He probably pulls 500k+ from the whole ecosystem,but the fact that such a popular product as Vue JS can only bring in $150K in support is a reality check.

Is it really? The guy is making a living thanks to his own personal project and it's bad he's not a millionaire, especially since you note his revenue might not be limited to his Patreon only?

He might earn much more in the golden handcuffs of a FAANG, but his is a pretty incredible scenario by all metrics, especially if you consider the reality of the whole job market, not the SV niche making millions a year working at Google & co.

I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

Is it a good living? Yes. Is it commensurate with the value Evan has helped create through Vue.js? Not even close.

But that's kind of the deal with open source, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I don't equate $150K to peanuts, far from it,but my point is that if a project of such success brings this much,what chances people have with smaller projects that are good but nowhere near to Vue JS popularity.

He also has +150 sponsors on GitHub, but it doesn't changes the reality that a software engineer at his level can cut of a deal from any FAANG company for a Staff SWE role, which will be probably between 450-700K/year band.

As a comparision, these are the top Patreon earners as of Dec. 2020. They range from $190M to $2MM per year. https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators