I just want Firefox to be faster. I'm donating to Floorp (a Firefox fork), at least they seem focused on making the browser better.
Like, in general, I find that any HN thread where most of the comments are just agreeing, one-upping and yes-anding while invoking the same talking points and terminology (CEO ghouls, etc.) is probably a topic we might need to chill out on.
Mozilla makes mistakes just like any organization but they’ve done and continue to do more for an open Internet than most.
The CEO’s salary is enough to fund >30 extra devs. Imagine how many of those issues could have been ironed out over the years.
It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer.
Yet many over here are getting paid double that.
Salaries are rarely based on value created. They are based on what others pay.
If you already have a platform in use by the entire world, that matter of scale makes it much easier to find value adds more than a sole proprietor could ever dream of.
It's for these reasons I'm wary of talking about "value add" only being from the developers directly implementing a feature. Without support, IT, security, Product, HR, etc, I could not deliver that value add.
It used to be incredibly common in the UK - half the decent devs in London were contractors making 2-3x what permanent employees made. It’s now uncommon because the government nerfed it with IR35 rules.
Also, as others have already mentioned, salaried with is much more stable.
At least these are my primary reasons, and those of some others I've spoken to on the matter.
It's illegal in most of EU but several countries do not check. So I know PWC in italy hires external contractors but tells them to be in the office at 9 and so on… just a scam to not pay sick leave, parental leave, vacations and pension basically.
You have to spend large amounts of time finding clients and being a salesman as you sell yourself and your services to them.
Once you do that, you have to prove that you're the person you promised. Unfortunately, most clients reaching out to freelancers are very....difficult.
After you've done the job, you have to be your own accountant and billing department. I should mention here that collecting from a lot of clients is often a frustrating endeavor and you will almost certainly be scammed at least once (at which point you have to do the math on handing most of your profits over to a lawyer and risking getting a bad reputation as a legal risk).
Because you're contracting, you are on the hook for higher taxes than normal to cover stuff like social security. Unless you are getting bottom-dollar insurance (the stuff with a $10,000+ deductible where you still get bankrupted if your medical bills are bad), you are probably paying tens of thousands in health insurance.
Want holidays, vacation, or just a day off? That means you are missing a paycheck (at least missing a bunch of billable hours) and may have upset clients. If you need to make $100,000 at a corporate job, then you'll need to charge at least $150,000. If you want to work a normal 2,000hr/yr, then you are going to have to sell your client on $75/hr while they're seeing $25/hr or less from some overseas "talent".
Also don't forget that lots of the highest-paying jobs aren't open to freelancers. Even if you contract, you'll be going through an agency charging big money then giving you a tiny fraction of what they take in.
After I got married and had kids, I was busy enough without running a business. I want to spend time with my kids while they are still kids. I may make less as a FTE, but I work a lot fewer hours and have way less work stress.
If US programmers were to organize into a union and add some level of credentialism to keep out the fake programmers with no skills, I'm fairly convinced that you would see salaries increase dramatically.
Instead, because there's no unified representation, you get Microsoft laying off 9,000 people then (allegedly) trying to apply for over 14,000 H1B visas to suppress wages even further knowing there's nobody able to speak out against it.