[HN Gopher] Actual is going open-source ___________________________________________________________________ Actual is going open-source Author : pbowyer Score : 564 points Date : 2022-04-29 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (actualbudget.com) (TXT) w3m dump (actualbudget.com) | brap wrote: | I've used YNAB before and really liked it, this seems | conceptually similar. Did anyone use both and would like to share | their experience? | | My main problem with YNAB was that entering transactions manually | all the time was time consuming, and I wasn't able to stay | consistent for more than a few months at a time (in my country | there was no way to import automatically). | l8nite wrote: | I left YNAB when they pulled the bait & switch on pricing with | their oldest customers last year. I've been looking for | something to replace it for awhile now, so I'm going to try | this out. | xbryanx wrote: | Check out Lunch Money[1] - Which feels more polished and | supported to me. | | 1 - https://lunchmoney.app/ | kashura wrote: | YNAB drastically changed their pricing (double for | "grandfathered" customers), but even more importantly American | Express import has been broken for about 6 months now. That was | the final straw. | bestcoder69 wrote: | We upgraded to SaaS YNAB and suffered through it for years, | before dropping it in our house for the same reason. Syncing | was broken for a really really long time. We finally reported | it, and it was working the next time we checked. | | So, their monitoring (if it exists) is not doing its job | whatsoever, and they're relying on customer reports to find | out about months-long outages. Not to mention the smaller | sync outages that would happen constantly. | | We tried to understand the way they want us to deal with | credit cards about a dozen times. Never had any interest in | learning it and still don't (because I don't treat a CC | transaction any different from a cash transaction w/r/t | budgeting), but the new YNAB forced it on us. | | Nothing I'm saying is new. It's just wild to me how bad their | Second System tanked their software & reputation. | dwild wrote: | > Syncing was broken for a really really long time. We | finally reported it, and it was working the next time we | checked. | | Well they use Plaid, they aren't really responsible for | syncing. Most competitor will also use Plaid and have the | same issue sadly. Mine also stopped synced recently as my | bank updated their website. It took a few weeks before it | came back. | | > So, their monitoring (if it exists) is not doing its job | whatsoever, | | Actually Plaid monitoring is quite good (for each bank you | get the percent of failed queries), but how fast they | react, well that's another ball game and I guess it depends | on the amounts of users affected and the amount of works | required to fix it. | | I was considering working on my own opensource alternative | to YNAB and that's why I looked a bit into Plaid. Now that | Actual is open source, maybe I won't... | | > I don't treat a CC transaction any different from a cash | transaction | | Well they aren't different either... I treat both my cash | and debit card transactions the same way I treat my credit | cards transactions. I add them in their respective accounts | and that's it (I only started adding them manually when my | bank updated their website, it has gone better than I | thought and decided to stay that way for now, never felt | comfortable knowing Plaid had my banks credentials). | | Maybe what you were confused with was the amounts shown on | the Budget side? The credit cards categories act a tiny bit | different than the actual categories. I know you said you | had no interest in learning, but if you change your mind, I | could try explaining how it works. | | I guess an issue with credit cards is that it feel like | it's actual money, but it's not. That doesn't goes well | with zero based budgeting which depends on the fact that | you already have the funds to pay for all your spending. | You work with past money, not future one. | rmesters wrote: | Shameless plug: OP mentioned Plaid as a way to sync bank | accounts, but if anyone wants to use a Plaid alternative in | Europe, check out Nordigen (it's free). | | Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders. | dwild wrote: | How can you afford to make it free? | michaelsalim wrote: | Awesome how James handled this! | | Unrelated, I'm looking for something that can help me create | finance projections. Eg: How's my account going to look like in | the next 3 months if I go for a holiday. | | Any suggestions for that? | Barrin92 wrote: | bern4444 wrote: | There are a lot of tools like Actual (YNAB, Monarch, Mint, Aspire | google sheet etc). All are focused on budgets and mostly managing | cash accounts. | | I've always wanted an equivalent but for investments. I know you | can sync investment accounts to some of these, but that only | reports the balance generally. | | I'd love to have the equivalent for investment accounts that | answer these questions: | | What is my sector exposure? | | How much, across multiple accounts and brokerages, of Apple (or | any stock/etf/mutual fund) do I own as a total percentage? | | How much money are in retirement accounts vs non retirement | accounts? | | What is my IRR (rate of return) in aggregate and per account? | | And of course things like projections, safe withdrawal rates, | analysis in the form of charts and graphs like what Actual and | the rest offer. | | etc | bolapara wrote: | Check out Laksmhi: | | https://github.com/sarvjeets/lakshmi | lhl wrote: | The best open source app I've found that does much of this is: | https://www.portfolio-performance.info/en/ | whoopdeepoo wrote: | Personal capital? Sigfig? | friendly_deer wrote: | personal capital is great. Yeah, I get a call from a rep | asking for a meeting 1x/year. I politely decline and don't | hear again from them til next year...not a big deal for a | great 100% hands off dashboard. | bern4444 wrote: | I've heard of personal capital - though I've read lots of | reviews that say they always try and upsell you to their paid | management platforms. | | Will take a look at sigfig! | troupe wrote: | They do, but the way they fund the development is to check | with people using their platform and ask if they want | financial advisement services. It is probably one of the | better business models out there that still gives you | something valuable for free. | adamarice wrote: | I've been working on building this since January. We should | have the first version up in a few weeks. Here's the landing | page: https://www.haystack.finance | bern4444 wrote: | I don't know if this is a business you're trying to build or | a project you're working on but I'd be interested in helping | if you need. | | I was working on something like this as a side project but my | motivation for it fluctuates. | adamarice wrote: | Awesome, yeah send me an email at | adam.arthur.rice@gmail.com. Would be great to chat. | troupe wrote: | You might take a look at Personal Capital. Their free service | will answer many of those questions for you and they have a | decent retirement simulator to understand what your chances are | of having enough money for the rest of your life. | molsongolden wrote: | Maybe is roughly working on this for all of your assets. | | Not much on their website yet but there's a high-level roadmap, | discord, and newsletter. They're in testing with beta customers | atm. Josh also built Baremetrics which does a great job of | slicing and rearranging business data streams into useful | insights. | | https://maybe.co/ | adamhp wrote: | Check out https://projectionlab.com/ | Ozzie_osman wrote: | If you're interested in exploring full-time work around this, | I'm on the Monarch team, and would love to chat. Most of us our | personal finance geeks on some level and we've loved working on | this together. Our investment sync is pretty primitive right | now but we have a pretty big batch of work in the next few | months around planning/goals/advice (which would include | investments, debt paydown, etc). | | You can find me on LinkedIn through my About link (or just | apply on the website, we keep a close eye on applicants | especially if they're interested in personal finance). | aloknnikhil wrote: | Try https://ghostfol.io/portfolio (there's an option to self- | host too) | mbesto wrote: | I really like Kubera for all of this: https://www.kubera.com/ | Ozzie_osman wrote: | Sad to see this. We were big fans of Actual. | | We're working on a product in this space. While there is a ton of | demand for products like this (the incumbents, like Mint, aren't | really evolving or providing the privacy people want), it's not | easy to grow. We ended up raising venture capital to bridge the | gap, but once we did, things started to come together. In fact, | we ended up having a few people who were trying to build an app | solo join the team (because they're so passionate about the | space, and had build great products, but couldn't get a lot of | traction). | nerdjon wrote: | I am curious, what do people use for budgeting? | | Mint seems like the most feature rich, but not only do I not want | to support their parent company because of their Tax lobbying... | but I don't trust them from a privacy standpoint (Considering its | free). | | YNAB and Monarch both seem like really good options. But I have | not looked into them much yet. | | I currently use Copilot (iOS only... really just iPhone, no iPad | app). I have found it really nice but the lack of a web or iPad | app makes doing some tasks more of a pain. | | I am curious if anyone has found any that work well for couples | that don't have joint finances but do obviously share some | expenses. My partner and me struggle with figuring this out and | inevitably loose track of certain small things. Rent and standard | expenses are easy. But going out, groceries, etc. those are the | complicated ones. | | I know there is an app you can use that you can mark transactions | as shared, but I don't want to use that for privacy reasons. I | would love if there was an app that had some functionality like | that built in without making it so we have one account that just | has all of our accounts in it. | cstoner wrote: | I've been using YNAB since March 2014. I started doing manual | entry with YNAB4 and was an early adopter of YNAB5. | | I manage my own personal budget as well a joint budget for | myself and my fiance. | | Here's my takeaway: | | * The YNAB model to budgeting is how I want all future | budgeting tools I use to work. They call the framework "The | Four Rules" (https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-four-rules/) | and they are a very pragmatic way to think about budgeting. | | * Specifically, I like to be able to have my budget cover | multiple months into the future. I have fairly bursty and | somewhat unpredictable income. I like to have a reserve of 6 | months of expenses covered just to make sure that I can handle | any ebb and flow of my income. | | * I have successfully convinced my partner to use YNAB and they | find it valuable. It really is super useful software that is | pretty straight forward to use and that makes budgeting very | quick and easy. | | * Sharing budgets with a partner doesn't really work the way | you'd want it to. You would need to share a single set of | credentials, and there isn't really any fine grained access | controls. | | * YNAB has been raising their prices lately, and I think it's | reasonable to assume that they are going to be raising them | again in the future. I am not convinced that I, personally, am | getting value out of the things they say they are improving. | While I have a lot of my financial history with them, I'm | definitely investigating competitors to see if they would fit | my needs. So far, none have but I'm going to keep looking | because honestly I'm not sure YNAB is worth $100/yr ($200/yr | between my partner and I is fucking crazy). | | Overall, would I recommend YNAB? Yeah, probably. I would bet | that if you haven't been budgeting before and started using | YNAB at the current price that you would probably make at least | $100 worth of better financial decisions in the first year. But | there's a huge asterisk next to the price. | | I remember paying $30 for YNAB4 and being happy with it. They | introduced the SaaS version that would sync to import your | transactions at $50/yr and I remember thinking that was kinda | pricy. You could always import the transactions from your bank | by downloading the Quicken files, but I understand they need a | subscription model to sustain an actual business around the | product. | | I am not convinced that the recent price hikes have been | justified by an increase in the value of the product. | nerdjon wrote: | The price is where I am finding myself hesitant to switch | unless I find something that has a life changing feature | (like features for couples). | | Copilot had a price hike to $9 a month (or $70 a year I | believe) but grandfathered everyone who had a subscription | for $3 a month "for life" (as long as you have an active | subscription). | | I do keep hearing great things about YNAB and I don't mind | paying for it, but if they are being that aggressive on | raising pricing that is concerning. | bern4444 wrote: | I use YNAB, I tried Monarch and I found it less intuitive. I | truly think YNAB is the best player in the budgeting personal | finance space. | | I wish they did more (see my other comment about investing) | bredren wrote: | Has anyone found a product that does a good job at consuming | and unwinding transactions from an Apple Card? | | If I understand correctly, AC can't be connected by Plaid, and | You have to do manual export and upload of transaction data. | | If you use this for most of your expenses the payments from | your checking account to pay off the card each month should | also be recognized as such. | | I've tried managing this using Waveapps some and besides not | liking that company, it didn't handle this very well. | | Specific to this thread, how well does Actual handle this? It | would be cool to self host this stuff. | nerdjon wrote: | I think Mint announced a few weeks ago native support. | | Unfortunately Copilot is the same where you have to do a | manual export, which means you only see it at the end of the | month. Making it not super useful for tracking your budget as | the month goes on. | | This has unfortunately lead to my Apple Card rarely being | used. Which sucks. | | I keep hoping that there is some sort of native data sharing | built into iOS so I don't have to log into apple through | something like Plaid | bredren wrote: | Thanks for the reply. | | I searched around and found no mention of this, but then | found it on Intuit's Mint product blog: | https://mint.intuit.com/blog/updates/you-can-now-connect- | you... | | Presumably, there are more integrations coming but no | information from Apple on this. Seems too good to be true | that Apple would offer an API to customers that could be | hooked up to a self-hosted Actual instance. | | Kind of a bummer that they only have Mint support right | now, seems quite at odds with Apple's Privacy goals. | kareemm wrote: | Used YNAB4 + 5 for several years and it never really took. I | use Tiller.com now - puts all your data into a Google Sheet or | Cloud Excel sheet. | | It has a bunch of extensions that you can use for budgeting, | emailing daily transactions, reporting, optimizing debt payoffs | using various different methods, etc. | | Plus it's just a spreadsheet, so sorting/filtering etc just | work. And it's as fast as having a large Google Sheet. So | pretty darn fast. | SeriousM wrote: | For the curious: https://www.tillerhq.com/ is the right url | ashirviskas wrote: | >But going out, groceries, etc. those are the complicated ones. | | Which is why I don't actually track those day-to-day. I'm using | revolut and it gives me a pretty decent estimate of spent per | category per month, give or take 15%. | | Then I use a slightly modified google sheets budgeting template | (it's right there) and just put all the numbers there. Quite | convenient and you can see all the data + add custom formulas | if you want to. | ChrisClark wrote: | Lunchmoney.app has a collaboration feature, but the description | isn't clear enough to see if it's what you're looking for. | [deleted] | drc500free wrote: | I used to use Mint, moved to Truebill a couple years ago. It's | easier to split out and budget discretionary spending and track | it over the month. They also do a good job of automatically | identifying bills and other repeat charges for review. | gunsch wrote: | I've enjoyed YNAB a lot for budgeting and been using it for the | last 3 years now. Works very well with my spreadsheet brain. | | It's got solid APIs if you want to do your own add-ons or | integrations too. As an example, a friend of mine who's on the | FIRE track has integrated his own layer on top of YNAB for | tracking "paid off for life" categories, including budgeting | for expected inflation, and allocated against retirement | account balances. | adrianmsmith wrote: | The blog post says 810 paid subscribers, and the price was | $4/month so that's $3.2k/month. | | I mean that's not bad, that sounds like they'd nearly made it. | Maybe they'd need 2-3x that to live off (depending where they | live). But if they got that far I sort of feel they might have | been able to make it. Then they wouldn't need any other job, they | could just live off the product. And then any additional revenue | growth would be profit. | | I mean they were a lot closer to it being able to sustain them | than a business with e.g. $0/month revenue, or e.g. 3 users at | $10/month (I've worked for a few such projects without | product/market..) | twobitshifter wrote: | There's a chance they just needed to raise the price. I wonder | how people land on something like $4. At that price your demand | for something like this is not price sensitive. $5 and you have | 20% growth, $8 and you've doubled. To the users it's just a few | bucks. | dwild wrote: | The thing is, YNAB increased pricing recently and that didn't | went well, it caused a pretty negative outlash... Actual was | actually a pretty good alternative that was pushed by many | people on Reddit, they got quite a bit of free advertising | through that. Yearly YNAB is only 8.25$ a month and support | syncing through Plaid (which add a few dollars per month for | sure to the cost and it also add quite a bit of negative | feedback sadly). So yeah he could increase the price for | sure, but not by much, and his current customers wouldn't | appreciate it that much considering they jumped ship to avoid | a price increase in the first place. | caseyross wrote: | Moreover, everything on the website implies that Actual was a | high-end, exactingly designed product for discerning, well- | off people. But it was priced like general-audience commodity | SaaS. My guess is that most subscribers would have been more | than willing to pay, say, 20 dollars a month instead of 4, | particularly for something that has "saving you lots of | money" as a core value proposition. | all2 wrote: | It's open source... We could try. :D | balaji1 wrote: | would it have been possible to sell the code and business? the | author doesn't mention that he explored that option. This seems | very sellable. And like you said, $3.2k/month could go long way | in other countries. So it would have been cool to find a | buyer/partner who could be aligned with the vision and values | of the author. | weaksauce wrote: | they mentioned that they need to hire 2 people. so that's a | pretty low gross for that. and the expense of running the | servers and all that is not included there so net was probably | wildly insufficient for that kind of newhire. I'd think | spending some money on marketing would have been more prudent. | rexreed wrote: | I still have yet to find something that works as well as | Microsoft Money. I have to run it on VMWare Fusion on a Mac to | make it work. Moneydance is the next closest thing. Something | that has real support for investments and tax reporting. | Everything else is too... simple. | ICodeSometimes wrote: | Interesting. I wonder why James didn't attempt to sell it at the | very least? | | 36K ARR means you could have rather quickly found a buyer for | 60k+ and gotten rid of the thing for a small but not in- | significant payday. Also i wonder if the users are truly happy | with being told they have to migrate to their own server as i'd | assume they're the type who'd rather pay $4 a month instead of | having to deal with the hassle. | | In any case, it's quite a courageous move and seems very well- | intentioned. | nnoitra wrote: | 36K is peanuts. That's 3K a month. | tomatowurst wrote: | i guess you make millions a month, i will still take 3k a | month MRR. | Trasmatta wrote: | 3k MRR, but with a huge amount of extra stress on top of | your full time job. It's not necessarily worth it, and the | type of thing that leads to massive burnout. | jonas21 wrote: | You have no control over what the buyer would do with it. They | might decide to slurp up all of the user financial data flowing | through the server, for example. Or they might leak the data | due to incompetence. Even in the best of circumstances, the | buyer would probably have a plan for increasing revenue, which | might mean raising prices, introducing ads, or any number of | things that James might not like. | | Finally, it sounds like he wants to continue working on the | product, just at his own pace, and without the stress of | running a business. This would not be an option if he sold. | [deleted] | quadrangle wrote: | As someone focused on sticking to FLO software, I've been using | Skrooge for accounting. It's just local, but it works well. How | does Actual compare? | codegeek wrote: | "I completely underestimated how much work it takes to build a | business. There's so much overhead. I'm always figuring out why a | build failed, taxes, how to triage issues, responding to support, | designing UIs, responding to Apple's complaints, and more. | There's so much that goes on behind the scenes. There's no way a | single person can possible do this alone, especially as a side | project." | | This is the part that resonates a lot with me even though I have | been able to build a small business that is reasonably successful | with a small team but it takes a toll. It is a frikin slog and | there are days when you feel like jumping off a cliff. Also the | cost of doing something so small can add up when you can have a | cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy. To do your own thing | requires a very different mindset and incredibly hard. | | There is a HUGE difference between building a quick side project | for fun VS turning it into a real business (no matter how small). | I have full sympathy for the owner and totally understand where | they are coming from. No judgement and I wish them all the best. | raverbashing wrote: | Agree. It resonates a lot | | Building your own business is as much about business plans as | it is to building the product as it is making sure there's | enough toilet paper in the bathroom. And all of those are | important | la6472 wrote: | 810 paid subscribers and he could not secure funding to sustain | the business ?? | granshaw wrote: | Real curious what his pricing was like, do you know? | carstenhag wrote: | In the blog post it says 4,99 per month. | amelius wrote: | Why not ask someone for help, though? | dwild wrote: | Based on the post, he was on his 4th year, and his current | number of monthly paid subscriber was 810 for 4$ a month | (thus less than 40k$ a year)... | | I got a feeling that he just didn't see an opening toward | making this viable against YNAB. An important fact is that | YNAB increased their pricing recently, which caused quite a | bit of stir up and an exodus to competitors. Everything was | in his favor, cheaper than YNAB, people were freely | advertising his app. As he mentioned he started to try to | implement Plaid, I guess he did the math and found out that | he would get too close to YNAB price (for sure it's going to | be a few dollars a month)... | nnoitra wrote: | so make 200K relatively easy? | [deleted] | johnwheeler wrote: | Well, it's the type of business. Personal finance is super-hard | to break into. It requires trust and budget. Trust requires | users and word of mouth so its chicken and egg. you're not | going to compete as a one man show with intuit on budgets or | trust. | | i get the vision - build something so good and usable, and they | will come. The good thing about Quickbooks though is that it's | trustworthy in the social proof sense. That trumps a lot of | ease of use (though it is also easy to use) | matwood wrote: | > Also the cost of doing something so small can add up when you | can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy. | | You've hit it on the head. The fastest way to wealth is not a | startup (though VCs want everyone to look the other way that | most fail), but to get a job at a FAANG or FAANG adjacent | company. | | A friend just switched jobs and he made a hit list of companies | based on his analysis of expected RSU appreciation. | mellosouls wrote: | _you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy_ | | Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a | different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you | are in a _tiny_ (and normally very privileged) set. | | The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows | perhaps just a _leeetle_ disconnect with the mainstream tech | world | daenz wrote: | My read on that is that it is total comp, so it includes | bonuses/RSUs/options. If you're not negotiating for those | things, what are you doing. Though $200k base salary is not a | crazy salary for a staff/principle/high-level engineer. | | I don't think people realize how corrosive to mental health a | $200k engineering job can be though. I was making very close | to that as a base salary, and the amount of responsibilities | I had, that all directly contributed to the success of the | organization and the engineering team, was frankly | staggering. I was always available, even when I wasn't "on | call." I was always putting out very important fires. It | never ended. | gabereiser wrote: | The mental health aspect I think is often overlooked. When | young engineers are eager to climb the ladder into | senior/principal/distinguished positions (this was me, btw) | they often overlook what it does to your mental health. The | beginning seems great. Big problems, big solutions, | everyone knows what's their role in it and how to get it | done. Over the years that view will fade. The certainty of | success replaced by tooling up, research, supporting | articles, still engineering hard stuff, fielding workshops | by the business to help educate and rehash the vision to | this next set of recent college grads. The complexity of | the job increases as the responsibility increases. | | My brother is also an engineer and instead of going after | titles and management he decided to stay as an engineer for | as long as he could. He's extremely happy working on things | without having direct reports. There's a sweet spot for | everyone here. Some like more freedom and time to recharge | (this is me) and some can balance the demands of the work | with the demands to explore work (my brother). Then there | are others who dive so far head first into work they burn | themselves out. | | Please, take the time to find your balance. Not only will | you be happier, people around you will be too. | daenz wrote: | I tried to re-negotiate a 4 day work week, but they | weren't having it, so ended up walking. I know it is | privileged to say, but sometimes no amount of money is | worth giving up things that are important to you. For me, | I was giving up my time and ignoring a project that I | think is very important. When I came to my senses about | how the money isn't worth giving that up, they had to | yield, or I had to leave. | bombcar wrote: | I'd like to do four days a week at 70% pay. | | No can do. | | Ok I quit, but I can consult 3 days a week at 200% pay. | | Sounds good. | conductr wrote: | This is pretty universal to all industries. You just don't | get paid well for the work you do in X hours. You get paid | well became you're expected to put in a high amount of | effort that isn't measured in time or stress, except by | you. | | Mo' money, mo' problems | samhw wrote: | Also, speaking personally as someone doing PS180k when I | know my market salary is at most two thirds of that: I | don't really spend the money, because I never want to be | pinioned to my job, or to even _feel like_ I 'm locked | into my job because I'd e.g. have to move out of my house | if I quit. That limits you quite a bit, unless you're | preternaturally confident in your jobseeking ability. | conductr wrote: | I do the same. I'm naturally frugal but have loosened up | some as earnings increases but I don't spend or leverage | like my peers. They are prisoners to their jobs and I can | (and have) said "enough" and walked away when jobs get | too toxic. I don't generally have a problem working long | hard hours but I unplug at times where interruptions will | not be fielded and I've been present during complete shit | show management stuff that I just morally will not be | associated with. It's immensely helpful to my mental | health knowing I can walk off anytime things go sideways. | | I even negotiate my compensation in a manner that I'm not | beholden like those with stock, options or anything where | vesting periods are involved. It's typically event based | and more short term. But, I don't work in a field where | I'm turning down early Facebook equity or something like | that. | samhw wrote: | Yeah, that sounds very similar to me. I'm the opposite in | terms of spending - I'll naturally default to spending my | income, rather than defaulting to not spending - but that | only holds up to about PS100k, at which point it goes | beyond my capacity to (in a natural way) spend it all. | But I share the concern about being a prisoner to one's | job. That's my main concern. I don't understand how so | many people are willing to put themselves in a position - | partly in terms of spending habits but primarily in terms | of fixed commitments like rent and women - where they | could not live their current life without their job, | where losing or forgoing it would mean ruination, by the | standards of the life they choose for themselves. That's | just beyond my comprehension. For me a job is a very | contingent thing. | rglullis wrote: | Again, what part of the world are you on? | | Even in Berlin, with all the talks about it becoming a top | destination for tech people, I'm yet to hear any 6-figures | offer. Even the blockchain companies that were flush with | cash were paying 90-95kEUR to their top people, maybe a | 10-20% performance bonus. Mind you, we are talking about | Germany where the tax is ~42% of your income at this | bracket if you are single. | | When I was freelancing, pay was higher, but my best year | hit around 130kEUR net income, and that only because I | deferred a lot of it and got an accountant that advised me | to put as much as possible into a private pension fund to | have a bigger tax deduction. If I wanted to have that cash | in hand, I would've ended up with maybe 80kEUR? | | Yes, cost of living is lower (though rapidly rising, and it | is not a post-pandemic thing) and there is plenty of social | welfare benefits. Especially after having kids, I wouldn't | go to the US for a $200k/year job. But to think that this | kind of compensation is par for the course shows a huge | disconnect from the reality in the rest of world. | beberlei wrote: | To clarify, 42% of every euro earned above 57919EUR. | Weighted average tax rate is still "just" 27% when | earning 100.000EUR | tormeh wrote: | Depends if you count the cost of statutory health | insurance as a de-facto tax, in which case it's closer to | 40% again. There's a bit more nuance to this (there's a | contribution cap), but if you ever read that taxes in | Germany are lower than 40% odds are the speaker is | leaving out health insurance. | | Aside: The neat thing with the statutory health insurance | is of course that they have to pay for your treatment, no | matter how fucked up your situation is or how little | money you have - but if you're healthy and well-paid it's | poor value. | blumomo wrote: | In Germany you may want to consider that the employer | pays another approx. 20% on top of your salary, by law. | So if your salary is EUR 100k, your employer actually | pays 120k to keep you on board. Money that your employer | could otherwise add to your payout as he's paying all off | it anyway _for_ you, right? | | Now with 42% income tax of a 100k salary, there's a net | of 58k arriving at your bank account over a year. | | Given that your employer pays 120k, you have actually | "lost" 62k (not just 42k) to the government and | insurances. With that maths, the _net_ tax (incl. | insurances) is actually close to 52%. That is a whopping | net +10% taxes from the math in the parent post. | derhagen wrote: | > "Now with 42% income tax of a 100k salary, there's a | net of 58k arriving at your bank account over a year." | | Oh boy, that's one of those misconceptions I'm really | sick of. "The tax is so high, I pay almost half of my | salary to the greedy state". No, you certainly don't! And | if everyone please spent 5 minutes to understand the | difference between the _effective tax rate_ and the | _marginal tax rate_ , we'd finally get rid of that | pointless discussion. With a 100k salary, there is ~75k | net arriving at you bank account, if you're married. If | you take care of children, it's even more. | | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkommensteuer_(Deutschlan | d)#... | | I live in Norway and pay an 34% effective tax. The | highest in the world at my salary level. I don't | complain, because tax money is used for an excellent | education system, including the best libraries I've ever | been to, and not least for my own ~50kEUR PhD salary that | every single PhD student in town receives. Meanwhile my | high school in Germany didn't even have soap dispensers | in the bathrooms because highly skilled hacker news | readers don't bother to learn the basics of their tax | system before they go and vote for corrupt privatization | parties that promise lower taxes and cut back public | investments. | | > "Money that your employer could otherwise add to your | payout..." Also, please don't mix up taxes, insurance and | pension. If you'd prefer to pay for medical expenses | yourself, do the math. You don't want that, especially | when you have a family. | y4mi wrote: | I am pretty sure they're saying $200k _before_ taxes. It | 's equivalent wage in Germany would be 150kEUR, as the | employer has to pay about 21% on top of the salary for | social securities. | | I agree that these numbers always sound outlandish (I'm | from Germany too), but they do seem to be true. Do keep | in mind that while the wage gap is bad here, its several | times worse in the USA. | rglullis wrote: | I know it is pre-tax. I also know that there are benefits | in Europe that simply do not exist in the US - minimum of | 25 days of _actual_ vacation and not that "you may | travel for a few days, but you are still on-call" thing | that people in the US call "holidays", Elternzeit, etc... | | But still, no one would claim that is easy to get a | 90kEUR salary in Germany, or that "if you are not asking | that much then what are you doing". For 150, you have to | be _way_ above average or you have to running your own | business. | shankr wrote: | No 200K doesn't include say things like 401K contribution | or health contribution from employer's side. So if you | are going to top German salary with employer | contribution, you need to do the same with USA salary. | [deleted] | sciurus wrote: | I've personally worked with people who I know made | 6-figures of total comp in Germany. Checking the | relatively-new https://techpays.eu/, there are plenty of | 6-figure entries for Germany. I'm not saying this means | it's the norm, just that it's achievable for people whose | posts make it to the front page of Hacker News. | | You mentioned taxes. When people talk about comp in the | US, we aren't taking out taxes. Effective tax rate | (federal+state+fica) for a single individual making $200k | of salary+bonus is ~30% here. That would turn $200k into | $140k take home. | shankr wrote: | I think the parent above you is talking without taking | out taxes. For 90K, you would pay (taxes+health insurance | + pension+unemployment benefit) ~42%. So at the end, what | you see in your account ~52K/year. This is as a single | person. For family/kids, you can make little bit more. | lkrubner wrote: | Europe is a very different system. Suppose I work | freelance in New York City, so I make $20,000 a month. | | $8,000 -- city, state, and federal taxes take 40% | | $3,500 -- rent | | $1,500 -- health insurance | | $4,000 -- care for my elderly mom | | total: $17,000 | | In other words, it is easy to make $20,000 a month in New | York City and feel like you are barely surviving. I'm | grateful I don't have children, as it allows me to take | care of my mom. If I did have kids, then some very | painful choices would have to be made about care for my | mom. | | Europe is simply a different system. | the_gastropod wrote: | If this a realistic representation of your situation, I | have a tiny piece of unsolicited advice: open a | retirement account like a SEP IRA. You can contribute up | to 25% of your salary in there, and avoid those steep | NY/NYC taxes. That can save you a truckload of money. | | And I know NYC rent is steep. I lived there as of 6 | months ago, and spent a hell of a lot less on rent, and | had an apartment no reasonable person would describe as | "barely survivable"--it was a beautiful place in Downtown | Brooklyn. Rents have increased a bit, as they have | everywhere, this past year. But $3,500/month is.. more | than ~1/3 of NYC residents take home a month total. | mypalmike wrote: | Unless you are assuming worst case (ACA legal max out of | pocket) you are vastly overpaying for health insurance. | Average in NY is under $500. | | https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/new-york-health- | insurance | | Also, you might look into state funded elderly care | support. Saved my family thousands a month for my dad in | assisted living in FL. | maccard wrote: | Most of Europe sees you with the same tax rates of | roughly 40%, if not higher. Even after rent, tax, and | health insurance, your leftover pay is more than a mid to | senior engineer will _gross_ before tax and rent in most | major European cities. The real outlier there is the care | cost. if you didn't have that, you would have 7/month | left over (and even after that, you have $36k/year) - | that's more than a mid level engineer will gross in the | UK. | daenz wrote: | Why are European engineers paid so low? | maccard wrote: | Despite a generally higher cost of living in Europe, | salaries across the board are lower. A PS100k salary in | the UK puts you in the 96th percentile for example. It's | not just engineers, it's everyone. | daenz wrote: | This is probably a controversial thing to say, but based | on your and other comments in this thread, it seems like | the social safety nets aren't worth the lower salaries. | Or are they? It seems like non-Americans in this thread | are unhappy that their ceilings are lower. | aidenn0 wrote: | It seems expected to me that the welfare state is not | going to be worth it for the top quintile? That's kind of | how redistribution of wealth works? | daenz wrote: | >Despite a generally higher cost of living in Europe, | salaries across the board are lower. | | I was more responding to that idea: everything is more | expensive, and everyone is making a lot less (not just | the top quintile). Seems like a bad trade, but that's | just my $0.02 | mjochim wrote: | Except everything isn't more expensive. For example rent. | Also, everyone can go see a doctor and pay nothing (not | just the top quintile). All of this is if course | simplified, but just to add another pair of cents. | maccard wrote: | And groceries. I was _shocked_ at how expensive buying | fresh food was in the US, and funnily enough, the most | desired food was imported from the EU and was far more | expensive. Here's a great comparison - aged parmesan | cheese from the supermarket [0] [1] is $11/lb here, or | $17+tax in the US. This is the same for a huge amount of | ingredients too; cheeses, meats + veg. I helped a friend | do his grocery shopping in a trader joes, by my best | guess it was twice the price of my shop in Sainsbury's (a | middle-of-the-road supermarket) | | [0] | https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/parmigiano- | regg... [1] https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol- | ui/product/sainsburys-parmi... | maccard wrote: | And many of us who exist in the top quintile are | perfectly happy with that, knowing that we are net | contributors to a better place to live for others. | daenz wrote: | Do you think they should be forced to stay? Suppose it | was easy for all of those high performers (who wanted to | leave) to move to the USA. You would lose out on that | extra tax revenue, and it would undermine the | redistribution scheme. | rglullis wrote: | The Welfare State is meant to be a stabilizing force to | avoid social unrest and to guarantee that the elites can | enjoy their power/status but _at least_ not destroy the | fabric of society completely. The Welfare State is not | meant to be "worth it". You can not think of it as | something that has a ROI, because it is not an | investment. It is insurance. | | With that said: my net salary may be less than half of my | American counterpart, but my quality of life is certainly | better here. At the moment, I would be more interested in | getting "German" salaries but to be able to live in | Southern Europe than to get US-salaries in Germany. | dimitrios1 wrote: | But it's precisely the welfare state that brought my | former country to the brink, when a massive influx of | refugees put so much strain on public services, that | lifelong citizens were having to wait months for critical | care and stirring up (understandable) angry, nationalist | sentiment. And there are many such examples across Europe | at different times. | | The other thing the safety net doesn't seem to provide is | happiness, much to the chagrin of American democratic | socialists. Overtime, unchecked depression results in the | crumbling of society as well. | rglullis wrote: | Milton Friedman said "You can have Welfare State, _or_ | you can have Open Borders. You can not have both ". | | What you are describing is one of my many objections to | the EU. | maccard wrote: | I'm an engineer living in the UK who likely _could_ move | to the US and take a larger salary, but actively choose | not to pursue that option. As I've said many times on | this site, it's likely that after paying rent for an | apartment in SF, health insurance, and all my living | costs, my pay after that would be more than the gross pay | of an engineer in most parts of the UK, I still decide | not to move for a few reasons. | | The first question I ask is what would I do with the | extra money. I don't _want_ to retire at 40 to pursue my | dreams, I like what I'm doing and the pace that I'm doing | it at. If I had the choice, I would choose to be where I | am doing what I am doing. Why would I move somewhere else | for 10 years to make money only to come back and do what | I'm doing right now? [0]. I have friends, family, a life | here. I don't want to uproot all of that (I have no kids | and have already moved country, I don't want to do it | again unless it would improve my quality of life). My | partner would likely need to find something to do, as | it's unlikely she would find a company willing to sponsor | a visa for her line of work. Health care being tied to my | place of employment is a total nightmare - I can only | imagine what happens if I'm in a car accident and I end | up at the wrong hospital, or treated by an anaesthetist | that is out of network. It's also not just me, the | injustice of it boils my blood, and I don't really want | to contribute to that system. | | I own a car, but it spends 5 days a week parked outside | my door, and is only used for "adventuring". The idea of | movin somewhere to live in a large house that I have to | drive for groceries, drive to the doctors, drive to the | bar after work etc, is not appealing to me. | | The annual leave situation is commonly far superior in | Europe - my current job has 40 days PTO per year, and I | take them all. My previous job, the American employees | had unlimited PTO, and I don't think my boss ever took | anything longer than a long weekend in the 3 years I | worked there. It also seemed many of them were banking on | a "European trip of a lifetime" with their families, | which I can do on the train from where I live (also I | live in one of those bucket list countries to boot). | | > It seems like non-Americans in this thread are unhappy | that their ceilings are lower. | | Grass is always greener. The Americans in this thread are | complaining that it's so much more expensive to live in | the US and are unhappy that it costs so much. Of course | it seems the "ideal" situation is work for an American | company, on an American salary and live in the UK, but | having worked with Americans for the last decade, that | has it's tradeoffs too - my workday starts at 10am and | ends at 7pm (whereas my partner works 9-5). The "culture" | of American work spills across, etc. | | [0] https://www.becomingminimalist.com/recognizing- | happiness/ - it's not a perfect comparison, but the point | stands! | lmc wrote: | Employer social security contributions is a big one. In | the USA it's around 5-10% of a worker's salary. In Spain | it's around 40%. | | The gross salary a worker sees is _after_ these, so not | representative of what it actually costs to hire them. | shankr wrote: | yeah as another tech worker in Berlin, reading these | salaries on consistent basis is kinda depressing. The | 70-80K is like a starting tech salaries in larger part of | US. Here in Berlin you have to toll for multiple years | and then before you know you have hit the 90-100K | ceiling. | | Just compare Berlin with any big American US city, | Berliner's PPP is still quite low. This is after the | salary "boom" in Berlin. | klausa wrote: | COVID and companies being more open to hire remotely has | partially fixed that, I know of multiple people making | 130kE+ in Berlin now, working remotely, with full | benefits of being an employee of a German GmbH. | | I can give you some details via DM if you want. | shankr wrote: | yeah I won't say no :) Thank you! | aidenn0 wrote: | Straight out of University, I started in the $70-80k | range in the US almost 20 years ago outside of SV (but | still an expensive area). | golergka wrote: | > Again, what part of the world are you on? | | Doesn't matter. There's plenty of remote (as in | worldwide) offers with these figures now. | | Source: heavily interviewed last July while living in | Moscow, Russia. Got several offers in that ballpark, | accepted one from "Who's hiring" HN thread. Not a | rockstar, just a regular developer. | rglullis wrote: | Congrats! | | But unless your story can come with _many_ other | examples, it should not be counted as representative of | any "average" situation from the market at large. | Dayshine wrote: | You realise people work jobs as vital and stressful as that | for a quarter of the money right? | | And that most people in the workforce don't get significant | bonuses, and no shares. | | Software engineering is an absurd bubble. | jasonjayr wrote: | Maybe the problem is not that tech is overpaid. | | Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and | stressful are not being paid enough? | cwalv wrote: | > Maybe the problem is that those other guys as vital and | stressful are not being paid enough? | | One possible reason for this is that in software the | "means of production" is much more accessible, so it's | easier for a group of developerss to go it alone than it | is in many other professions. When tech salaries are | compared to "small business owners" in general, it | doesn't seem so out of whack. | daenz wrote: | I'm not going to say people don't also have stressful and | difficult jobs while making less. But I will say that I | was paid what I was paid because the employer and I | negotiated, and determined that my salary was mutually | financially beneficial. | e-clinton wrote: | Software engineering is a bubble like sports is a bubble | julienb_sea wrote: | Tech salaries are a direct result of basic supply/demand. | The available supply of workers and the demand for a job | are, to a certain extent, independent from how "vital and | stressful" the job is. | | The only bubble that might pop is an America first hiring | mindset which constricts the supply. If this were to | change I would expect tech salaries in America to go | lower. Then again, this is not that hard to do, most | large tech companies already have major offshore dev | teams. There are clearly reasons why companies don't move | more of their spend offshore. | runako wrote: | $200k is increasingly a mid-career engineering salary in many | parts of the US. Some quick examples taken from companies | reported on levels.fyi, where pay around $200k was reported | for people working outside the most expensive US cities plus | Austin: | | - Lowe's (Charlotte): | https://www.levels.fyi/company/Lowe-s/salaries/Software- | Engi... | | - Equifax (Atlanta): | https://www.levels.fyi/company/Equifax/salaries/Software- | Eng... | | - ExxonMobil (Houston): https://www.levels.fyi/company/ExxonM | obil/salaries/Software-... | | - T-Mobile (Dallas): | https://www.levels.fyi/company/T-Mobile/salaries/Software- | En... | | TL;DR; look around and ask for more if you don't see $200k | near you and you would like to earn more. I'm biased, but I | think it's also worth noting that $200k in Dallas leaves a | person with a lot more money left over after basic expenses | than it does in SF. | Goronmon wrote: | That ExxonMobile link has 3 of 20 salaries being an amount | above $122k and only 1 at $200k. So, even in your cherry- | picked examples one of the companies only has a single | person making this "mid-career salary". | runako wrote: | 0 - These examples were chosen specifically to avoid | software & Internet companies, to show that "real" | companies that operate in "normal" parts of the country | also pay in the $200k range. (These companies are also | likely to have less representation on levels.fyi because | people who spend any time on levels quickly start | wondering why they aren't working for a tech company.) | "Cherry-picking" would be highlighting all the FAAMNG | workers who are remote and/or working in satellite | offices. Google engineers in midtown Atlanta are paid | well above any of these, but I specifically did not | include those jobs because those in fact are elite. | | 1 - levels.fyi will not have a record of all the folks | working at a given company. | | 2 - Somebody is indeed the highest-paid engineer at every | firm, so that data point is relevant. (It could be you!) | | 3 - Fine, swap out ExxonMobil for Chevron in Houston and | then realize they hire from the same talent pool and | likely are in the same total comp range: | https://www.levels.fyi/company/Chevron/salaries/Software- | Eng... | | 4 - Take JP Morgan in Houston as a bonus: | https://www.levels.fyi/company/JPMorgan- | Chase/salaries/Softw... | | 5 - Yes, some tech people make a lot less than others. It | is also true that $200k is still rapidly becoming a mid- | career salary in major US cities beyond the expensive | coasts. (No, you are not mid-career at age 28.) | TechTeam12 wrote: | 5. What constitutes mid-career? Why do you disqualify | someone who is 28? | runako wrote: | Great question! | | Mid-career means somewhere near the middle of your | career. If you expect to work from age ~23 to ~65, the | middle is around age 44. (Edit: if you start work at age | 18, the middle is still over age 41.) Age 28 is much | closer to the beginning of your career than the middle. | Even if you retire at 50, the middle of your career is | still in your mid-30s. | rglullis wrote: | I am inclined to agree with you, but tech has two | peculiar distinctions: | | First, tech changes so fast that we end up having many | "mini-careers" instead of a long one. | | Second, ageism is still a thing: unless your work is so | noteworthy that companies hire you for the PR (or to | avoid that a competitor hires you for similar reasons), | companies think there is not that much of a difference | between someone with 5-7 years of experience vs 12-15. | ZephyrBlu wrote: | Assume working life from 22 -> 65. Call it 45yrs. | Therefore: | | Early: 22-36 | | Mid: 37-52 | | Late: 53-68 | | You're definitely not mid career in your 20s. I'm in my | 20s and I think that's dumb. | usayimunderpaid wrote: | As a technical lead (one level above senior software | developer in my current company), I make EUR96k in Germany. | I had an interview with Klarna, and they offered me EUR85k | (they actually started with 75 and went up to 85), and the | interviewer nearly laughed at me when I asked for EUR110k. | | Different continent, different problems? :) | jypepin wrote: | salaries in europe are much lower - but to be fair, I | lived much better in amsterdam with 100k euro than SF | with 150k | shankr wrote: | For me it was Shopify laughing at me for asking for 90K | with 7 years of experience. | | EDIT: Shopify not Spotify | runako wrote: | https://techpays.com looks really interesting for | European compensation transparency. Tech folks should get | paid a lot more, especially those outside the US. | trunnell wrote: | If 200K sounds high to you, check out the salaries posted on | Levels FYI [1] | | The Bay Area might have the world's highest paying market for | software engineers. | | [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Netflix&t | rac... | [deleted] | codegeek wrote: | I hear you. I meant in the context of people who can get that | 200K job instead of indie hacking. I don't know the founder | of "actual" personally but I just checked his twitter profile | and he works in design systems at Stripe. I would guess he is | not too far off from that number (all in). | Dig1t wrote: | I grew up in the US, my parents are very blue collar, neither | of them went to college, and they worked hard to give me and | my sibling a decent childhood. I went to the cheapest college | I could (a local university you've never heard of) to get a | BS in Computer Science. | | I worked my ass off, grinding on interview studying, working | internships and jumping companies whenever I could get a | better offer. I'm about to turn 30 and I made 430k (200k of | which is salary) in 2021 working at a big company in the US. | | I would not consider my background to be particularly | privileged and I don't consider myself to be all that smart, | but I managed to get here just by working hard and never | getting comfortable. Yes, if you get comfortable in the first | tech job you land and just sit around enjoying your life, | then you probably won't naturally end up in a place making | lots of money. | | Obviously being privileged and getting everything handed to | you makes landing a nice cushy job much easier, but there are | still plenty of paths to these high paying jobs if you're | willing to work hard. | | Also, as mentioned by another person in this thread, this | totally does take a toll on your mental health and you | absolutely have to sacrifice things. I gave up a lot of | things that would have given me a better quality of life, but | those were choices I was willing to make. | rglullis wrote: | You were born and raised in the US. That by itself is | already a huge privilege. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | also most cs people who are smart tend to think they are | average because they are surrounded by other very smart | people. I hate that mindset of "oh if you work hard, you | too can get a FAANG job making 400k" | arsfeld wrote: | I don't think the privilege is just about being handled | things easily, it's also about being able to reach such | positions, no matter what the upbringing you had. | | A lot of people are going to work as hard or harder than | you, but because they chose a different career or because | they don't have your set of skills, they'll never reach | what you got and that is a huge privilege. | Dig1t wrote: | Oh yes, you are totally right, and I'm not saying I don't | have any privileges because I obviously was given a ton | of them. You're right, I wasn't born a poor farmer's | child in Africa or something, I'm speaking relatively. | | If we're just talking about people who already know they | want to work in tech and have some access to a technical | education, then I think a path to these jobs is | absolutely open to pretty much everyone if they are | willing to work hard and sacrifice things. Of course it | is easier for some people than others, it's not fair. | cwalv wrote: | > I don't think the privilege is just about being handled | things easily | | It seems like there are many cases like this where people | have different perspectives because they have different | understandings of certain word. E.g. "privilege": to some | this doesn't have any implications around fairness, like | "you pass the exam and you can get your driver's license; | then you have the privilege to drive." To others "you're | privileged" has an implicit "which isn't fair, and | shouldn't be so* attached. | soneca wrote: | I agree with you, but I appreciate that people on HN talk | like this because then I am presented to this world of | privileges. It shows to me that this world exists and I might | benefit from it. That happened to me. | | Instead of anchoring myself to what Brazilian companies pay | for developers, I focused on getting a remote job at a US | company. One that would anchor themselves among their peers | around SV, LA, NY. Now I earn about 12x more than when I | started as a junior when I started 5 years ago. I earn about | 3x more than if I was lucky to get the best paying job for my | experience level here in my city. | | This 3x salary increase is very related to knowing that this | privileged world existed, which is mainly HN's fault in my | case. | | Bear in mind that I am not earning close to USD200k (but six | digits). I learned around here that FAANG salaries exists, | but then I decided that those are not for me. But that's a | conscious decision. A much better position of not even | knowing this exists. | xtracto wrote: | Whitexican problems we call it here in Mexico: I'm in a | similar position. 6 digit USD salary while living in | Mexico. My problem is that I've been wanting to setup a | business: real life like a gym, a store or similar. | | The issue is that there's no way I'll get as much money as | what I'm earning now... and I know building the business | will require insurmountable efforts. | | So I'm reduced to keep working in IT, wait until my good | luck ends and hopefully be able to retire around 45 | jeromegv wrote: | You are not "reduced" to do that. You are making that | choice, that's all. Nobody is forcing you. If you badly | wanted to create a business, you'd just go ahead and do | it. | LesZedCB wrote: | > > will require insurmountable efforts | | regardless of whether or not you believe it's just | "making that choice," completely discrediting somebody's | claim the effort is insurmountable _to them_ makes you a | breaker of Rule 1 | bombcar wrote: | Or find an extremely trusted local who also wants to | start a business and bankroll them. | | The extremely trusted is the hard part. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and | normally very privileged) set | | If we're talking about people talented enough to actually | build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or more | compensation package should be easy to come by remotely or in | any medium size city. | | For the truly _average_ developer, $200K is definitely not | the norm according to any compensation data I 've seen. | rglullis wrote: | I've built and shipped my own apps independently. I have | almost 20 years of professional experience in Web, some | Machine Learning and Data Science. I also led teams | distributed around the world. I also got into blockchain | development in 2019 and now I am working on a slow-but- | steadily-growing open source project [0] to make payments | with crypto easier. I'm living in the hot "tech center of | Europe" (Berlin) and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any | offer above 90kEUR/year. | | Let's make a deal: I will give you my CV and we can work | through it to see what I need to improve. If you get me an | $200k/year offer that lets me work remotely, I will give | you 15% of it for as long as I work there. | | [0]: https://hub20.io | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > I'm living in the hot "tech center of Europe" (Berlin) | and I'm yet to see (much less receive) any offer above | 90kEUR/year. | | European compensation is lower. Sorry, I shouldn't be | generalizing to United States like I did. | | That said, in Berlin your options for high comp are | largely limited to the big tech companies. You can get | some hints here: https://techpays.eu/europe/germany# | (sort by total compensation). | | My suggestion, if you really want to get those high value | offers, is to identify the best paying names on that list | and start applying now. Stripe, Shopify, Twitter, other | big tech US remote companies primarily. Work with their | recruiters to optimize your CV and update your study | skills. Use the interviews as practice and feedback, | because it will be better than just about any advice we | can give you online. | | Whatever you do, don't pay some rando from HN huge | amounts of money for help. All of the information about | interviewing at big tech companies is out there for free. | Plenty of prep material to study from. | rglullis wrote: | I said that I would pay conditionally on getting the job, | not for the help. ;) | | And it was on purpose. I know that HN is US-centric, but | I lived on both sides of the ocean and as time passes I | am getting more sensitive to this limited (dare I say | _privileged_?) view from otherwise very smart and | educated people. | | My proposal was more of a provocation to see if you could | really back up the statement that "it should be easy for | good people to make that much money remotely or medium- | sized city". | | > information about interviewing at big tech companies | | That's the other thing that bugs me a lot: Big Tech. If | these salaries are only attainable at FAANG companies, | then the road of getting 200k+ offers is no longer just | about being "above average", but also to be okay in | selling your soul by working in places that long stopped | worrying about the welfare of its consumers. | daenz wrote: | Sounds like a startup idea... | balls187 wrote: | I'll take that deal. | | Caveat, 200k would have to include bonuses, and not just | base salary. | rglullis wrote: | And I'll add the following: | | - it can not be a FAANG company, or any other company who | makes their money by unethically exploiting consumerism, | and/or advertising that abuses user privacy. These are | non-negotiables. I want to sleep at night without | thinking about how many people get screwed over for my | benefit. | | - things like "flexible schedule" and "work-life balance" | need to be more than just wishful thinking. I have two | small kids that are always going to be my priority. | | If you are up for it, let me know your email and I will | send you my CV. | balls187 wrote: | Willing to relocate to the US? | | balasuar @ gmail dot com | rglullis wrote: | No, I am not. We are talking about remote work here. | balls187 wrote: | Fair enough. | | > Also the cost of doing something so small can add up | when you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively | easy. | | The point being relatively easy if you fit a specific | criteria (don't need flexibility, want to work long | hours, have a above average CV, can live near a major | tech hub, have no problem working for FAANG etc). | rglullis wrote: | My proposal was a direct response to PragmaticPulp, who | said "a $200K or more compensation package should be easy | to come by _remotely_ or in any medium size city. " | | And this is why I made the proposal, it was a challenge | to this notion that it is _easy_. I stand by the idea | that is not, and I am willing to pay to be proven wrong. | noobermin wrote: | Best not to make a job proposal over a Hacker News | comment. | rglullis wrote: | Why? I'm reading over the proposal I made and I can not | find anything bad about it. | | Worst case, they can't find a job and nothing changes. | Best case, I'd be getting a job where I could work from | anywhere in the world and that would pay me 30% more than | what I was getting previously. | junon wrote: | > If we're talking about people talented enough to actually | build and ship their own apps independently, a $200K or | more compensation package should be easy to come by | remotely or in any medium size city. | | I've been able to build and ship my own apps for almost a | decade now and have never received an offer close to that, | even in SF. Maybe things have changed in the last 5 years, | but whenever I see the 200k figure I always have to scoff. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | The software engineer hiring market is very trimodal: | | There are companies that hire at average salaries. | Usually targeting Radford database @ 50% _or_ whatever | numbers they think they can get away with paying. | | The next cluster of companies pay _well_ but not at FAANG | levels. They pay somewhere around 80-90th percentile of | salary data. They collect all of the best employees who | either can 't, won't, or don't want to get FAANG jobs. | | Then the long tail of FAANG salaries occupies something | like the 95th-99th percentile of salaries. These are the | numbers you see on the levels.fyi homepage. | | HN tends to over-emphasize the FAANG level salaries, but | there are a lot of companies in the middle bucket that | pay much better than average. You might have to network | and work to find them, though. Staying at average or | below-average companies too long can actually make your | resume less attractive over time, so you have to put in | some work to break out of the rut and into the higher | paying companies. | daenz wrote: | Sounds like the missing piece is the interviewing and | negotiation skills. The money is there, you just have to | convince them that it is in their best interests to give | it to you. | junon wrote: | That was certainly not the problem. | motoxpro wrote: | If that wasn't the problem, sounds like you didn't have | the right skills. | pcthrowaway wrote: | Please take a look at levels.fyi if you don't believe | there are $200K offers available (caveat: I can only | speak for US+Canada). | | I'm an above-average-skill but ADHD / below-average-work- | ethic software dev in Canada who just finished interviews | and my highest offer was $150K USD. I only prepped | algorithms for 1-2 months but have a feeling if I spent 4 | months prepping, I'd be able to break into the mid to | high 200K USD range. And this is well below what a lot of | people are making in the U.S. according to levels.fyi and | teamblind.com | | I don't say this to make you feel bad, and I even agree | that the average is of course lower (glassdoor says the | U.S. average for software engineers is ~$108K USD though | I suspect older data-points bring it down from the real | figure). | | But I think >70% of U.S.-based software engineers with >5 | years of experience are capable of breaking into 200K USD | if they spent 3-6 months preparing (depending on their | degree of natural talent and abilities to learn, problem- | solve, and retain information). | | Of course, chasing TC is also not a fun treadmill to be | on, so if you're comfortable, you should do what makes | you happy :) | | The point of this is to say that these numbers are very, | very real, and even attainable for the majority of devs | who set their sights on them, and it's kind of silly to | scoff at them as you put it. The only important skills | required are ambition, dedication, perseverance, and good | research skills (which are among the most critical skills | for software engineers anyway) to be able to navigate | negotiations and the market. | balls187 wrote: | I'd phrase it slightly different--talented enough to build | a small company that generates real revenue, vs building | and shipping apps. | risyachka wrote: | It's not that simple. Even if you are a great developer, | but not from first-world country, you can forget about 200k | unless you literally bust your ass for years and years in | order to get US visa. | Goronmon wrote: | _For the truly average developer, $200K is definitely not | the norm according to any compensation data I 've seen._ | | One issue in this community is its members being unable to | understand what "average developer" actually means. | lkrubner wrote: | A lot of people on Hacker News are in the USA, so we see a | lot of USA salaries posted here. Obviously you'll make a bit | less in Europe, that is a different system, salaries are | lower but social services are higher. And outside of the | West, I think we all understand that salaries are lower. We | could adopt the habit of stating which country we are in, | with every comment that we post. Would that help? | trafnar wrote: | I'm guessing this comes from the California / Bay Area | perspective where 200k salaries are not rare (but a "just ok" | house costs $2.5 million) | [deleted] | noobermin wrote: | The keyword I'm assuming is "relatively," I'm hoping it's not | absolutely an easy job because that would just be wasted | money, which I don't put as being above some people's | intelligence but still. | alexandargyurov wrote: | I have to fill out every transaction manually? No Open Banking | integration? :/ | skrobul wrote: | There are few importers available which have been opensourced | (look at the Actual's github org), I have only tried one during | migration from greedy YNAB. | | There is also an API which works quite well. I am using it to | import transactions from Revolut. So no Open Banking yet, but | afaik it's painful to get in the UK anyways | xd1936 wrote: | > You could even hook up your own bank syncing -- Plaid support | a free development plan that covers an individual user. In | fact, you'll see Plaid support in the syncing server because I | already started building this out. | | Not yet, but it sounds like a top priority. | klik99 wrote: | THIS is how you sunset a product, good on him for making a tough | choice and doing it the right way | PStamatiou wrote: | Would be curious if you'd be open to talking about some of the | history in terms of user growth, revenue and costs. Just curious | about how these types of projects go. | yurishimo wrote: | If the final user numbers are accurate, revenue was a bit over | $3k a month. Not even enough to really pay the founder if | living in the US. Assuming $200/mo for servers, backups, and | help desk software, that doesn't leave much after taxes for | take home pay. | | As someone who just discovered this software, I am now really | curious to give it a try! | jlongster wrote: | Yep that's right. | | I launched around 3 years ago, and it was brutally slow. I | think it took a year to hit 100 subscribers. | | Another year to hit 300. | | This past fall, YNAB increased their prices which gave me | decent jump from around 500 to 800 subscribers which is where | I'm at today. | | I did everything wrong when it comes to marketing and getting | subscribers. I focused on the tech and never invested in | content, building hype, etc. Well, I take that back -- | sometimes I did, but only 10% instead of 70% like I should | have been doing. | xbryanx wrote: | This is awesome feedback and I appreciate your honesty. I | will help so many remember what matters in their next | ventures. | [deleted] | difflens wrote: | Can I just say that I appreciate the transparency about | your numbers here! As a bootstrapped SAAS builder here, | this gives me perspective | codegeek wrote: | As a bootstrapped solo founder myself (even though I have | somehow built a small team after 7 years), I totally get | what you are saying. Be proud of what you did and most | don't even get to do what you did. It is so hard to do | things alone and especially when you realize it is mostly | about Marketing and Sales (and not the product only). | candiddevmike wrote: | I'm a firm believer that the only way to stand out in the | B2C world is to have a VC backed marketing budget. You | can't bootstrap a positive CAC in a reasonable timeframe | without going bankrupt as a solo founder. | 650 wrote: | An excel spreadsheet to track reoccuring expenses and income with | additions made for upcoming expenses, etc. hyperpersonalized for | you has been the best for me, have tried a few budget apps. | Micromanaging food expenses should be something that you decide | on the spot rather than seeing 600$ on food this month oh-no. | | Caveat: Software Engineer salary with large discretionary income | conductr wrote: | Me plus wife and a toddler and I wish I could keep under $600 a | WEEK | | We eat out regularly and just going to a fast casual spot is | like $40-50 for sandwiches | corderop wrote: | Sometimes I feel that society forces us to be economically | successful in all aspects of life. I'm in the first steps of my | career, and even though I just want to learn new things and do | exciting projects, the first thought that come to my mind when I | have an idea to develop is: "How could this be profitable?" | | > One thing I'm really excited about open-source is I no longer | have to deal with any of the business or deployment stuff. I can | focus on being a project manager. | | I think that having this feeling it's the best achievement you | can get from this. | poleguy wrote: | I still use YNAB4 regularly. I have a paid copy from before they | moved to an online model. I'm running it on ubuntu in wine. It | still works fine. | | I had never heard of Actual till today. It looks like it would | cover my use case. I'm not sure why I would have switched, | though, as YNAB4 still works for me and has no recurring charge | and is fully local. | [deleted] | sirtimbly wrote: | Sad that this app didn't achieve the scale of subscriptions it | deserved. A good reminder that awesome tech isn't usually enough. | Do you regret not taking capital to fund marketing and support | full time? Or put another way, any other ideas of where you could | have spent someone else's money to give you a boost into higher | subscription numbers? | jlongster wrote: | Yes I totally regret it. There are ethical VCs that would be | willing to invest a small amount and I should have done that. | Bootstrapping isn't all it's cracked up to be; there are a lot | better and smarter ways to kickstart a project. | renewiltord wrote: | You can still raise if you want to and have a growth user | growth story. Though completely understandable if you feel | burned out on the product. | | If you want to stick to it, I would lean the open-sourcedness | of it into a connector data-source import advantage. | | Your product looks slick, man. It's probably small | consolation, but you've got a talent for good product design. | cyral wrote: | This open source finance product recently raised 8.5M: | https://openbb.co/ I believe it from some organization that | focuses on OSS | adrianmsmith wrote: | Could you still pursue that route? Presumably it's never too | late, especially as you've got a product already, and have | demonstrated traction. | jlongster wrote: | I've thought about it! I'm a little burned out though on | the business stuff. I'd like for this just to be a cool | product now. | tomatowurst wrote: | but if you can't generate enough revenues to justify | valuations you wouldn't go anywhere either. i guess it is | better to find that out after raising millions and paying | yourself a fat salary | sirtimbly wrote: | It's in an established and competitive market. There's | money flowing into companies doing this same thing. An | investor throwing (some) capital at marketing and growth | for this totally functional (and beautiful) product could | have made sense. | cpitman wrote: | I wish people wouldn't use "we open sourced it" as a synonym for | "this product is dead". Especially for a SaaS company, there is a | totally valid business strategy in open sourcing your codebase | but continuing to provide a paid SaaS offering for users that are | not interested in self-hosting. | | It causes confusion every time a company open sources their | software. Always have to wonder, "Is it dead and they are yeeting | it over the fence?" | tshaddox wrote: | To be fair, the email they sent to their newsletter list is | more succinct and clear about their services shutting down: | | >>> | | This will be the last email you ever receive from Actual. You | are receiving this because you are a subscriber or have used | Actual in the past. | | Actual is moving to an open-source model and will be 100% free. | | This means our subscription syncing service will be shutting | down in the future. We have instructions for setting up your | own server, letting you completely own your data and have | syncing for free. | | Read more details about how this effects you in the full blog | post: https://actualbudget.com/open-source | ramshorns wrote: | Even that part is kind of misleading. Making the software | open source doesn't _mean_ that the subscription service has | to shut down; those are two different decisions. | | But maybe we don't have to be too critical. I tend to read | "[project you've never heard of] is going open-source" as | "here's a new project you might want to check out", but even | if they really mean that the project is mostly shutting down, | open sourcing it is a good thing to do. | bdcravens wrote: | Any examples of companies that opened previously closed source | that continued to offer that product? | tshaddox wrote: | The web framework Remix was closed source and available only | to license purchasers for about a year, until they announced | their seed funding in October of last year: | https://remix.run/blog/seed-funding-for-remix#open-source | cpitman wrote: | I work for Red Hat, we do it all the time. We often acquire | closed source companies and then release the software as | open-source, while continuing to offer it. | | I believe the most recent example was Stackrox, open sourced | March 31st. The "productized" version is Red Hat Advanced | Cluster Security. https://www.stackrox.io/blog/open-source- | stackrox-is-now-ava... | blooalien wrote: | Blender 3D might be one of the more well-known success | stories in that regard. Godot game engine also perhaps? Gotta | be more'n a few others as well, I'm sure. Those are just two | that instantly come to mind for me (being a couple of my | favorites that were both closed source at one time in their | history and have gone on to massive and continual success | since their open sourcing). | zwily wrote: | The Canvas LMS: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms | Trasmatta wrote: | Canvas was open source from the start. Schools have always | been able to run their own instance, but most just pay | Instructure to do it. | indigochill wrote: | I don't necessarily interpret it as a synonym, more that these | are two events that naturally coincide. IMO it's better to | decide to open source a product when it dies than to annihilate | it. If nothing else, people may be able to learn something from | the source. | cpitman wrote: | I agree, better to open source a product then to just let it | die off. I just wish companies were honest in their headline | ("this product didn't work out, here's the source") instead | of trying to spin it. | spyremeown wrote: | Not gonna lie, this is kinda awesome. Thanks a lot, will take a | look at the code later. | ubiquitous-dev wrote: | Hey James, we're really sorry to hear about you closing down the | business from a revenue standpoint! It sounds like it was the | right choice for you though. Thanks for the contribution back to | the community, as well as for prettier! We are building a | platform to support local-first application development, and have | appreciated your various articles / interviews / blog posts about | the topic! Best of luck in the future, and thanks again. | panick21_ wrote: | I work for a company that does this kind of product for banks. We | spend a huge amount of time integrating our solution into | traditional banks contexts. There for sure is a lot of overhead. | But being inside banks also gives you better data access. | Robin_Message wrote: | If it's running locally (or in a cloud the user choses to trust), | it doesn't need to be a CRDT any more to get the same security | properties, which would ironically mean it is now easier to | develop. | | (Granted CRDTs might enable other features although OT is | generally considered simpler) | finchisko wrote: | I feel your frustration about business not going as envisioned. | My current failure rate is two failed attempts to build | profitable busines. Actually the second project is similar to | yours. Invoice app for small entrepreneurs. Till today I'm the | only user of the app. To reduce costs, I made it run completely | without server support, all data is stored in local storage and | hosted on netlify for free (no own domain). https://moja-- | fakturazdarma.netlify.app/. It was nice challenge for me to make | it work completely without any backend (generation of pdfs using | pdfmake, generating qrcodes and lzma compression ...) I still use | it for main own invoicing and use to in my resume as work | reference, but with zero money income. | tinytuna wrote: | I'd suggest first having an English version of the site and | maybe paying for a domain (looks more professional and | trustworthy) and you could post it in Product Hunt to have more | people discovering it. | finchisko wrote: | Thanks. Sure, I had own domain for a year, made promotion on | Facebook. This product was not developed with other countries | in mind. Idea was to do pilot in my own country and then | scale up. Every country has different invoicing rules, so it | cannot be just translated to English and put on US market. | But since it didn't attract any single customer, I just gave | up as my previous experience was that adding features when | there is no traction for MVP just prolong your suffering. | joshpadnick wrote: | Could you share more about the challenges you hit working with | CRDTs? | aeharding wrote: | Great to see it going open source! I hope Actual can keep | development going with the community support. | | Similarly, a local-first (PouchDB) budgeting app I built[1] went | open source[2][3] a few years ago. It's worked out well, I love | seeing what everyone does with it in their forks. Unlike Actual | however, I maintain a paid subscription service while being open | source. | | It's worked out quite well. Luckily it's not a huge time | commitment as a side project, probably due to no native apps. | I've also shifted from active development to maintenance, with | sporadic updates every now and then. For example, I recently | moved everything from Gitlab to Github[4] and upgraded a bunch of | dependencies under the hood to get everything compiling on Apple | Silicon. (For example, I now run AngularJS tests with Jest, | hehe.) | | [1] https://financier.io/ | | [2] https://github.com/financier-io/ | | [3] https://blog.financier.io/financier-is-now-open-source- | bdfe9... | | [4] https://blog.financier.io/weve-moved-to-github-4617239b9fa3 | gtirloni wrote: | _> Great to see it going open source_ | | It's actually shutting down. | jlongster wrote: | What's shutting down is the public syncing server. That | server is literally just a message store: it takes CRDT | changes and puts them in a big table. And it servers them | back out. | | Now that the server is public, it's incredibly easy for you | to run your own. It's such a simple server (no postgres etc | requirement) that this model is actually way better. | ec109685 wrote: | CRDT's and the like seem like the perfect thing to build an | app, but you make a good point about it requiring something | so custom compared to a thin client that makes web service | requests for data on each screen / page view. | cormacrelf wrote: | > you make a good point about it requiring something so | custom | | The comment you're replying to didn't say this at all, | the developer did. In theory it's also wrong. The server | can be application agnostic. It shouldn't care whether | the CRDT update is from a budget app or an RSS reader or | whatever else, because the sync job for the server is | exactly the same. You should also be able to encrypt the | content, and therefore set up generic shared CRDT servers | instead of requiring people to run their own. | | It only requires more work now because nobody has built | that yet. | muhehe wrote: | I've never heard of this, but it looks nice. Anyone can compare | with firefly-iii? | slwoslownsn wrote: | It's far less flexible of a system than firefly-iii. | | That said it actually (lol) functions well with any amount of | historical data. Firefly-iii slows to a crawl with just a few | years of data. | | Actual handles nearly a decade worth of data (imported from | YNAB4) with ease. | sirtimbly wrote: | I've used both. firefly-iii is a fairly good, easy to maintain | and host, web app. It's not as good design or UX as Actual - | especially since firefly-iii has no mobile experience to speak | of. Acutal had great mobile apps. firefly's budgeting interface | is a bit of a UX mess. | tegansnyder wrote: | I'm looking for a solution in this space that lets you plot the | waterfall effect. What I'd like this solution to do is the | following: | | 1. Enter all my bills that require full payment each month 2. | Enter my bills that can be variably paid (ex. credit cards, | medical bills, etc) 3. Enter my monthly income 4. Enter my | budgeted personal/home expenses (food, gas/transport, etc) | | Then the solution should be able to model a few different paths | to maximizing my savings and plot out a waterfall that says if I | payoff X over 6 months and pay the minimum on Y then here is what | my savings would look like. | | I'd like to be able to see what my projected payoff dates for | different bills are and what my projected savings look like if I | was to follow the model. | thepra wrote: | Yep, making clients apps is kind of hell, that's why I chose PWAs | for my web app collAnon, "installable" on iPhones, Androids and | Desktops | encoderer wrote: | I did the SaaS-side-business thing for about 6 years. Early on I | decided the SaaS was going to be my next career move and I would | stay at my employer until I could quit employment altogether. A | new job means you have to earn your place on a new team and how | could I do that successfully with one eye on my SaaS at all | times? | | When James joined stripe I was surprised both that stripe was | agreeable to side projects and that James was courageous enough | to try to do both. Open sourcing here just looks like more | courage. | | Good luck James and congrats on what you've built here! | brushfoot wrote: | As someone else with a SaaS side business of around the same | age, it gets painful around then: You have to make tough | decisions and the early fun is gone. Plus keeping up with new | and existing customers can make it feel like you're not really | steering the ship anymore but being tossed around by the storm. | | I understand James's desire to step back, though MIT is an | interesting choice since now anyone can do anything with it, | including selling it. | | What did you end up doing with your SaaS business? | encoderer wrote: | Went full time in 2020! Immediately took an 80% pay cut, but | I spend 0 hours in bullshit meetings and no longer have to | play the corporate employment game. | zippergz wrote: | That's awesome. Congrats! | brushfoot wrote: | Was hoping for that answer. Good for you! I've been | weighing when to take the plunge myself. I can't support my | family with what mine is making on the side right now (10% | of my day job salary), though I know if I were full time on | it I'd be seeing more return. Just feels like a high dive | into a small pool and I'm trying to suss out the right | moment. Any tips/lessons learned? | encoderer wrote: | Double down on anything that has worked to attract new | customers. Ask yourself if there was a gun to your head | and you HAD to 10x in a year what would you do. Get to a | point where it covers your lifestyle and make the leap. | mgkimsal wrote: | > In June, all existing subscriptions will be cancelled. Specific | dates coming soon. | | On one hand, good for being this transparent about it. I'm sure | none of these decisions are easy. On the other hand... June is... | 6 weeks away? I don't know the size or tech skills of the | userbase - perhaps this is a decent time frame? It seems overly | aggressive going in to 'shut off' mode so quickly. But... | dragging it out longer may not help that many more people. | | Probably no simple decisions that don't inconvenience people in | the short term, regardless of which way you go. | jlongster wrote: | If the community want to wait, I'm happy to push back the date. | | I actually thought it felt less greedy to not wait too long, | because doing it in the far future just means people are paying | for unsupported software. Happy to keep it running though for | as long as people want. | jtbayly wrote: | I'm not using your software, but as somebody who has had to | switch personal finance apps multiple times, I'd personally | want to be able to use it through the end of the year. It's | easier to just start a new program at a new year. | slightknack wrote: | I love Actual, one of the best local-first apps I've used. I'm | excited that it's been open sourced, but I also understand that | this release is a bit bittersweet. Awesome work James, best of | luck in your future endeavors :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-29 23:00 UTC)