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by noirbot 1383 days ago
When 10/year is often less than .01% of even a junior developer's salary with benefits, then yea, that does kinda mean we can't have nice things, if nice things require a few devs to implement. We've all gotten so used to getting things where the VC discount was already fully priced in over the last decade that we're deeply conditioned to expect everything to be sold at VC subsidized prices, which it turns out isn't really economical for most non-VC backed businesses to sell at.

I'm sure someone will, like clockwork, reply to me that that could be done by one developer in C, sold for $0.50 and then never patched again because UI designers just mess everything up and no one should have a smartphone anyway. If that's your idea of "nice" then you're likely living a happy life, but if you expect a UI and reliability like even oldschool 1Password or Lastpass, then $10/year isn't buying you that level of development and support.
1 comments
GekkePrutser 1383 days ago
Well, the thing is, we have nice things now. I don't think most bitwarden users are screaming for new features. Simply continuing as they are with current staffing would be preferable to risking the farm with a big new product.

And the kind of user that picks bitwarden over LastPass or 1Password is not the kind that needs a ton of support.

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noirbot 1383 days ago
I guess the question is if they felt like they could continue with their current staffing. Obviously this is a really big funding round, so they clearly decided to aim for more than the status quo, but I've seen plenty of projects where it was many dev's side project, or it was a small number of full-time dev's work, but they were getting burned out and overworked trying to provide the service.

It just always feels too easy to assume that it was sustainable to run/maintain some minimally priced service. Perhaps they realized they needed more developers to have a healthy relationship with their job, and instead of raising the price to $30/year or more to match the new costs, they decided to shoot for the moon.

I'm certainly not trying to say that it's obvious that they're making the right call by taking this investment, or that this won't all fall apart. It's just also important to not assume that the status quo for them was something they could keep going on for the next 3 years.

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