- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy.
When running a business, you need to budget 3x salary for actual TCO of a staff member:
1x covers their direct salary 2x covers retirement fund, electricity, office space, and infrastructure items unlike server and laptops for corporate use etc.
The 3x multiplier is for when you’re a services company, and that represents a possibly profit margin.
So for signal, your $380k becomes $190k which in my experience is average for a US tech sw dev at a mid to early senior level.
I donate to signal monthly and I have no problems with the costs they’re posting. I work in SV tech and I’ve seen 20x worse numbers.
3x is too much tbh. It’s more like 2x in total, at least going by european points of view - I don’t know what would make the US more expensive though with even less welfare. And office space in these days is a diminishing cost of course with all the hybrid/remote options. Laptops cost is pretty negligible. I think Signal does have a lot of hosting costs though.