Modern web browsers are among the most complex piece of software out there.
If you’re qualified to write that kind of code, basic needs are surely well taken care of and are the least of your concerns.
To put it simply, these people will not have a hard time finding high paying jobs. And since they are able to choose, “being part of the open web” makes a lot of sense.
I was making almost that much pre-Covid as a regular old SAAS CRUD developer in the south East US. It was comfortable but far from not needing to work for a few months and hold out because I was concerned about “open source values”.
I jumped at the chance to work remotely at BigTech three months ago. I’m sure many of them would too.
When you have kids, bills, trying to save for retirement, etc. I can’t afford to be out of work for an extended period of time. Even making $120K a year (just trying to make the math easy), means every month I am out of work I am losing $10K.
But I was replying to this...
If you’re qualified to write that kind of code, basic needs are surely well taken care of and are the least of your concerns.
The Mozilla developers aren’t getting paid minimum wage by any means, nor am I doubting their skills, but they definitely aren’t making the salaries of great engineers if levels.fyi is accurate.
That was my entire point. I wouldn’t get past the first technical screen for an entry level software engineer at $BigTech without “grinding leetCode ((tm) r/cscareerquestions) as a CRUD developer, but I made about that much even before I got a consulting job at $BigTech and I am living on the opposite coast from Silicon Valley.
Well, the key is that you trade your time for something and — if it is indeed harder to find a fulfilling work — you wish to maximize that something in a time you do work in order to be able to allocate more time towards more satisfactory ends.
I tried something like that. What happened was that the free time I had left was completely unproductive. Doing unfulfilling work is exhausting, turns out.
Not saying I have all the answers, just what happened to me. This fulfilling thing is hard.
If you’re qualified to write that kind of code, basic needs are surely well taken care of and are the least of your concerns.
To put it simply, these people will not have a hard time finding high paying jobs. And since they are able to choose, “being part of the open web” makes a lot of sense.