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freewilly1040
It's truly amazing that a product with the reach of Lichess can be run so cheaply. Comments here criticizing the hosting costs extremely myopic - dev time isn't free, and doing a rewrite to chase down hosting savings isn't necessarily a good call.
I just signed up for a monthly donation. I complain about the ad supported internet all the time, but had never donated to LiChess. This thread is a good reminder of how far dollars to support projects like this can go.
lhorie
FWIW, in the earlier days of lichess, IIRC when it had barely broken the Alexa top 10,000 threshold, lichess ran on like 2 boxes despite serving millions of users.
There's a good chance that many AWS slinging devs here have not actually had to deal with the volume of traffic that lichess sees. Half a mil yearly to run the entire lichess infrastructure, including dev salary and providing stockfish analysis for every user for free takes an insanely efficient setup that most big tech companies could only dream of.
Tenoke
> providing stockfish analysis for every user for free
Edit: As discussed in another subthread most of the analysis happens in the user's browser, the rest is run via a fishnet by volunteers.
lhorie
While we're in the topic of impressive technological achievements, it's probably also worth mentioning how crazy it is that just a few decades ago, Deep Blue running on a supercomputer was the state of art in chess analysis, and nowadays we can just casually say, oh lichess runs stockfish on users' phones via wasm to cut on server costs.
epolanski
Most engineers in the world never saw such daily traffic.
I doubt you can't make Alexa top 10k with a million of daily unique visitors.
anaganisk
And people here be afraid of serving small HN traffic without using cloudlfare.
jka
I was wondering what the cost per game is on lichess, and fortunately the linked spreadsheet includes the answer: lichess currently runs at a cost of $0.00022 per game (4545 games to the dollar).
shric
That's good to know. I've played 12,316 games on lichess so almost $3 worth. Might donate $10 or so soon.
DarylZero
Do you computer-analyze your games?
One stockfish computer analysis must cost more than merely playing 1,000 unanalyzed games.
mileycyrusXOXO
I think Stockfish usually runs clientside but it does look like they do some server side too
https://lichess.org/blog/YOCx7hIAACUAgsUo/stockfish-14-has-a...
altvali
You're downloading the engine from the Lichess server but the analysis is done on your computer, with your resources.
shric
I do run a computer analysis on maybe 10% of games, but I also participate in fishnet (explained elsewhere in this thread) on a local machine so that hopefully offsets it
jb_s
For this reason I wish I could run something locally to generate the same analysis UI and therefore not put any load on the Lichess servers.
Kranar
Stockfish runs in your own browser using your own CPU.
c4m
I love Lichess's feature comparison page (https://lichess.org/features), which helps users decide whether to upgrade to a premium account.
tholman
Lots of people saying "You can improve costs here!" without factoring in the developer time/learning/upkeep dollars it would take to do that. Sometimes the best solution is the one you know that will be easiest for you.
bluecalm
It only 420k because they pay themselves minimum salaries. The founder/lead dev is easily worth mid 6 figures on the market and yet his salary is not even 60k EUR.
It's a great project, great quality and run at a low cost but it's all that because it's run by people who sacrifice their financial situation to make their idea happen.
ta988
And I wish they would be rewarded by their users even more.
systemvoltage
They should charge. And I would pay.
kdmytro
They have users because the service is accessible. If they charge, many would playe elsewhere. There is a lot of competition.
jeremyjh
In this thread: people with zero knowledge who can cut costs drastically without impacting the service (that they have never used and don't understand).
dang
Putting others down doesn't help. If you know more than others, the thing to do is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. Then you're addressing the underlying ignorance as well as contributing to the ecosystem, instead of poisoning it further.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
jeremyjh
It's not a put down to say that there are people without knowledge of Lichess's operations or infrastructure. I'm one of those people. I don't presume to have any knowledge of effective cost cutting measures. Others do.
dang
It's a putdown to snarkily sneer at others in the community, which is why the site guidelines specifically ask you not to: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I understand the temptation to do this—we all feel it. That's why that guideline is in there. Such comments reliably lead to lower-quality threads, because they don't add anything that anyone can learn from. They just assert the commenter as somehow different from / better than others.
That's not to say the comments you were criticizing aren't bad. Of course, shallow dismissals are bad. But it only makes things worse to respond with a different sort of shallow dismissal.
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altvali
As someone who is working on a similar project (a chess mmo) and looking to validate a business model in order to get funding, how are they covering the costs? The answer usually is "donations", but there are only 402 patrons on https://lichess.org/patron and Thibault said on twitter that the average donation is $8. That's $3216/mo, less than a tenth of monthly costs. Is the rest coming from the swag store? From coaches? How much do the donations surpass the costs? Lots of missing pieces from the revenue puzzle.
ornicar
These are just the most recent. ATM there are 10,722 active patron accounts.
Jommi
Maybe you should look at a model where your chess mmo runs on top of another platform? That way a lot of your costs would go down and you could focus on the core parts that you want to build. E.g. you dont really want to spend time paying for or optimizing for hundreds of simultaneous users from multiple countries.
llimllib
That’s definitely not every patron
amelius
Main developer gets a monthly salary of $4705, is that normal in Europe? (Assuming Europe because they pay French taxes).
a_humean
Maybe a bit low for someone this experienced, but actually its just above the median salary for a developer in Paris.
Developer salaries in Europe are not the astronomic salaries you see in the US in the major cities. Probably the highest paying in Europe is London in the UK, and even then its still less than 50% of what developers in SF make at probably around 75k USD per year/6-7k USD per month in London.
pembrook
Funny enough, I just posted a comment about this the other day, how basically every SF/NYC company that has gone full remote could cut their employee costs by nearly 2-3X by switching their dev team to a European time zone. And this is including all the extra taxes involved with having employees there.
And I'm not talking about having to hire in Romania or something (where you could save 4-8X or more). You could hire the top 5% of talent in expensive cities like London and still cut your payroll costs by 2-3X
isbvhodnvemrwvn
You can't save that much by hiring in Romania. The differences between developer compensation in europe don't follow cost of living differences, an average software engineer in Poland is likely in a better position when compared to an average Pole than an average software engineer in France vs an average Frenchman.
lsferreira42
There are many companies hiring Brazilians for the same reason, since 1 USD is 5,56 brazilian real and 1 eur is 6,30 brazilian real, it's dirty cheap to hire brazilians on these conditions!
mkurz
Really? Can't speak for France, but it's definity low, specially for a senior dev. USD 56 470,69 equals EUR 49 465,78 as of today. You still need to pay taxes and (compulsory) social insurance from that. IMHO this is low, in some (western) european countries that amount may is junior dev entry salary IMHO. But someone responsible for a project that big could easily start at EUR 90 000,- or more (~USD 100 000,-). At least this is my experience. Experienced senior devs in German speaking countries I know, which know what they are talking about, don't consider to work for less than EUR 80 000,- gross per year, for some this is the lowest base line. Just recently talked to a friend about that who works for a middle sized (~200 people), not very well known software company in Germany.
Tarsul
yes, but France is cheaper/less well paid than Germany (my guesstimation would be 20-30% less). Most countries are, e.g. Spain, Italy, and of course eastern Europe. Actually, 80k€ is VERY good for developers in Germany, you are not paid these sums easily, but yes if you're good (and willing to change employers and good in interviews) you will get there, that's true.
Aeolun
I can’t find anything in normal EU companies that would be over €80k for IC positions. Where do you find these magic opportunities?
snovv_crash
Highest paying in Europe is probably Zurich, not London. Salaries are comparable to sub-million-population US cities, which considering Zurich is also sub-million seems like it's actually pretty competitive with the US.
barrkel
Zurich and Switzerland generally is also much more expensive. Accommodation is hard to find, rents are 50+% over somewhere like London, groceries 2x or more the price, especially beef, and is often low quality. Imported food is harder to find and restaurants are pretty dire.
Good wine is easy enough to find though, and the outdoor scenery is pretty.
I cannot wait until end of Covid and try and spend a large fraction of our weekends outside this place.
isbvhodnvemrwvn
Not really, you're competing against a ton of people from different countries if you want to work in Zurich. Switzerland has a ton of foreign people working there.
laurentb
worth baring in mind that there's a lot of extra paid by the employer on top of the "gross" salary someone gets in Europe (especially in France) that someone in the US would have to cover by himself (hence why i't typical to see double that amount for someone in the US).
a_humean
I'm pretty sure once you cost out everything from taxes, health insurance, housing, etc.. whether business or personal costs an equivalent developer in say Paris will have much less disposable income and overall assets than one in SF.
maccard
I've posted this reply numerous times here but a junior dev in San Francisco on 120k, after paying taxes and rent has more left over than a mid level engineer in the UK makes in gross pay.
dan-robertson
See graph here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax
Though rates probably depend on income so maybe the graph only gives a rough idea (e.g. top taxpayer rates probably higher in Europe and higher rates may kick in earlier in Europe.)
cosmodisk
In quite a few European countries it's really not that much on top it. UK is the primary example of it.
Macha
$56k is €49k at the current moment.
Europe is not all one market price wise, with big differences internally. But you can certainly get a developer for €49k. You might have trouble retaining them, as based on salary surveys on the subreddit Irish developers it's like a 20th-30th percentile salary, and this developer has a track record of leading a successful customer facing web service, but not preposterous.
pyb
Yes that's probably near the median dev salary locally.
Some FAANGs understand this and have decided to hire more in Europe.
bufferoverflow
Depends where in Europe. In Norway or Switzerland that would be low. In Croatia or Italy that would be high.
NorwegianDude
Starting income for developers in Norway are normally ~€55k. The average 33yo developer income is ~€75k.
sgt
I know some developers making that in Norway - but that would be after taxes, not before.
DC-3
It's somewhat low but they've probably made a concious choice to accept a lower salary to work for a project they are passionate about.
throwbacktictac
I don't know how much time he dedicates to running the service at this point but the salary seems light if it's full time work.
Scarblac
It's his hobby project that he turned into this, it runs completely by his philosophy, and it's decent money for the country he's in. I think he's won.
petters
It is normal in Stockholm, Sweden, but the local FAANG offices pay much more along with some others. There is a wide distribution.
bruce343434
It’s high. You never get these insane american salaries in europe. I’m lucky if I’ll ever get 60K annually.
leros
For reference $420k is about the cost of 2 employees at a typical tech company.
_fnqu
Which typical tech company outside of Silicon Valley would that be? I’ve never seen wages at $210k for a „typical tech company“
graton
A rough estimate is that the cost of an employee is 1.25x - 1.4x the salary of an employee in the US. With health insurance, Social Security taxes, 401K matching, office expenses, and more.
blip54321
That seems exceedingly low. I've generally seen 2x. It's a bit less than that as salary goes up, but I can't imagine hitting 1.25x.
jlack
An employee costs more than just their salary.
dijonman2
My company isn’t based out of SV, we pay 130-220k base depending on team and experience. Senior devs are 200k+
yurishimo
Hey, it’s me, your future employee!
piafraus
In Silicon Valley that would be a salary of a single engineer.
doopy1
The cost of an employee is much higher than just the wages you pay them.
nojito
Wages are just part of the total cost of a employee.
vultour
About 8 tech employees where I am in Europe. And that's after all the additional costs apart from salary.
marcrosoft
5k in French taxes to run a non profit site, why?
RaitoBezarius
Non profit does not mean that it do not have to pay taxes on the money it manipulates.
Non profit orgs receive services from the state and they have a cost to fund social security and such.
Other non profits which do not have a very nice situation can receive help from the state, so why not share the bits of success of Lichess to everyone else?
pyb
It's the norm in France for employers to pay another euro of tax for each euro their employees earn.
newaccount74
I assume with "tax" you mean "tax + health insurance + unemployment insurance + retirement savings etc"?
ta988
Yes and it was a mistake in my opinion. It make employees feel that the company is paying for these benefits and it makes the company believe that they are spending money for things they should not (I've heard so many CEOs complaining about having to pay "all those taxes for their employees"). I prefer a way where the employee is responsible for all costs with a deduction at the source to make sure you don't get nasty surprises at the end of the year. In term of numbers that's all the same, not in term of psychology.
pyb
Sure
wodenokoto
Why should non-profit be tax exempt at all?
henvic
Because the state was never about making things easier for people.
_zooted
> $68,600 in Servers
pessimizer
> Candles $3,600
That being said, it's probably a lot cheaper than rewriting it to run on less.
whalesalad
i will never financially recover from this
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The author did an AMA on Reddit 9 months ago that I think is relevant here: https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
In particular:
How they remain free: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
On his salary: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...