sponsors. Of course I had to get a day job, so my open source time is limited compared to the previous decades. Though my company is fine for me contributing to some GNU projects or openssl.

JamesSwift• 3 years ago

The number one rule of transitioning to contractor is _do not start from zero_. This can't be stressed strongly enough!! The amount of time and energy it takes to get the ball rolling in that space before momentum kicks in is enormous. Hoping to rely on the goodwill of the anonymous masses, and not leaning _extremely_ hard on your existing direct network is absolutely a failure waiting to happen in 99.9% of cases. If you are working full time, and plan to transition, you absolutely should be moonlighting it first and/or have hard contracts in place with your first 'medium/long-term' client already (i.e. not a one-off engagement).

langsoul-com• 3 years ago

I wonder if one day we'd have companies that hire devs, then another company would contract them to work on specific open source packages.

Seems like the easiest approach for a business. Finding a person then issuing a free lance contract is a lot of overhead.

jpetso• 3 years ago

There are a handful of these companies out there. Collabora, KDAB, D. Richard Hipp's SQLite company, and if you're lenient enough you could also include companies that productize their open source package such as NextCloud or The Qt Company. Heck, Red Hat (sorry, IBM) regularly gets pulled in to improve software across their stack, kernel or otherwise.

You could also include non-profits like the Linux Foundation, Blender Foundation or (new!) Godot Foundation, which do the same thing but without having to disguise as consulting, because development of the software itself is important enough to the industry that can pool its resources by donating to the respective foundation.

Still only works for important enough packages. I don't think there's a way around that. An open source project generally has to provide massively outsized value so that a handful of developers can capture a fraction of that value for paid maintenance.

tilladam• 3 years ago

Speaking for KDAB, only a relatively small fraction of our overall revenue is paid work on open source codebases. We mostly get paid to work _with_ Free Software and to teach it to people. Living off of maintaining or improving Free Software is only sustainable for freelancers or small boutique companies. Even the big foundations don't fund all that much development, they mostly focus on governance, infrastructure and promotion. The Linux kernel is possibly an exception, in terms of feeding an appreciable number of people working on it professionally outside of a company directly selling it.

mastabadtomm2• 3 years ago

That's great but his experience is totally unique. My side project is used by at least 10 companies. Some of them are tech giants. My total earnings are -300 USD and 5 years of development time.

mromanuk• 3 years ago

What is your project?

mastabadtomm2• 3 years ago

It's Olric: https://github.com/buraksezer/olric. Publicly speaking about the companies may not be a good idea but you can dig into the issues, pull requests, and Discord channel if you are curious.

robertlagrant4• 3 years ago

TL;DR: author invents contracting; explains it.

hypfer• 3 years ago

In beloved memory of n-gate?

I’m now a full-time professional open source maintainer

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