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Datawrapper | Backend / Full-Stack Developers | On-Site or Remote (EU&UK) | FTE / 80% (4-day week)

Always looking for talented developers or designers with experience in Svelte or data visualization.

Datawrapper is a data visualization tool for journalists & other publishers. Used by NYT, Washington Post, AP, and many others. You’ve likely seen a Datawrapper visualization before - election results, Covid numbers, maps on world events, etc. are created using Datawrapper. We reach >200 million unique monthly visualisation viewers with a team of just over 20 people. Bootstrapped, profitable since day 1.

Stack is NodeJS backend with Svelte frontend and D3/Svelte visualizations.

https://www.datawrapper.de/careers

hiring at datawrapper dot de

(Not OP) The kind of regressions I'd think of would be things like:

- updating the URL state when someone clicks on a button

- proper back-button support in the browser that takes me back to the prior 'page'

- being able to navigate to any URL deep in your app and get a valid response (ideally rendered server-side so there's no client-side loading delay).

Things like these are hard, and the reason why it's common advice to use a framework and not hand roll. If you hand roll but don't support these things gracefully, you're making a case for not hand rolling.

The most interesting part of this is probably Salesforce taking such an aggressive marketing position by calling it 'SlackGPT', when the 'GPT'-suffix is currently strongly associated with OpenAI.

Particularly ironic since Slack doesn't seem to be launching any type of GPT-like model as part of this announcements, it appears just to be a rebranding of a bunch of APIs Slack already has, with the enterprise software marketing dress-up as a revolutionary AI productivity boost.

Huh?

Revenue 2019: $160bn Revenue 2022: $280bn

Net income 2019: $34bn Net income 2022: $60bn

Datawrapper | Backend / Full-Stack Developers | Remote (EU&UK) | FTE / 80% (4-day week)

Data visualisation tool for journalists & other publishers. Used by NYT, Washington Post, AP, and many others. You’ve likely seen a Datawrapper visualization before - election results, Covid numbers, maps on world events, etc. are created using Datawrapper. We reach >200 million unique monthly visualisation viewers with a team of just over 20 people. Bootstrapped, profitable since day 1.

Stack is NodeJS backend with Svelte frontend and D3/Svelte visualizations.

https://www.datawrapper.de/careers

Feel free to reach out personally to david at datawrapper.de

Datawrapper | Backend / Full-Stack / Data Vis Developers | Remote (EU&UK) | FTE / 80% (4-day week)

Data visualisation tool for journalists & other publishers. Used by NYT, Washington Post, AP, and many others. You’ve likely seen a Datawrapper visualization before - election results, Covid numbers, maps on world events, etc. are created using Datawrapper. We reach >200 million unique monthly visualisation viewers with a team of just over 20 people. Bootstrapped, profitable since day 1.

Stack is NodeJS backend with Svelte frontend and D3/Svelte visualizations.

https://www.datawrapper.de/careers

Feel free to reach out personally to david at datawrapper.de

My free PR advice to companies announcing layoffs is to cut short on the cute company employee nicknames, keep the 'Twilions', 'stripes' and 'Zoomies' to the good times.

If your theory involves market participants acting against their clear and demonstrated interest (capitalists preferring to lose money rather than reduce margins), maybe contemplate your theory being incorrect rather than mass irrationality from a large number of people.

Well, for reasons stated I don't believe it was a fair and representative sample then, and that 4% is closer to the upper bound than the lower. Also no idea how "no one was able to give a precise figure" – go into stripe dashboard, open most recent invoice, divide amount paid through payments processed (which are both stated right there on the invoice!)

I'm a B2B SaaS founder and paid 2.7% to stripe last month. OP, feel free to update post with new lower bound.

Thanks for the reply! I just couldn't follow how you end up paying 8% to stripe, save some very non-standard requirements or setup. You can relieve my concerns by telling me the stripe product setup that results in a $100k MRR SaaS company to pay $8k per month to stripe. Might very well be that I'm overlooking something!

Otherwise, the "no one knows exactly how much but up to 8%" framing reads like FUD to me.

Even including those, I don't see how you would get to 8%. Apart from the fact that 'Stripe Identity' isn't something I'd expect a standard SaaS company to need (or a tool like Lago to provide), the cost simply isn't that high. Radar and Sigma together for 1,000 monthly transactions adds like ~$130 to your monthly bill.

I challenge the authors of this blog post to provide me a Stripe product setup that would result in an $8,000 monthly cost for a $100,000 MRR SaaS company. It must be very unusual.

Is it really though? It very much depends on your definition of 'scaled up'. Sure, you wouldn't run a Fortune 500's payment processing through stripe's public pricing plan.

But for a $10M SaaS startup, this would come to $350k/yr (assuming some amount of non-credit-card and non-taxed payments). I would say at least 60% of that you would pay anyway to other payments processors, even doing all the software stack yourself (nothing is free in the world of finance, after all). So that leaves you with $140k p.a. for a software stack that covers billing UI, invoicing, taxes, financial reporting. It's far from obvious how you can come up with a comparable solution yourself with a budget of at most 0.5 developers and 0.5 designers that your $140k would get you.

You are right, and I see how that would push up the bill as % of revenue.

That being said, this has nothing to do with stripe's software platform which this article focuses on, and all to do with credit card payment fees. Braintree charges "2.59% + $.49 per transaction". PayPal charges "3.49% + $.49 per transaction". Square payments charges "2.9% + $.30 per transaction".

Working at a company that is currently making this decision, I appreciate the blog post. That being said, I absolutely don't see how they arrive at their numbers. They state that SaaS founders routinely pay "4-8% of revenue" to stripe. Then their own calculation ends up at 4.2% of revenue using a combination of all Stripe services possible (Billing, Payments, Tax, Data Pipeline). Where are the other ~4% supposed to come from?

If anything, the calculation is overstating the realistically expected cost in a few ways:

- Particularly B2B SaaS will likely have some % of invoice/bank transfer payment. Assuming 100% payment via credit card is a 'worst-case' assessment.

- Even given that, the bulk of the cost are credit card processing fees, which you would pay either way. Maybe not exactly at stripe's rate, but something similar.

- Stripe Tax for example doesn't charge 0.5% of revenue flat. It only charges for revenue where you’re registered to collect taxes, which for an international business will be far from every transaction (depends on locality & customer base, of course). In addition to that, the pricing drops to 0.4% if you process more than $50k per month.

All in all, I appreciate the effort, but given that Lago is a stripe competitor, this calculation dressed up as a 'neutral assessment' on Github seems disingenuous and makes me trust them less.

It literally isn't. The source provided by the parent confirms it. There is no 'with intent to process' clause.

> Processing covers a wide range of operations performed on personal data, including by manual or automated means. It includes the collection, recording, organisation, structuring, _storage_, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction of personal data.

If you don’t make 500+ mile trips frequently, why is the size of the battery so important (honest question)?

I think this is very much a matter of personal preference. To me, the "Magic Mouse" is the best pointing device I have ever used on a computer, and was actually my original reason for switching to Macs. I do understand that many people see it different, of course.

It's real because our laws (including those of European countries) make it real.

Some seem to assume there's some general "If it's American it's invalid" law in Europe. This is not the case. With the exception of specific laws, such as GDPR regarding privacy, this is a perfectly valid clause.

From GitHub’s Terms of Service [0]:

> Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California.

[0] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

I don't have any inside information on this, but at the end of the day, the level of service or availability you offer is up to you. There's no legally mandated support response time or SLA, so unless you're promising something else in your Terms of Service, there's nothing stopping you from offering no support.

How customers respond to this is another question, and most of the time companies strive to have good service because they value growth higher than 'lack of employees'. But everyone is entitled to their own approach.

I don't doubt that. But you don't have to come up with 'novel solutions' for everything because you can read books, watch conference talks, listen to podcasts, read blog posts, by people who have done it before. Working somewhere will give you a very close and detailed, but n=1 experience of one company.

But I'm biased, as I started my first startup at 16 and failed, and proceeded to re-try at 18, and succeeded. I'm not doubting that someone with years of experience in high-growth startups would have been a better founder than me at 16, but I do think that starting a startup was a choice that lead me to startup success faster than trying to get a job and then attempting.

> and I'd invest my money with a team of people who've experienced good versions of these things over those with none any day.

This is an absolutely valid (and imo likely correct) assessment, but it's a different question than "What should I, as the potential founder or employee, do?".

I feel like this article makes valid points, but they don't necessarily support its conclusion. The question it asks whether to start a startup or work at another startup first. Yes, working at a startup and gaining experience will likely improve your abilities and increase your chances to succeed later. However, so would starting your own startup.

The question about working somewhere else is not "is it better than nothing", but "is it better than starting a startup now". It can be equally true that "founders that worked at other companies before are more likely to succeed" and "the ideal course of action for a person who wishes to start a successful startup is to start it now".

Datawrapper | Backend / Full-Stack Developers | Remote (EU) | FTE / 80% (4-day week)

Data visualisation tool for journalists & other publishers. Used by NYT, Washington Post, AP, and many others. You’ve likely seen a Datawrapper visualization before - election results, Covid numbers, maps on world events, etc. are created using Datawrapper. We are reaching >200 million unique visualisation viewers with a team of under 20 people. Bootstrapped, profitable.

Stack is NodeJS backend with Svelte frontend and D3/Svelte visualizations.

https://www.datawrapper.de

Feel free to reach out personally to david at datawrapper.de

How does it work for you to be on-call 24/7 for escalation? I get that that ends up happening for many committed founders/operators/managers, but I struggle how that can be a real strategy.

Are you never off-grid for a bit, or drunk in a bar, or just on a real no-work vacation? There seem to be situations where being on call just isn’t feasible.

I'm a little amused - I really wouldn't have expected "get a puppie at the same time" as advice for someone who'll have their first child in two months. Particularly coming from somebody who who has been in that situation themselves. But I never had kids, so what do I know!

Datawrapper | Backend / Full-Stack Developers | Remote (EU) | FTE / 80% (4-day week)

Data visualisation tool for journalists & other publishers. Used by NYT, Washington Post, AP, and many others. You’ve likely seen a Datawrapper visualization before - election results, Covid numbers, maps on world events, etc. are created using Datawrapper. We are reaching >200 million unique visualisation viewers with a team of under 20 people. Bootstrapped, profitable.

Stack is NodeJS backend with Svelte frontend and D3/Svelte visualizations.

https://www.datawrapper.de

Feel free to reach out personally to david at datawrapper.de

The demand for gelatine would contribute to the pig meat revenue stream, offsetting costs and thereby (at least ever so slightly) decreasing the cost of pork, leading (in theory) to increased consumption.

Whether that effect is large enough to be noticeable is questionable, and I definitely agree there could be "better choices", but it's not exactly right to say that it has no impact.

Congrats on the launch, Render team! Like so many others here, I was a former Heroku user turned AWS-customer that is longing for an option with the positioning, UX/DX that Heroku offered ten years ago.

There's this bit of copywriting I see on many startup landing pages that annoys me a bit:

"You can now set up a Redis instance in just a few clicks and let Render handle the heavy lifting to operate it reliably and securely."

To me, it always feels somewhat patronizing to refer to yourself as doing 'heavy lifting' and the customer's work as (obviously) not-quite-as-heavy-lifting. Maybe in particular because I've set up Redis in the past, and as many others have mentioned it is really the epitome of hassle-free, easy-to-setup server software. So referring to hosting Redis as heavy lifting just kind of feels wrong or over the top.

Germany? I’m very grateful for that operation.

Yes: the point is that it is owned & controlled by Microsoft. The actual location of the data processing doesn't matter if the parent company is bound to US jurisdiction (which Microsoft is).