[HN Gopher] How I make a living working on SerenityOS ___________________________________________________________________ How I make a living working on SerenityOS Author : akling Score : 428 points Date : 2022-10-29 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (awesomekling.github.io) (TXT) w3m dump (awesomekling.github.io) | sendfoods wrote: | Congratulations. I have only listened to your awesome programming | sessions once or twice, and did find them very enjoyable! | | On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you | using in CLion? Thanks! | kristoff_it wrote: | This is awesome and I'm confident SerenityOS and all its related | projects (eg Ladybird) will only grow in popularity over time. | | Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to | what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have | to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that | forces him to write bad software on purpose. | | It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a | chance to experience this. | brunojppb wrote: | Andreas is a truly inspiring individual. I follow his videos on | YouTube for a long time and his calmness and direction while | coding the SerenityOS is something I try to learn from him. | version_five wrote: | How much time or focus is associated with "money making" | activities would be my question? And is it less than it would | take to earn than money part time and focus the rest on serenity | OS? | | I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work | for people who have already built something great, but it | dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being | beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a | coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I | don't think that's the case here) | | *edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens | with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making | something | marginalia_nu wrote: | At least of some of that "making money" stuff is just the sort | of publicity you should be doing to help your project even if | making money isn't the goal. | | I honestly think it's more common for projects to under-do that | than to over-do it. | tibbydudeza wrote: | An inspiring story. | Accacin wrote: | Great post, I'd been meaning to sponsor you for a while and | completely forgot so I've signed up on Github :) Stay awesome! | akling wrote: | Thank you so much for the support Accacin! I will do my best :) | labrador wrote: | Andreas started this project to keep himself busy out of rehab | for drug abuse. I did something similar out of rehab for alcohol. | He named it Serenity OS from the Serenity Prayer for this reason. | Being responsible and earning income to support your family is an | important part of recovery. Beyond that, he's doing it for | spiritual reasons. Sometimes the most debilitating feature of | addiction is isolation and loneliness. He's created a community | that is warm and friendly. | | I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons: | He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of | contributers He's supporting his family He's got | himself well out of isolation with a big community of people | Edit: forgot one. He's staying sober | daniel-cussen wrote: | tristanbvk wrote: | agumonkey wrote: | Quite a heart warming story. I hope this inspires a lot of | people. Kudos to him. | helmholtz wrote: | And, might I add, paid a fitting tribute to Terry Davis. | fb03 wrote: | Nice! I didn't knew about that. Can you elaborate on this? | | I still mourn Terry Davis passing.I really enjoyed seeing him | work on his Operating System and I was really saddened when | his mental condition deteriorated to the point he got | homeless, ultimately ending his life. With meds, he'd still | be here and kicking :-( | nasalter wrote: | There is an interview with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS on the | CoRecursive podcast here: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os- | with-andreas-kling/ | adamgordonbell wrote: | Fun fact: I was super nervous to interview Andreas. I knew the | way to really understand the backstory of Serenity was to ask | Andreas about directly about his early days of recovery. | | It felt invasive, but Andreas just shared and shared. Amazing | person and his youtube car videos are so good and raw and | honest. | | We also actually spent sometime playing around with Serenity | and that was fun (and was never released). | | But yeah, I love the boldness of just starting to build | something, taking a step in the direction and not worrying that | it seems so large. | williamstein wrote: | There was also an amazing new talk on porting Zig to SerenityOS | today on youtube: https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ | julianeon wrote: | Those of you using Serenity OS: this is an amazing value, and an | incredible talent you have there. Consider contributing, even if | only once. The market price for talent like that, if | realistically priced, would be about 5 times what he's earning. | easygenes wrote: | Some senior engineers at big tech companies make more than a | million US per year, so someone with an excellent diverse C++ | skill set and an entrepreneurial bent could well make much more | than that. | ketzo wrote: | I don't know about _much_ more. The last time I saw the top | ends of Google's IC pay scale, it was ~$1.5 million TC, and | that was for, like, two people. | | I'm being nit picky. But big tech isn't THAT insane. 7 figure | TC is incredibly, incredibly rare. It's not just "senior | engineer", it's "senior senior senior senior" or more. | vidarh wrote: | For C++ the top end of the market is more like trading | systems and the like than Google. | | Still rare, though, but the C++ market has lots of weird | little very high paid niches. | quickthrower2 wrote: | You also need the "willing to work high up in big tech" | trait, and probably jump through leetcode loops too. | ipaddr wrote: | Those million dollar engineers are not being paid for there | c++ skills they are being paid for their leadership | mtnGoat wrote: | Or their knowledge the payer doesn't want the competition | to acquire. | | My understanding is that most of these really high wages | are more strategic than anything else. | | If they are an IC, they probably wouldn't be leading | anything except maybe thought leadership. | [deleted] | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | Absolute legend and an amazing role model for people learning how | to be a hacker. Not a lot of them remaining. Most are just | grinding leetcode. | gigatexal wrote: | "As you can see, the numbers above put me at roughly $4200 this | month. My wife and I live a modest life, and while taxes in | Sweden are high, this is enough to break even where we are right | now." | | Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he | should be making a lot more. | | In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things | you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your | terms). | kaashif wrote: | > He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot | more. | | What do you mean by this? His situation seems perfectly good - | he has enough to live on without drawing down savings and gets | to work on his passion project. | | If we think he should get more in donations, we should donate | more, I guess? | quickthrower2 wrote: | At a job you tend not to worry about next months salary being | s lot less. If you are let go because they can't afford you | you get a job somewhere else. So being poor (as in can't make | ends meet) is less of a concern than something like this. If | I were doing this then "marketing" would also be on my mind. | systemvoltage wrote: | He was an engineer at Apple for many years I think. So that | means he has some buffer to take on Serenity for last 2 years. | I wish him good success and hope to see him having to not worry | about money. Subscribe and support him! | rjh29 wrote: | He's working full time on a project he absolutely loves, with a | community he loves. Sure more money would be good but we can't | have everything! | akling wrote: | Indeed! But if I did suddenly have a lot more money, I would | use it to pay people in said community to work on SerenityOS | :^) | mtnGoat wrote: | This is a great statement! I think it's a privilege to work | on something you'd put your own money into, and have | conviction about. I'm happy that you have found that thing. | CobaltFire wrote: | So many comments saying he should make more doing something else, | how low his wage is, etc. | | He said he's HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself, | can be enough. | | It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their | world view instead of accepting the one this person shared. | | As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for | sharing! | [deleted] | [deleted] | aliqot wrote: | Absolutely agree. The older I get the more I realize we all | have a few callings in life, and not all of them are justly | compensated for the purposes they fill, but it does not make | them any less significant in my eyes. | azakai wrote: | And to add to that, it also makes other people happy too, to | contribute or just to follow. Really cool stuff, and | meaningful. | vasco wrote: | > Once the channel grew large enough, I was able to enable | monetization in the form of ads. I felt a bit weird about this, | since I use an ad blocker myself, but I figured that the kind of | person who watches my content is perfectly aware of ad blockers | and can make their own decisions about them. | | The classic. | [deleted] | trykondev wrote: | This is so fantastic to read -- congrats Andreas! I admit I am | very envious reading this. I would love to be in a similar | situation, able to focus full time on a passion project (in my | case, video game development). Maybe it's time to start planning | my own Patreon... | edpichler wrote: | This inspiring dude is does awesome projects. I am not a regular | donor, but every time I see him working in something, I do it. It | also makes me happy to know that he is Swedish, a country that I | love very much. | jstummbillig wrote: | Ah, Andreas YT programming sessions. The length, the sincerity, | the mood. The way he is able to communicate with us while being | alone in a room. His very conscious effort to not get side | tracked. And, of course, him just being a really effective | programmer, while not being flashy or pretentious about tech or | tooling in the least (and also probably because of it). | | Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes | I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in | programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it | out. | longrod wrote: | Thank you for sharing Andreas! It's absolutely phenomenal how far | along SerenityOS has come and it's also a peek at how FOSS is | supposed to be - a way to learn, hack on something fun, share it | with others but without any huge expectations. | | Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion, | this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to | work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out | it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously. | | I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience | it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but | that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience | allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication | etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront. | tootie wrote: | This is the thing that confused me. What exactly is the | audience for this? It seems like more of an intricate art | project than a useful piece of software. | azakai wrote: | It is exactly that - an art project. | | Maybe it will also be useful some day, maybe not, but to me | at least that's not the point. It's really cool that we can | fund some art projects like this in the software industry! | | Not a perfect comparison, but it's like how some people | approach math simply for the beauty of it. That's enough of a | reason! And sometimes that math ends up useful too - maybe | because math has a connection to reality. So does software - | it runs. | ativzzz wrote: | The audience is the people who contribute to the art project | and want to be part of the community. A community that serves | itself for no other reason than to serve itself. Seems like a | good time to me | traverseda wrote: | It has a nice consistent ui toolkit that seems highly | productive. I hope the user-space (window manager, default | apps) eventually becomes an alternative linux user-space. | trashburger wrote: | https://justforfunnoreally.dev/ | BirAdam wrote: | Well, more or less, at the moment it's for fun and art. It's | recreational. Odd thing is that SerenityOS has made so much | progress so quickly that it may soon be a viable daily-use | operating system. | mysterydip wrote: | I for one am looking forward to that. The pace of OS | development has been inspiring, to say nothing of the | appliations (a usable browser?!) | ultrasounder wrote: | Truly inspiring. Keep up the good work! | gigel82 wrote: | It's surprising you can live off $4200 / month in Sweden (after | tax I presume that's about _$2000 / month_). | | That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example | ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross). | bjornsing wrote: | The median gross salary in Sweden is 2618 USD/month. | | (Sweden used to be a rich country, but we've fallen behind over | the last few decades.) | cjblomqvist wrote: | Don't forget that you need to take payroll tax into | consideration (31,42%) | fragmede wrote: | Don't forget the US has federal income tax (even if you | only make $30k/yr); Washington doesn't have an income tax | but has all sorts of sales tax, and then of course there's | the matter of health insurance costs. Choose the wrong plan | in the US and get into a car crash through no fault of your | own, and suddenly you're declaring medical bankruptcy on | minimum wage. How many days of PTO and sick leave is that | minimum wage job giving? Is the workplace unionized? How | much is rent for that matter? Did you get housing in, say, | Sthlm by waiting in line or did you use one of the | loopholes? How much does food cost, in the grocery store, | eating out, and food delivery. How easy is it to recycle? | | There's a lot more thought that should go into a | consideration when choosing between two places to live. A | simple dollars to SEK comparison doesn't begin to scratch | the surface of it. | kwhitefoot wrote: | No one in Scandinavia pays anything like that amount of income | tax. | | Sweden has three levels (2106) 0 %, up to 18 | 800 kr About 31 % for 18 800 to 443 200 kr. 31 | % + 20 % (statlig skatt): 443 200 kr to 638 800 kr. | 31 % + 25 % (statlig skatt): 638 800 kr and above | | 5200 USD is about 550 000 SEK so 31% of about 250 000 SEK plus | 51% of about 100 000 SEK. | | Roughly 130 000 SEK, or about 1000 USD per month. | | See https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatt_i_Sverige#Inkomstskatt | marginalia_nu wrote: | You need to include payroll tax (arbetsgivaravgift) as well. | cinntaile wrote: | Surely you can't ignore the tax that is usually paid by the | employer? | cjblomqvist wrote: | As another commenter have pointed out, you're missing payroll | tax. | guerrilla wrote: | That's more than enough unless he lives in a big city. At one | point I even bought a waterfront apartment walking distance | from downtown in a medium sized city making a bit less than | him. Things are pretty affordable here. The taxes thing is just | FUD/propaganda. (Well, ignoring the energy crisis that might be | about to hit us hard that is.) | peoplefromibiza wrote: | not surprising at all. | | p.s. in Sweden the average is slightly below 30 hours of | work/week | efrecon wrote: | Uh? | peoplefromibiza wrote: | _Average weekly working hours: 30.9 hours per week in 2011, | it had dropped to 30.1 in 2021, only being below 30 in | 2020_ | | _Across Sweden, only around 1% of employees work more than | 50 hours a week, one of the lowest rates in the OECD, where | 13% is the average. By law, Swedes are given 25 vacation | days, while many large firms typically offer even more. | Parents get 480 days of paid parental leave to split | between them_ | | Joe Armstrong, Erlang creator, talked a lot about being | able to work on Erlang while being in Sweden because as a | parent he was allowed to work less hours a day and had | plenty of free time. | marginalia_nu wrote: | I averages may be a bit quite deceiving since they're | across industries. About 80% of office workers do a full | 40 hour week. | | More than 40 is likewise very rare. A work-week is | legally standardized up to at most 40 hours. Overtime is | a thing, but demanding chronic overtime without good | reason is a legal liability, where the boss responsible | is held personally liable. | rjh29 wrote: | I don't live in the US but get the impression that US prices | have skyrocketed in many cities? Like paying $20 for a sandwich | in California for example, or $4k rents in New York. So even | though the dollar is a stronger currency internationally, it's | worth less and less within the country? | | If that's true, retiring in Europe might get more and more | common for US software developers... | vlunkr wrote: | I imagine many developers just retire outside of the big | cities, where prices drop drastically. | akling wrote: | At the moment, I'm paying myself a net salary of $2,700 / | month. It's perfectly livable where I am :) | vidarh wrote: | > (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month). | | No OECD country has a total tax wedge (including _employers_ | payroll taxes, which may be relevant here since he 's running a | company) above 50% for an average salary other than Belgium. | | Sweden is at ca 42% vs ca 28% in the US. | | Which is of course high, but e.g. effectively includes full | health cover etc.. | | (For comparison, income tax and _employee_ contributions | average at ca 24% of an average salary both places) | | Source: OECD Taxing Wages. | marginalia_nu wrote: | It's on the low-end of average for a software developer salary | in Sweden. Sort of thing you'd earn with 5 years of experience. | | Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income. | Raydovsky wrote: | If you're earning 1.8k eur in Sweden with 5 years of | experience, you're doing something really wrong. | | In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at | least woth 5 years of exp. | marginalia_nu wrote: | May figures may be a few years out of date, but it's not | that far off. Also varies with where you live. Stockholm | pays a bit more, but is also significantly more expensive | to live in. | | This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will | probably at least double that. | tqh wrote: | It is not. If you studied three years at University you | should ask for at least 35 300 kr a month before taxes. If | you worked for five years you should earn a lot more. See htt | ps://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangsl... | | So donate more... | marginalia_nu wrote: | Dunno, I still think it can be characterized as the low-end | of average, even if it's closer to 2-3 years of experience. | Maybe not in Stockholm, but there are a places that still | offer like 30k for entry level hires. | tqh wrote: | As written in the article talking salaries in Sweden is | avoided, so there are probably many offers in that range. | The recommendation is for Sweden in general though, not | Stockholm. It is for any kind of engineer, where IT is | above average. | guerrilla wrote: | What are you referring to in the article? All taxable | income (which would include salary) is public information | in Sweden and the majority are unionized and do talk | about salaries. | tqh wrote: | Mostly "Please understand that I'm publishing this for | transparency, not to brag about making so much or | complain about not making enough." and such. | guerrilla wrote: | Yeah, that's what I thought. I think you read too much | into that. He's just being the humble and cool guy he is. | It's not as taboo here like it is in the US.[1] | | 1. https://www.ft.com/content/2a9274be-72aa-11e7-93ff-99f | 383b09... | pzmarzly wrote: | I don't know how taxes work in Sweden, but in most countries | gifts and donations are taxed at much lower rate than | employment income, so I would expect the net income to be way | higher than $2k. | noAnswer wrote: | That can't be true, or everyone would be paid in gifts and | donations. (Anyway. He has to report his donations as his | self-employed earnings.) | guerrilla wrote: | > everyone would be paid in gifts and donations. | | That's literally fraud and tax evasion which comes with | enormous fines, prison time, revocations of licenses and so | on, which is why people don't do that. | kelnos wrote: | Context matters. You can't arbitrarily declare something a | gift and expect the local tax authorities to just agree | with you. | cinntaile wrote: | These types of gifts and donations are considered regular | income and are therefore taxed as such. | coldtea wrote: | Depends on the country | cinntaile wrote: | The grandparent already said that so I clarified the | situation in Sweden. | miraz12 wrote: | It would be closer to $3000 / month after tax. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Since he's employed he also needs to pay payroll tax. Roughly | speaking with both income tax and payroll tax accounted for, | you usually end up with at about 50%. | miraz12 wrote: | I work in Sweden having a similar salary and pay around 35% | tax. | cjblomqvist wrote: | Yeah, but that's missing the 31,42% tax that the employer | is paying before you pay your 35%. (and the extra % for | pension, insurance, etc) | miraz12 wrote: | Aah, yes I was thinking it was salary and not company | income. My bad! Who knows what he actually takes out from | that in the end then though. | GekkePrutser wrote: | Interesting. I've never taken a keen interest in the project | because I think the WIndows 95 look reminds me too much of | Microsoft and fvwm95 :) | | I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there _is_ in fact a | remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it | has almost the same UI but it 's much more boring than VUE. VUE | was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes. | CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a | result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring | brownish colours. | | But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really | good to hear that he can still make a living from it. | marginalia_nu wrote: | It's interesting to see some people are making it work living off | these types of projects. | | > I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly | at the time, with thoughts like "who do I think I am" and "what | am I even doing" echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was | too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected | nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up! | | I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella | pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised | to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the | story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in. | IncRnd wrote: | > Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. | | I'm not sure of your location, but in the US these are not | donations but income on which taxes need to be paid. | treffer wrote: | Germany, IANAL but was curious because I've seen it | differently here: "donations" that are clearly not tax | deductible, the only real test for that wird in some sense. | | Lawyer Google tells me donations are just money gifts. Some | organizations that are approved can hand you a recipe that | allows you to tax deduct it. And I think those organizations | also don't need to pay taxes on it. | | TIL. Not sure how well that resonates in Sweden though. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Yeah they're not de jure donations, but de facto. | sebazzz wrote: | Living on donations, especially recurring donations like Patreon, | must be difficult. It is the first thing people cancel when the | economy gets difficult like high energy prices, and you also | can't ask for a raise. | asddubs wrote: | >I've also been approached by a handful of folks from VC firms | and while I have nothing against them, I'm not taking any | meetings. I'm not interested in selling influence over the things | I work on, and I'd much rather have many small donors who believe | in me than one huge investor telling me what to do. | | I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of | thing a venture capitalist would be interested in | convolvatron wrote: | at the bottom of the barrel these people have moderate amounts | of money and _noone_ to throw it at | rogerclark wrote: | Andreas will always be the GOAT | BaculumMeumEst wrote: | andreas, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for | sharing your story of recovery. you have unimaginable courage. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-29 23:00 UTC)