Different incentives. Apollo was made by someone who loved making software and wanting to build something nice for people. Reddit is made by a corporation interested only in extracting as much wealth from the platform as possible, with as little regard for users as they can get away with.
For a while, until he made sure every holiday stuffed the app with a repeating pop-up (think 5+ times over the holiday) that asked users to subscribe. Even users that already paid for the “Pro” version.
I forgot what he did when Apollo closed down but it was another big moneygrab.
The app itself always stayed pretty great, but the steady ramp up in monetization got increasingly annoying over the years.
I remember the reports in r/apollo but I never experienced those issues myself. I don't know the guy personally so I can't make a judgement on if he was lying about that being a bug or not, but whatever the case it certainly wasn't something every user experienced.
> I've seldom met a dev who didn't enjoy the profession.
When you're an individual dev, if you think ads are bullshit, tracking is bullshit, /r/all is bullshit, non-chronological feeds are bullshit, infinite scroll is bullshit, promoting ragebait/clickbait to boost engagement is bullshit, gold/coins/stickers/premium is bullshit, inline images are bullshit, and anything that negatively impacts responsiveness/performance/stability is bullshit - it's within your power to improve the product - often by simply not implementing them.
When you're a dev for a big corporation like reddit, though, if your boss wants some bullshit that makes the product worse but more profitable, it's your job to make the product worse but more profitable.
Passionless devs exist in droves, but I've never met a dev who didn't enjoy the salary. It's not far fetched at all to say that an individual working on something they care about has different incentives than an employee earning their pay.
Dev pay in Canada isn't extraordinary in comparison to US salaries, but the average salary of an associate dev is in the top 25th percentile for all age groups, and the low end of the scale is above the 50th percentile for all age groups. Note that this does not include people with senior in their title.
I would say that any career that essentially guarantees above average pay compared to your age cohort for your entire career without the need for a degree is a rather extraordinary industry.
I once had a job in Louisiana where they gave me a $12 hourly raise because the guy they were hiring to be my subordinate was going to be making $7 more than I was currently earning.
There are many high caliber engineers who just do it for the paycheck. I’m not one of them, but given the crazy compensation, it’s no surprise the field attracts outsiders.
Under capitalism workers dont have autonomy to do what they want. They do what the bosses want who themselves do the dictates of the system, which is to maximize profit above everything else, in one form or another, for capital owners.
This is one of the main reasons why solo-dev passion projects vastly exceed quality, usefulness, etc than a commercial product. See also Windows Server vs Linux-based servers.
