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I don’t usually weigh in on controversies from this account (and do squirt me with water like “bad webmistress!” if I do), but I did want to use the current buzz around the AO3 donation drive to talk about something I’ve been meaning to for a while: software engineering costs.
Our society has a strong negative association with "money talk", and, especially with income inequality this high, I’m worried about using the right words. But the truth is that understanding the cost of building internet spaces is key to understanding why stuff is so fucked now.
Take Twitter. The entry level compensation (salary+stock+bonus) for a Twitter SWE (software engineer) is 201k$ as reported by http://levels.fyi"> http://levels.fyi . Glassdoor puts it slightly lower, but above 150k$.
This is for entry level, which often means straight out of college.
This is for entry level, which often means straight out of college.
When you go higher up in experience, the pay increases significantly. A senior SWE (a level many people reach) will be making around 300k$ a year. Above that, you count in percentages of millions.
The current AO3 donations sit at 250k$. In 2020 their budget totaled 520k$.
The current AO3 donations sit at 250k$. In 2020 their budget totaled 520k$.
It’s hard to find numbers on how many engineers tech companies have (they don’t disclose those), but it’s safe to assume Twitter employs more than 5 (they reportedly had 350 people in 2011 and more than half of those were engineers).
There, your AO3 budget is already gone.
There, your AO3 budget is already gone.
“But Twitter has mobile apps, and way more functionality!” sure, it’s a bit apples to oranges, but it’s part of why AO3 can’t just churn out “improvements": features cost money, not just to implement, but to maintain and scale. And good, full-time SWEs are *expensive*.
To give a more small-scale example, one of my new recurring jokes is measuring the cost of anything I do in “sidemenus”. You see this sleek BobaBoard sidemenu here? This is one of the few things I contracted out. It took the person 15 hours, and at 35$/hr it costed ~500$.
(Do not look at my notifications. Do not judge how I live).
35$/hr, I hope it’s clear by now, is not expensive for a SWE. I initially tried budgeting 20$/hr and the quality was so abysmal I realized it would be MORE expensive in the long run.
15hrs = 2 days = $500 = a sidemenu.
35$/hr, I hope it’s clear by now, is not expensive for a SWE. I initially tried budgeting 20$/hr and the quality was so abysmal I realized it would be MORE expensive in the long run.
15hrs = 2 days = $500 = a sidemenu.
(I want to add that after spending $500 on the sidemenu, I still had to do a lot of work myself to make it work seamlessly on *sighs* iOS, and to account for edge cases that the contractor hadn’t considered. I’ve made countless small edits too since then. It’s not buy & forget.)
If someone says they could code a better Twitter/AO3 in a weekend, chances are they’ve never built even half-as-good ones, and don’t understand software at scale and its costs.
(FWIW many baby SWEs, me included, said those things. Being crushed by reality is a rite of passage).
(FWIW many baby SWEs, me included, said those things. Being crushed by reality is a rite of passage).
Anyway, back to my initial point: the way software like Twitter (and Discord!) is built is by having Venture Capitalists pump MILLIONS into them so they can afford the high quality engineers they need to bring you the level of service you’re used to having for “free".
You can imagine that Venture CAPITALISTS aren’t doing this for charity. One of the reasons they do it is that, once a company has established themselves as the market leader and pushed out competitors, they can start squeezing more and more profit out of its customers.
This is a whole topic for another day, but if Venture Capital didn’t exist, the social networking landscape of today would be very different. The reason so much bullshit has been tolerated and allowed to fester is because, by design, what matters most is the numbers going up.
The reason an ethical competitor doesn’t just come free us from the stronghold of these giants is that it’s really hard to be ethical AND competitive on the web today.
Can a social network be successful, honest, ethical, AND pay its engineers fairly? I don’t know. Sure hope so.
Can a social network be successful, honest, ethical, AND pay its engineers fairly? I don’t know. Sure hope so.
The creators of AO3, in a different time and for a different slice of the internet, understood this conundrum very well. AO3 is structured the way it is not on the whim of its creators, but because they knew the present structure would ensure its principles could not be thwarted.
This comes with tradeoffs, one of which is relying on volunteers and donations. These are enough to pay contractors to work on some large, crucial tasks, but absolutely not enough to pay full-time software engineers to run the site like for-profit corporations run their sites.
A lot of the “AO3 donation drive” discourse is, ON ANY SIDE, the reverse-equivalent of Lucille Bluth asking how much could a banana cost.
Most people, in fandom and outside, don’t understand the practical costs of software. This hurts indie efforts, and keeps us exploitable.
Most people, in fandom and outside, don’t understand the practical costs of software. This hurts indie efforts, and keeps us exploitable.
To conclude, please DO donate to AO3 and continue doing so: https://otw.cividesk.com/civicrm/index.php?q=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=17
But">https://otw.cividesk.com/civicrm/i... also, deeply, truly appreciate what a miracle it is that AO3 exists as it is, and the scale of the UNPAID effort that goes into it. None of it is a given, and none of it is owed to us.
But">https://otw.cividesk.com/civicrm/i... also, deeply, truly appreciate what a miracle it is that AO3 exists as it is, and the scale of the UNPAID effort that goes into it. None of it is a given, and none of it is owed to us.
