246
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive (signal.org)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/technology@beehaw.org
112 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I’m extremely curious where you get those numbers from, I operate businesses and that doesn’t pass the sniff test.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    I've used the 3x multiplier for staff planning at services companies since the early 2000s.

    Perhaps there are regional differences, but they've rung true for planning billable rates of return at every services company I've worked at in the last 20 years here in AU.

    I realise that the services aspect isn't relevant, but having the sum of indirect staff costs equivalent to staff salary cost when office space is involved isn't a massive stretch in my experience. (Indirect costs would include office rent, utilities, infrastructure and a share of shared functions such as IT, HR, facilities etc...)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent