[apacheCamel]

>Another important thing is that I take long breaks (several weeks) whenever I feel I need to — which is probably harder to do if I’m a full time employee at a company.

A "Patreon-funded full-time job position" and the ability to take weeks off at a time? What an amazing career path Evan has taken. He sounds so passionate about Vue and he is fully funded to be able to do it. And what a good project to fund, always moving forward but at the same time pushing for the features that users want.

[Cthulhu_]

It sounds lucrative and leisurely, sure, but it's not a career path I'd personally be interested in, because (caveat: I don't know the guy, I'm not involved in Vue, etc; generalizations ahead) he's very much a community manager, possibly moreso than a developer. He's got huge responsibilities and accountability, whereas I prefer to be (proverbially) holed up in a basement with my work laid out for me.

I mean I basically have online social anxiety in that I don't tend to go read my old comments and possible responses to it. I rant without standing for and defending what I say. If you run a project like Vue, you can't avoid things like that.

[ohitsdom]

This is what you'd expect, but he is very hands-on trying out technical ideas. I would look through his tweets to see the things he gets involved with.

Recently he built Vite to see if it'd be possible to have a dev setup with no bundling (just using ES modules). It's evolved since then, but he picks up work a lot on new ideas and seeing how it can drive the direction of Vue.

https://github.com/vitejs/vite#how-and-why

[mesaframe]

I experience similar anxiety. For too long I kept my profiles (GitHub/Twitter/..) pseudo-anonymous. So that If I mess up somewhere I don't have to face the consequences after I shut that account down. This is primarily due to social anxiety rather than having any malicious intent.

Even my HN account is anonymous.

(That I think is holding me back too.)

I cannot imagine myself working like Evan.

[agumonkey]

I think it's a side effect of internet. By working too much in isolation we fear approval or rejection ?

It frees us from following others opinions or a group direction but we also lose track of something (I'm blurry I have no precise word for this)

[sethetter]

Accountability! It can be scary, but it's also important and a driver for positive change.

I deal with all of these things as well, but have pretty much decided to not go the anonymous route, because I would rather try to build that confidence in myself and embrace the accountability that comes along with it.

That said, I still don't comment or publish much online out of this same anxiety. /shrug. It's a work in progress :)

[mesaframe]

Thank you. Today I realised, I should take responsibility of my words, and behaviour.

[agumonkey]

personally I dropped the whole thing, it's useless.

I'm going back to good old life.

[mesaframe]

> It frees us from following others opinions or a group direction

This! The biggest pro is the freedom to say politically incorrect things.

[lowdose]

I had that too until I ramped up my own noise signal. With twitter I hooked up a couple of RSS feeds via IFTTT. I do tweet more but send out 20 RSS tweets also. Perfectionist is a creativity killer. Nobody fact checks and remembers what you tweeted a month ago.

I do keep my hn profile low profile because it is also nice to have an outlet for fresh idea's and opinions that need refinement. I actually change my mind the most about things I comment in on HN. On my work everything is within the Overton window.

[rk06]

It sounds pretty good until you realise that it is the peak of open source full time job. And survivorship bias is taking place here.

Evan took a huge leap of faith when he quit his job for working full time on vue. I am happy that it has worked out well for him.

But it does not mean this path will work for other open source developers, of course they can still get corporate backing(node.js) or paid to work on it (react/angular) or make a business offering around it (laravel/tailwind)

This road is very less travelled.

[wolco]

This is new and exciting but we must understand the use case. For solo developers on projects with a huge amount of github stars this might make sense. It enables you to work on the project full time.

The tailwind project model seems like it would pay better. The profit amount might make for sense for the pretty popular project vs the extremely popular project. It's a compromise because you stop working on the core project and start building these additional businesses that take time/effort away the project.

Corporate backing would make sense but enterprise has picked react. Vue lives because it's a great framework that is easily assessible not because it started as a corporate sponsored project with a popularity boost buildin.

[langitbiru]

And the money is not bad.

https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-you

[matthoiland]

>$16,000/mo, enough to cover his salary along with his new hire

That's $192k, pre-tax, between two people and likely infrastructure and tooling costs. Most developers of You's skill earn nearly double that at FAANG companies.

[rk06]

Well, those developers also live in silicon valley which is an expensive location.

I think the money is decent and Evan must also consider it to be decent enough to get a person working full time with it. And that's what matters

[kyawzazaw]

DO we know where he lives? Patreon is not his sole revenue source.

[wetmore]

New Jersey iirc.

[cwxm]

with his level of fame, he would easily make that at one of the top tech firms though.

[fractionalhare]

Yes. He would more than double that by joining at the E5/L5 level at Facebook/Google, which he's almost certainly qualified to do. But given the success of Vue.js and his status in the JS community, he'd probably be a marquee hire at the E6/L6 level.

However he would be sacrificing a lot of autonomy to do so, because Vue.js would effectively be developed under the same corporate stewardship model as React and Angular. He doesn't make as much money as he could given his accomplishments, but he maintains broad control and ownership over his work.

Likewise his Patreon sponsorships can increase over time as Vue.js increases in adoption. And if he wants more income, he can take on lucrative consulting contracts for Vue.js deployments with large tech companies. A few of those per year would likely meet or exceed everything he's bringing in through Patreon.

[quicklime]

So that’s his Patreon earnings. Looks like he’s also making money from OpenCollective, and if I’m adding it all up correctly it’s about what an E6/L6 at Facebook/Google would make?

[azemetre]

https://www.levels.fyi/

is a good site to check ranges at a variety of companies (not affiliated, just a fan).

E6 at G/FB can range between $450-$600k.

[quicklime]

Yes, I know :). Did you try add all the numbers up on opencollective?

[wolco]

He would probably double that by selling t-shirts.

[steve_adams_86]

I agree. I earn something comparable and I'd say I provide far, far less value to any community or even my employer.

[agumonkey]

Well worth it IMO, vue is a very well made tiny thing that is very good at making intermediate project with fun.

[dsco]

Isn't running a project more about the outcome than putting in as much time as possible? Also taking long breaks could potentially mean being AFK but still obsessing about next steps in the project. Maybe you're imagining him being on a tropical island drinking mochito's during the long breaks?

[ZephyrBlu]

> Isn't running a project more about the outcome than putting in as much time as possible?

As far as I understand, he's not really running a company though. It's mostly a solo endeavor.

So it seems like in this case time put in ~ outcome.

[pieterr]

> It’s mostly a solo endeavor.

The team is more than just Evan.

[1] https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/team.html

[ZephyrBlu]

Are these people working on Vue full time though?

[Kiro]

For me it's the opposite. I dread to see a Patron cancel so I can't take any time off since I'm imagining any "slacking" will lead to cancellations. It really feels like a race against the clock with every Patron is on a thin line.