It's not far off for a developer in the US. You figure they make somewhere from 80-150k in the median, X2 all-in cost as a rule of thumb for employment in the US, so 2k/dev is ~1% or "rounding error"
Can you please elaborate what are “X2 all-in cost” for a $150k software engineer?
I can imagine it would include things like an office space, snacks, yoga classes, etc.
I don’t think it is anywhere close to additional $150k, maybe $10-20k.
Your software engineer, have a manager, was hired by the Human Resource department based on a contract written by the legal team. Your company also most likely has sales persons, marketing, project management and a product development team. Then you have office cost, health insurance plans, etc.
Sure, but I'm saying compare it to something like Oracle (what other commercial software is still out there? I don't know). What does a company pay annually for Oracle (expressed per engineer for comparison)?
Soooooo I realized that commercial software is no longer onpremise (Oracle) but SaaS. :D
Anecdotally, $2,000 per user per year would be a really expensive SaaS app (right?). Not exactly apples to apples but so far I think $2,000/user/yr is a good ballpark for open source value. Note also that the blog post indicates a 50% markdown in labor value because companies pay a tax to direct employee time, so people should expect to get paid less when working self-determinedly on open source.
I can imagine it would include things like an office space, snacks, yoga classes, etc. I don’t think it is anywhere close to additional $150k, maybe $10-20k.