Re:The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
by rleigh on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:48AM
(#25159934)
This was exactly my experience of "consulting". I too was between jobs, and it seemed like an idea worth trying. At the very least, something interesting to keep me occupied while unemployed. And it was an interesting experience to set up and run a company, which I don't begrudge. But when I looked at my effective hourly rate, it was below minimum wage.
It did give me some perspective on running companies, negotiating contracts and billing with an hourly/daily rate vs fixed price per contract. I would certainly increase what I was billing by several times were I to repeat it, but having a sustainable source of business before starting would also be something I would factor in.
As someone who tried their hand at doing paid "consulting" work on an open source project i contributed to (just very briefly when i was between jobs. I wasn't very succesful at it. Nobody offered me $1000/hr) most of the jobs were very small and there was a surprising amount of overhead between getting different jobs (maybe not that surprising, i was probably just naive). Decently big $$$/hr translated to less than i thought it would in practise.
> Maintainers can handle this problem however they like, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who's not getting paid
What exactly are you feeling sorry for, and would $$$ alleviate the issue? People don't go into open source software to become millionaires, and money will not fix burnout.
> with the bonus that the expectation to do other people's shit for free is gone.
People will always try to get you to do shit for free, even if its a paid project by a company. Not being paid at least means you can tell off the people you don't like really easily.