...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.
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.
Even aside from cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs and that kind of stuff, there's a lot to question when it comes to the ethics of the computer security industry. A lot of it is snake oil, like Firewalls that basically whitelist everything so as not to become annoying. A lot of it is a racket (e.g. you can't get insurance for your company if it doesn't have antivirus software). VPNs basically make money by helping people break the law by circumventing geoblocking. I could go on, but I won't.
Taking Google-money means taking money that's earned through surveillance capitalism and anticompetitive tactics deployed by a monopolist that erode our free markets. Taking crypto-money means taking money earned through "greater fool theory" of valuations of investable assets.
People, on the whole, are never all-good or all-bad. When I see somebody showing off their good sides, I instinctively start looking for the bad. When I see somebody owning up to their bad side, I instinctively start looking for the good.
The good in this person is that he does open source. But that doesn't make him an angel. The bad in this person is that he's a top earner in part because he takes money that causes bad things to happen in the economy. As to his personality, I simply have no information on that and have never met him.
Which he does not do. He develops cryptographic libraries (used to encrypt files, network connections and the like). Nothing to do with cryptocurrency at all, save some cryptocurrencies might use the library he writes, but most of the use will be for TLS connections, file encryption etc.
If your definition of "crypto bro" is so broad to include "receives money from any person or company that has ever incidentally done anything with cryptocurrency" you've basically painted the entire industry that way.
Just because it mentions "Filecoin, whatever that is" doesn't imply that he's working in cryptocurrency.
I use "crypto bro" to describe people who actively work/invest in cryptocurrency directly and/or evangelize it. This usage does not intersect with Filippo at all.
But Filecoin IS a cryptocurrency. It's not merely "incidental".
Or change my mind and show me which of his projects is cryptocurrency-specific.
Fair enough, no reason to denounce him as "crypto bro", though, because you know full well what it insinuates.
Also:
>Google-money [...] surveillance capitalism
The email domain from your profile points to 180.136.102.34.bc.googleusercontent.com ...
Just saying, you know.
The fact that "bro" is a derogatory term for you is also not great.
You don't?
There's a massive difference between "hey this signature scheme is safe, trust me I'm a cryptographer, all my colleagues agree" and "hey this signature scheme is safe because if anyone can break it they can steal over $1,000,000,000 USD anonymously"
Effectively what should be pointed out is "this guy makes some extremely fundamental crypto libraries that are used by millions of projects out there, including cryptocurrencies". But that's hardly relevant.
Prove is the technically correct word here, in the sense of mathematical proofs: the existence of an example proves that it's not impossible.
When a motivational speaker says something like "Billionaire X proves that it's possible to be a billionaire" that's mathematically correct, yet totally uninteresting. What people go there to hear about is methods for reproducibly becoming a billionaire or even just slightly increasing your odds of becoming a billionaire, and this article is just as lacking in that department as most motivational speeches.
Don't get me wrong. I think open source is a good thing. It seems like the author is working hard, doing good work, sharing it, and making a solid livelihood may be well-deserved for him. There's just nothing here that suggests a reproducible method.
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.
> I myself don't refer to anything that isn't paying new customers with old customers money as a pyramid or Ponzi scheme
In Wikipedia's definition, that aspect doesn't seem to be strictly necessary [1]. They define it as "a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme".
In my mind it also plays a bit of a role whether you're doing that with retail investors vs. high-net-worth or institutional players. A retail investor generally can't invest in startups, but might invest in crypto if their neighbor recently bought some and then talked them into it.
…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".
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.
Isn't that what tidelift [1] is doing?
That is totally worth day 10% of the value of the product!
It won't work: this company will eventually crank up their fees to 30+% of the value.
A lot of software/B2B sales are procured through a channel whose primary purpose is an existing business relationship with the company you're trying to sell to.
They take a % as a transaction fee. Anywhere from 10-30%, depending.
They exist. They suck, they all suck... and I say this as a vendor "procured" by these companies.
It's a necessary evil, one that's ripe for disruption.
> 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.
Isn't that exactly what Github does through its Sponsors program? I think I only handle two endpoints these days: Github Sponsors and Clojurists Together. Github works very well, and they will even fold/consolidate new sponsorships into your existing invoices as you add them over time.
I don't think "overhead" is a valid excuse anymore.
I'm sure it's not the only reason to choose open-source tech.
At least with open-source projects you can read, patch, clone or fork the source
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?
I really don't understand. GitHub does help developers make money. Sponsorships are subscriptions, not one-time tips. If you can get 20 companies to pitch in with, say, $250/month, you begin to look at a sustainable living. From a company point of view, paying, say, $1000/month for four most-used pieces of software that the company depends on, is still many times less expensive than hiring even a single full-time developer.
I feel like rather than trying to change the mindset ("everything must be FREE FREE FREE"), we are trying very hard to find reasons not to use a perfectly good existing solution.
It is possible to survive a shark attack. Well, yes, but do not count on my to try.
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.
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.
It's difficult to believe that even in SV.
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.
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.