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Jakub Konka Hired Full Time

171 points| komuW | 5 years ago |ziglang.org | reply

31 comments

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[+] losvedir|5 years ago|reply
That's great! I appreciate the full transparency here. I'm a GitHub sponsor for $5/mo, not because I actually use Zig (yet?) but because I'm interested in how this experiment goes.

Andy Kelley has been doing a lot of development very publicly (check Zig's issue tracker!) and I feel I've gotten some value just out of watching his process unfold, in terms of community interaction, prioritization of features, brief exploratory experiments, etc.

Plus, he seems to have, I dunno, great "taste" in language design (though I realize this is very subjective), so maybe Zig will end up somewhere great.

[+] geodel|5 years ago|reply
> Plus, he seems to have, I dunno, great "taste"

This. I feel something similar. It is kind of way things are arranged, the simple layout of repository, or that on average zig src file has ~500 lines of code (for Swift/Rust, it is 65/80 respectively). So yes, it is all subjective. I also feel as if zig is like more time/money is spent on books and not on bookshelves.

[+] MrBuddyCasino|5 years ago|reply
> Right now we are paying 50 USD per hour

I'm really happy Zig is gaining momentum. I do hope they can raise more money. If people are paid as freelancers, 50$ is a really low compensation. You'll have to pay health insurance, retirement etc. out of your own pocket. In Germany, the rule of thumb is if you're earning below ~70€ / hour as a freelance sw dev, it is better to be employed.

[+] Decabytes|5 years ago|reply
The article says that in the next two years they would like to get it up to $75 an hour and it cites the things you said as reasons why. So I believe they are in agreement with you
[+] dstick|5 years ago|reply
For how many hours billable? If you were comfortably billing 40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year that would amount to €134.400 / year. Assuming that Germany isn’t _that_ different from the Netherlands, good luck earning that while employed as an average sw dev. Insurance and retirement isn’t that expensive.
[+] magsnus|5 years ago|reply
In Sweden the general rule of thumb is that as a freelancer you should charge 2.4x what you want to (or normally) net since you are responsible for your own vacation-pay, sick-pay, time between projects etc. on top of taxes and expenses.
[+] whb07|5 years ago|reply
And if they are living in Colombia, they would be living like kings.

Got to start somewhere.

[+] JediPig|5 years ago|reply
If it was a startup in AI yes

A language ran by one guy to challenge the most popular language ever, epic mistake.

[+] FpUser|5 years ago|reply
Congratulations. I am really happy to see Zig project reaching this stage.
[+] GavinMcG|5 years ago|reply
I really don't understand the title changes sometimes. I have no idea who Jakub Konka is. On the other hand, the old title communicated that this hiring was the first for Zig, which gives me far more context, and a prompt for my next thought which was "huh, how does that work?" That value is gone now.
[+] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
I always check the domain on the right of the submission, here ziglang makes it clear it's for Zig the programming language