Curious attitude. I’ve always found that the people who have the most “valuable” spare time are the most willing to give some of that to help others - because they understand what true value means - which is nothing at all to do with money and everything to do with connection and community.
But yeah, some people value their spare time in dollar amounts, and they’ll never get beyond a hustle and grind “hourly rate” mindset.
Yeah abstain from having a life and a family just so you can afford to spend your days hacking on other people's websites for free as a hobby or something.
Come now. Plenty of people on HN insist in AI threads that artists and creatives should only work for passion and love and not corrupt the purity of their craft with the vulgar drive to make money. Suffering and hunger only drive one to greater innovation after all. So why not apply that philosophy to tech as well?
When so much of the web is currently being destroyed by capitalist incentives, shouldn't we go back to the days when quirky nerds just built and maintained websites as a hobby? Why should any of us be paid for any of this when money ruins everything?
The point is you do it for you. Just because you like it. And you also get to do it however you want, whenever you want, with no obligation to anyone else.
Money gets involved when people want you to work on their stuff. Nobody really cares about other people's stuff. So either they do it themselves or they pay other people to get them to work on it. Sometimes even money doesn't get people to do it. I was offered money to develop some features on an open source project and I certainly wanted to take up that offer, the problem is literally days later I got engaged and that overrode all other concerns. I should probably see if the offer's still on the table when life winds down a bit.
> shouldn't we go back to the days when quirky nerds just built and maintained websites as a hobby?
That's what I do. And that's why my website doesn't have a new article every single week. Because I only work on it when I feel like it.
In fact most really good lawyers deliberately take pro bono cases to expose them to legal thinking they might not otherwise encounter. Solving problems and applying your expertise to things you wouldn’t normally trip over is a great way to enhance what you are doing day to day.
And that’s why people volunteer to do stuff that might not seem “worth it” - because if you’re an expert in something you can always learn more by looking at it through a different lens.
This, obviously, is aimed at the upstream comment not yours!
But yeah, some people value their spare time in dollar amounts, and they’ll never get beyond a hustle and grind “hourly rate” mindset.