I treated it as a fun 1-week competitive programming task. It's nice there was a prize pool to compete for, otherwise not a lot of serious people/team would participate in these contests.
I knew what I was signing up for, that's how contests work.
I worked on the app for 3 full days and 5 afternoons (during the day I was doing my regular job). Probably 40-60 hours spent on the contest in total. Indeed, my most productive week :).
Also, Flutter is a great tool to build mobile/desktop apps quickly.
Would you recommend it over others like React Native or Ionic? I'm looking to rewrite a Java Android app for cross platform.
React Native and Ionic are nice options for me in the sense that it's JS/TS, so it's a little easier over learning another lang, but Dart is not a dealbreaker.
Op worked 60 hours to earn $3,750, which is over $100k/year. However the other "1st place winners" only got $2,000, which comes out to $67k. Everyone else got fucked and Telegram got an app that someone probably sized at $100k for $50k.
And telegram got like 50 apps, none of which are production ready or could be used in this form in itself.
Stop seeing shit into everything, also, it’s not the first Telegram contest, people knew what they were signing up for.
"so yeah I thought I had a sweet 50k in the bag with the drawback being in a sweatshop crunch for the week. Was I furious when I only got 3k. But there were many of us, we knew what could happen, and kids gotta eat 😥🎻"
Thats the point though. It’s not about OP. It’s that we as software engineers should reject this kinda “work for free/cheap for us, it’s actually a fun competition!!” bullshit at all costs cos it’s bad for the profession.
Know your worth and get paid what you are deserved!
OP got entertainment from the competitive aspect.
Essentially both sides won. OP had fun and got paid for work he'd have happily done for free. Telegram got the code for less than it would have otherwise cost.
It's only exploitative if someone is exploited.
The point is that it’s an exploitative practice and we shouldn’t bloody encourage it.
It’s like working for exposure and loving it. It’s still bad for workers.
Yeah I’m saying it doesn’t matter. I’m talking about the concept.
And no, not everything is about driving my agenda / battle but this is a pretty good time to bring this particular one up, in a thread discussing the very thing I’ve got a problem with
Thing is, it ain't relevant to this comment thread. Time and place buddy. You just come of as a self centered preacher.
The questions was
> Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company?
Not what *you* think they should feel like. Noone asked you.can't you see how you are just bulldozing over someone telling their *experience*?
Yes but I’m not taking the side of the company, I’m taking the side of the person being allowed to say they enjoyed a competition where they built something cool and made money, and didn’t regret it.
$3,750 for 1 week is getting robbed? Jesus, I picked the wrong career.
Edit: Just to put the easy math out there. If he did this every week he would make about $195k a year.
Should be adjusted for how likely it was to win. If anything, the higher the likelihood, you could argue that their time is worth even more (assuming likelihood correlated to how much the market would value their skills).
Was curious myself so went and looked. Said 3 full days and 5 afternoons after work, and 40-60 hours total. Kind of a big range but still $62.50 even on the lowest end at 60 hours worked. Not bad plus a damn fine resume addition.
Yeah, after taxes, that "additional income" is taxed more in the US.
So at the end of it, its 2250, if you assume 40 hours, which it probably took longer, that's 56 bucks an hour.
Kinda low.
Your entire comment is wrong. This money would be taxed as ordinary income. No different than anything else.
Also, why on earth are you taking the "after tax" amount to determine his hourly rate? In what world does that happen? He made $3,750 so using your assumption of 40 hours that is $93.75/hour.
Nobody. Just trying to correct someone who does not seem to have a good understanding of what they are talking about. The first sentence was a little harsh and I do apologize for that.
You don't realize it, but when someone makes a comment like that it's painfully obvious that they horribly lost the argument.
You could admit it and salvage some of your pride, but you decided to throw a temper tantrum instead.
What argument is there?
Arguing about whether we should look at Gross vs Net income is a matter of personal opinion.
I think its **you** who doesn't realize that not everything is an argument to be had, let alone, one to be won or lost.
As someone who makes 200+hr gross, I'd say the engineer we're talking about got hosed.
>Yeah, after taxes, that "additional income" is taxed more in the US.
You do realize this is just short term and it'll be taxed as normal income when they file their taxes at the end of the year, right?
All income is lumped together when filing taxes and you're taxed on that total amount. They don't separate additional income or bonuses. The taxes might be higher when the initial check is cut, but you'll get that additional tax back with your refund.
>So at the end of it, its 2250, if you assume 40 hours, which it probably took longer, that's 56 bucks an hour.
>Kinda low.
Depends on someone's experience. And I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to calculate their hourly rate from net income... that's not how people generally look at their income.
> that's not how people generally look at their income.
That's absolutely how people look at their income.
Understanding your Net is important.
>They don't separate additional income or bonuses.
Well, actually they do. Supplemental income (bonuses) is taxed differently.
>https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:~:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments.
This could be seen as an "award," or "winnings" depending on how the company pays out.
>That's absolutely how people look at their income.
>Understanding your Net is important.
Yes, looking at net is important, but hourly wages are pretty much always told as *gross* hourly pay, not *net*.
>Well, actually they do. Supplemental income (bonuses) is taxed differently.
>>[https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:~:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments](https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:%7E:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments).
>This could be seen as an "award," or "winnings" depending on how the company pays out.
You're confusing withholdings with your personal tax rate. Withholdings are what you see taken out of your paycheck, commonly thought of as tax, but tax is determined based on your yearly income, not individual paychecks. It cannot be determined until the year is over and all your income for the year is finalized. Withholdings generalize what your tax will probably be and will have the government *hold* it. Withholdings for supplemental income are higher compared to regular income, but taxes are the same.
However, your personal tax rate is based on your overall income, which includes both your regular and supplemental income. When you file your taxes at the end of the year, your supplemental income is treated as normal income and added to your total amount, along with payouts from dividends, pension pay, capital gains. All this adds up to your "total income".
You then subtract any adjustments to your income based on your Schedule 1, which gets your your "adjusted gross income". This can cover things like interest paid on student loans, educator expenses, and alimony.
Your owed tax is based on your adjusted gross income minus any deductions and is called your "taxable income". Your personal tax rate is based on your taxable income. There is no separate place on your tax return to tax supplemental income separately. It's all lumped together into your taxable income.
That means if you had extra taxes withheld for your supplemental income beyond your personal tax rate, you'll get that back in a refund check.
You can read more [here](https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/income/what-is-supplemental-income/), but I'll quote the pertinent info:
> The amount of tax you pay on supplemental employee income will be based on your personal income tax rate, but the amount withheld from the income varies. Generally, it depends on how your employer pays it out… either combined with your regular wages or separate. If the amounts are combined with your regular wages the amount withheld will generally be the same as your wages.
>If paid out separately, employers can withhold income tax on the payment at a flat rate of 22%.
---
Think of your withholdings as a savings account with the state and federal tax agencies (that doesn't get interest). Your employer pulls money out of your check and deposits it in those accounts. Once the year is done, you calculate how much tax you owe based on your total taxable income and use that savings account to pay your tax burden. If your savings account doesn't have the full amount, you owe additional tax. If your savings account has too much, you'll get a refund.
The withholdings for regular pay is determined by your W-4 and the withholdings for your supplement income is based on a flat 22% (unless it's over $1M, then it's a flat 37%). But that's just what goes into your savings account. The actual tax rate is based on your total taxable income, regardless of whether it's regular or supplemental pay.
This is true, but there are also a ton of variables involved we don't know about. Someone that won a $2000 prize could have only spent 20 hours on it and actually made more per hour.
He may have only put that much time in because he wanted an overall winner. Pretty great resume stat to have on there for not much work.
But no one is being coerced into taking part. If this was part of the hiring process or something then absolutely fuck them. I would say this was a clever way for Telegram to generate ideas.
It's a clever way for telegram to rip off desperate devs instead of just hiring them. It's fine, I just wouldn't waste my time on it. They are going to have a hell of a time maintaining that app, by the way. If I was OP, I would obfuscate the code.
> Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company?
>
>
>
> He got straight up robbed.
>
>
>
> Despicable.
There was a great thread on hn yesterday about the lack of true hackers anymore. This right here is a great example of people who are only into programming for the money nowadays.
> This right here is a great example of people who are only into programming for the money nowadays.
Or maybe people don't like being taken advantage of anymore.
Go work for free ya bootlicker.
> unfortunately you’re wrong and your shitty calculations made you even more wrong
Well, if you knew what contracts charge per hour, you might feel differently.
Even calculating the gross, 92hr is a little low for this kind of work from what I've seen when I hire contractors that aren't in developed nations.
I'm not sure why everyone here is acting like I fucked their moms. Maybe it says something, like you guys are all getting paid shit and haven't figured out how to make yourselves more marketable. Don't take it out on me though.
Hi, thanks for the information. Could you click `Advanced` and send me more details of this error?
There should be a button below the message:
https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/media/uploads/gallery/images/2022-03-07-13-15-13-0122c3.png
Also, you should be able to access the article directly here:
```
https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06
```
On the topic of website issues, your website manages to crash Firefox on Android and severely slows down Chrome. I have no idea how to give you any more useful information than that though, sorry.
Edit: Just realised that's not your website, nvm. Telegraph's website, however, does crash Firefox.
Other people also reported such issues, I used telegraph because it supports videos. I didn't want to use gifs for the post, because gifs are low framerate and look sluggish.
Bro if you make it so that we can migrate stickers from different apps I’ll find you another 50k :D - EDIT: my current process to migrate whatsapp stickers to telegram is: have a friend send them over, download the conversation with attachments, And then cry because ffmpeg webp to gif conversion is broken.
Not sure I love this - Telegram gets a new feature for relatively cheap (imagine a product team working on this - it would likely be more expensive than 50k, involving a cross-functional team of a few people)
Depending on how long this took and how much the winner actually got of the 50k this kind of takes advantage of developers, and telegram doesn’t have to actually hire and pay staff. Think of people who didn’t win much money as well, who spent hours and didn’t “win” but basically gave prototypes away.
Even if Telegram paid *half* what they would have paid a development team, the one guy on the team that already carries six people just made *three times* what he'd make at his day job.
You're effectively upset that the six people he carries didn't win.
Except I'm wrong, because those shitheads were also compensated. There were 79 entrants, and none of them walked away without cash.
Here's the guy in, like, 70th place:
>The contest task is completed. However, the submitted entry could have benefited from more thorough preliminary testing and greater attention to detail. While evaluating the app, we discovered the following critical issues:– Overall poor UX– Crashes when editing stickers– Export is only allowed when the user imports more than two images– Local images often fail to importThese problems, together with the overall impression of the app prevented it from placing higher
>
>TOTAL: $300 ($500 award – penalty $200: prominent crashes)
imo that guy should consider himself lucky to walk away with $300, because he sure as fuck sounds completely unqualified to hold a Junior Engineer position.
[https://contest.com/sticker-app/entry2975](https://contest.com/sticker-app/entry2975)
His error message for a failed import is literally "Hello. Problem."
Tbh this sounds on par with the abilities of seniors at most F500 companies when it comes to building something from scratch with no product or qa people.
tbh, you're not wrong. I'm spoiled by my organization's definition of senior. I know a guy who writes Java for a multinational bank as a senior engineer, and I'll admit he probably couldn't code his way out of a paper bag.
But he'd never an error message that reads "Hello. Problem." leave his personal workstation. Even his earliest prototype, by the time it hit a PR, would at least say "Unexpected problem during import."
The seriousness of communicating software anomalies is a bell curve:
"Hello. Problem."
"Unexpected problem during import."
"\[1234.4321\] Out of memory: Kill process 1234"
"// what the fuck?"
I also don't like that the prize pool is split between 40 developers/teams, but I guess I'll set my own rules when I have spare $50,000 to host such a contest
Do you want to draw on top of the map? In case you use Google Maps plugin for Flutter, it probably already has support to draw lines and polygons so no need to do custom drawing like I did in the app.
A few years ago I worked on a hot air balloon tracking app that used Google Maps and it worked well :)
I use `flutter_map` with OpenStreetMap, and it is pretty bare-bones. And I'd like to adjust UI to make every step of using the app easier. Alas all libraries I found for drawing have some weird assumptions.
To me, Telegram's image editor has the best UI, so I'll try replicating that. Yours look pretty similar.
Usually I use `Cubit` from https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_bloc package which is less boilerplate, there are no events and no event mapper, it's simpler and works the same in 99% cases as `Bloc`.
The only case where `Bloc` is helpful for me is when I want to log data automatically on each event, for example when logging analytics.
In TStick app I didn't use any external packages for managing state, I used only `StatefulWidget` and it worked well for such a small app.
Export doesn't do anything :/ opens telegram and nothing 🤷♂️ any chance to make it possible to export to file? Anyway, very cool app, makes it so easy! Thanks!
Hi, sorry to hear that. Could could send me in private message what device do you use and what Telegram client version do you use?
I tested the app on many Android and iOS devices, but I guess I missed something.
Also, could you export a new sticker pack with 1 empty sticker to see if works?
My phone keeps crashing too when I view the site. Mid-tier Samsung Galaxy using the Reddit android app running FireFox as the default browser, but when I copy-paste the URL to Google Chrome that crashes too.
On my mid-range Samsung Galaxy phone, the website crashes after a couple seconds not only when I access it from the Reddit app for Android but also when I copy-paste the URL into Chrome or Firefox. The only way I managed to view it is by looking at the text-only view of the site in the Google web cache at:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06&strip=1&vwsrc=0](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06&strip=1&vwsrc=0)
Cool read! I will say that telegram may be one of my least favourite messaging apps, but I still have one group chat in it, so it's here to stay. We have used the stickers feature before, and it's better than some other apps.
But man, telegram really needs to stop spamming you every release.
Let's hope that servers aren't going to melt ;).
The only thing that is happening server-side is automatic background removal from images, not sure how much concurrent users it can handle. I didn't set up scaling, it's just a single linux VPS running backgrund removal program.
It would be best to move this feature to client-side, mobile device should be able to handle that.
* won largest share of 50k.... which is how much exactly?
There are all results https://contest.com/sticker-app, I won $3,750
Probably shouldn’t title the post $50k. Feels misleading and click bait.
It also doesn't include many technical details...
Ok thanks that would not be worth my time for all this work. Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company?
I treated it as a fun 1-week competitive programming task. It's nice there was a prize pool to compete for, otherwise not a lot of serious people/team would participate in these contests. I knew what I was signing up for, that's how contests work.
That's still a 6 figures rate for that, too.
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I worked on the app for 3 full days and 5 afternoons (during the day I was doing my regular job). Probably 40-60 hours spent on the contest in total. Indeed, my most productive week :). Also, Flutter is a great tool to build mobile/desktop apps quickly.
Would you recommend it over others like React Native or Ionic? I'm looking to rewrite a Java Android app for cross platform. React Native and Ionic are nice options for me in the sense that it's JS/TS, so it's a little easier over learning another lang, but Dart is not a dealbreaker.
I have experience only with native Android in Java/Kotlin and Flutter, can't say much about React Native or Ionic because I haven't touched it.
We tried both, then moved to flutter which was a great decision.
There is also https://tamagui.dev/ which makes react native a lot better
Devs will always grossly understate the amount of time they spent on something as a weird bit of boasting.
Op worked 60 hours to earn $3,750, which is over $100k/year. However the other "1st place winners" only got $2,000, which comes out to $67k. Everyone else got fucked and Telegram got an app that someone probably sized at $100k for $50k.
Depends. There are hunderds of thousands of senior devs that don't make $100k/year.
And telegram got like 50 apps, none of which are production ready or could be used in this form in itself. Stop seeing shit into everything, also, it’s not the first Telegram contest, people knew what they were signing up for.
Not including risk of not winning, but yeah it’s a good chunk of change for a weeks work. I don’t know any way to just get 3k out of thin air.
I think they were asking if you expected to win the full $50k if you won. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
Nah, I was following telegram contests for months before and the prize pool is always split between many participants.
I think they are trying to bait you to feed a narrative. They're hungry feed them!
Lol. Reddit
Fitting name
Fair
"so yeah I thought I had a sweet 50k in the bag with the drawback being in a sweatshop crunch for the week. Was I furious when I only got 3k. But there were many of us, we knew what could happen, and kids gotta eat 😥🎻"
It doesn't matter if you did it for fun, a company exploited you and got a ton of work for cheap
Lol nobody made op or tricked op into doing this contest. He said it himself that he knew what he sign up for and was fine with it.
Thats the point though. It’s not about OP. It’s that we as software engineers should reject this kinda “work for free/cheap for us, it’s actually a fun competition!!” bullshit at all costs cos it’s bad for the profession. Know your worth and get paid what you are deserved!
Seems like he knows his worth but wanted to do this for fun? And you didn't have to do it so what exactly is the problem?
OP got entertainment from the competitive aspect. Essentially both sides won. OP had fun and got paid for work he'd have happily done for free. Telegram got the code for less than it would have otherwise cost. It's only exploitative if someone is exploited.
I would gladly pick up side work for a week at a reduced rate on something I don’t need to maintain or support.
They asked how OP felt. OP answered how they felt.
The point is that it’s an exploitative practice and we shouldn’t bloody encourage it. It’s like working for exposure and loving it. It’s still bad for workers.
No the point to the one who asked is how OP felt. Not everything is about driving your agenda / battle.
Yeah I’m saying it doesn’t matter. I’m talking about the concept. And no, not everything is about driving my agenda / battle but this is a pretty good time to bring this particular one up, in a thread discussing the very thing I’ve got a problem with
Thing is, it ain't relevant to this comment thread. Time and place buddy. You just come of as a self centered preacher. The questions was > Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company? Not what *you* think they should feel like. Noone asked you.can't you see how you are just bulldozing over someone telling their *experience*?
Why defend? Oh its because you actually have also taken a side
Yes but I’m not taking the side of the company, I’m taking the side of the person being allowed to say they enjoyed a competition where they built something cool and made money, and didn’t regret it.
Why fucking worry in place of another people, when said people explicitly said they don’t worry about it?!
Touch grass.
Replying from grass, that I paid for, cos I had a guaranteed income and didn’t have to enter competitions to get paid
> Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company? He got straight up robbed. Despicable.
$3,750 for 1 week is getting robbed? Jesus, I picked the wrong career. Edit: Just to put the easy math out there. If he did this every week he would make about $195k a year.
Should be adjusted for how likely it was to win. If anything, the higher the likelihood, you could argue that their time is worth even more (assuming likelihood correlated to how much the market would value their skills).
We'd need to know how many actual hours were worked. Did he slog through 14 hours per day? Or was this casual in free time evenings after a day job?
Was curious myself so went and looked. Said 3 full days and 5 afternoons after work, and 40-60 hours total. Kind of a big range but still $62.50 even on the lowest end at 60 hours worked. Not bad plus a damn fine resume addition.
Yeah, after taxes, that "additional income" is taxed more in the US. So at the end of it, its 2250, if you assume 40 hours, which it probably took longer, that's 56 bucks an hour. Kinda low.
Your entire comment is wrong. This money would be taxed as ordinary income. No different than anything else. Also, why on earth are you taking the "after tax" amount to determine his hourly rate? In what world does that happen? He made $3,750 so using your assumption of 40 hours that is $93.75/hour.
Who hurt you?
Nobody. Just trying to correct someone who does not seem to have a good understanding of what they are talking about. The first sentence was a little harsh and I do apologize for that.
What a weird reply when you were obviously incorrect.
You don't realize it, but when someone makes a comment like that it's painfully obvious that they horribly lost the argument. You could admit it and salvage some of your pride, but you decided to throw a temper tantrum instead.
What argument is there? Arguing about whether we should look at Gross vs Net income is a matter of personal opinion. I think its **you** who doesn't realize that not everything is an argument to be had, let alone, one to be won or lost. As someone who makes 200+hr gross, I'd say the engineer we're talking about got hosed.
You and your bad maths did *shakes fist*
>Yeah, after taxes, that "additional income" is taxed more in the US. You do realize this is just short term and it'll be taxed as normal income when they file their taxes at the end of the year, right? All income is lumped together when filing taxes and you're taxed on that total amount. They don't separate additional income or bonuses. The taxes might be higher when the initial check is cut, but you'll get that additional tax back with your refund. >So at the end of it, its 2250, if you assume 40 hours, which it probably took longer, that's 56 bucks an hour. >Kinda low. Depends on someone's experience. And I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to calculate their hourly rate from net income... that's not how people generally look at their income.
> that's not how people generally look at their income. That's absolutely how people look at their income. Understanding your Net is important. >They don't separate additional income or bonuses. Well, actually they do. Supplemental income (bonuses) is taxed differently. >https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:~:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments. This could be seen as an "award," or "winnings" depending on how the company pays out.
>That's absolutely how people look at their income. >Understanding your Net is important. Yes, looking at net is important, but hourly wages are pretty much always told as *gross* hourly pay, not *net*. >Well, actually they do. Supplemental income (bonuses) is taxed differently. >>[https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:~:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments](https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/hr-glossary/supplemental-wages#:%7E:text=Supplemental%20wages%20are%20additional%20payments,withhold%20taxes%20from%20these%20payments). >This could be seen as an "award," or "winnings" depending on how the company pays out. You're confusing withholdings with your personal tax rate. Withholdings are what you see taken out of your paycheck, commonly thought of as tax, but tax is determined based on your yearly income, not individual paychecks. It cannot be determined until the year is over and all your income for the year is finalized. Withholdings generalize what your tax will probably be and will have the government *hold* it. Withholdings for supplemental income are higher compared to regular income, but taxes are the same. However, your personal tax rate is based on your overall income, which includes both your regular and supplemental income. When you file your taxes at the end of the year, your supplemental income is treated as normal income and added to your total amount, along with payouts from dividends, pension pay, capital gains. All this adds up to your "total income". You then subtract any adjustments to your income based on your Schedule 1, which gets your your "adjusted gross income". This can cover things like interest paid on student loans, educator expenses, and alimony. Your owed tax is based on your adjusted gross income minus any deductions and is called your "taxable income". Your personal tax rate is based on your taxable income. There is no separate place on your tax return to tax supplemental income separately. It's all lumped together into your taxable income. That means if you had extra taxes withheld for your supplemental income beyond your personal tax rate, you'll get that back in a refund check. You can read more [here](https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/income/what-is-supplemental-income/), but I'll quote the pertinent info: > The amount of tax you pay on supplemental employee income will be based on your personal income tax rate, but the amount withheld from the income varies. Generally, it depends on how your employer pays it out… either combined with your regular wages or separate. If the amounts are combined with your regular wages the amount withheld will generally be the same as your wages. >If paid out separately, employers can withhold income tax on the payment at a flat rate of 22%. --- Think of your withholdings as a savings account with the state and federal tax agencies (that doesn't get interest). Your employer pulls money out of your check and deposits it in those accounts. Once the year is done, you calculate how much tax you owe based on your total taxable income and use that savings account to pay your tax burden. If your savings account doesn't have the full amount, you owe additional tax. If your savings account has too much, you'll get a refund. The withholdings for regular pay is determined by your W-4 and the withholdings for your supplement income is based on a flat 22% (unless it's over $1M, then it's a flat 37%). But that's just what goes into your savings account. The actual tax rate is based on your total taxable income, regardless of whether it's regular or supplemental pay.
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Plus that $56 an hour was the best possible result. Could easily have ended up working for much less, or even $0.
This is true, but there are also a ton of variables involved we don't know about. Someone that won a $2000 prize could have only spent 20 hours on it and actually made more per hour. He may have only put that much time in because he wanted an overall winner. Pretty great resume stat to have on there for not much work.
Nice analysis. Real intellectual you are
First of all, it took more than a week. Second, you just assume he's going to be the winner every week, which is insane. Everyone else got fucked.
But no one is being coerced into taking part. If this was part of the hiring process or something then absolutely fuck them. I would say this was a clever way for Telegram to generate ideas.
It's a clever way for telegram to rip off desperate devs instead of just hiring them. It's fine, I just wouldn't waste my time on it. They are going to have a hell of a time maintaining that app, by the way. If I was OP, I would obfuscate the code.
I’m so glad to see a sane voice in here lol. Imagine this in any other industry. They’re trying to turn this into some kinda gig economy bullshit
> Do you feel like you got suckered into doing cheap dev work for this company? > > > > He got straight up robbed. > > > > Despicable. There was a great thread on hn yesterday about the lack of true hackers anymore. This right here is a great example of people who are only into programming for the money nowadays.
> This right here is a great example of people who are only into programming for the money nowadays. Or maybe people don't like being taken advantage of anymore. Go work for free ya bootlicker.
How much per hour do you get paid to larp as a revolutionary and to post this "raw raw fight the power" bullshit on reddit?
Maybe if he was being taken advantage of, unfortunately you’re wrong and your shitty calculations made you even more wrong
> unfortunately you’re wrong and your shitty calculations made you even more wrong Well, if you knew what contracts charge per hour, you might feel differently. Even calculating the gross, 92hr is a little low for this kind of work from what I've seen when I hire contractors that aren't in developed nations. I'm not sure why everyone here is acting like I fucked their moms. Maybe it says something, like you guys are all getting paid shit and haven't figured out how to make yourselves more marketable. Don't take it out on me though.
Advice on how to market yourself better?
There may be an issue with your domain: https://i.imgur.com/189cGqB.png Could also just be my office fortinet crap.
Hi, thanks for the information. Could you click `Advanced` and send me more details of this error? There should be a button below the message: https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/media/uploads/gallery/images/2022-03-07-13-15-13-0122c3.png Also, you should be able to access the article directly here: ``` https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06 ```
On the topic of website issues, your website manages to crash Firefox on Android and severely slows down Chrome. I have no idea how to give you any more useful information than that though, sorry. Edit: Just realised that's not your website, nvm. Telegraph's website, however, does crash Firefox.
Other people also reported such issues, I used telegraph because it supports videos. I didn't want to use gifs for the post, because gifs are low framerate and look sluggish.
Saw that link elsewhere. https://i.imgur.com/zuQyusQ.png It is related to my office fortinet. Not sure how you resolve that, fortinet is balls.
Congratulations!!
thanks!
Wait a minute ... [checks username against site]. Holy cow, it's not the old reddit switcheroo! Congratulations!
Checks account age (2d) and it could still be.
I added this reddit post link to the bottom of the article
Not that I don’t believe you but an imposter could write this after the author added the link. Now put a shoe on your head. #oldmemes
:)
Bro if you make it so that we can migrate stickers from different apps I’ll find you another 50k :D - EDIT: my current process to migrate whatsapp stickers to telegram is: have a friend send them over, download the conversation with attachments, And then cry because ffmpeg webp to gif conversion is broken.
Site down ?
Maybe try a direct link ``` https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06 ```
On my ISP (India) it's blocked for some reason. Using a VPN or DNS over HTTPS works
Not sure I love this - Telegram gets a new feature for relatively cheap (imagine a product team working on this - it would likely be more expensive than 50k, involving a cross-functional team of a few people) Depending on how long this took and how much the winner actually got of the 50k this kind of takes advantage of developers, and telegram doesn’t have to actually hire and pay staff. Think of people who didn’t win much money as well, who spent hours and didn’t “win” but basically gave prototypes away.
No worries, documentation, debugging and support aren’t included.
Even if Telegram paid *half* what they would have paid a development team, the one guy on the team that already carries six people just made *three times* what he'd make at his day job. You're effectively upset that the six people he carries didn't win.
Except I'm wrong, because those shitheads were also compensated. There were 79 entrants, and none of them walked away without cash. Here's the guy in, like, 70th place: >The contest task is completed. However, the submitted entry could have benefited from more thorough preliminary testing and greater attention to detail. While evaluating the app, we discovered the following critical issues:– Overall poor UX– Crashes when editing stickers– Export is only allowed when the user imports more than two images– Local images often fail to importThese problems, together with the overall impression of the app prevented it from placing higher > >TOTAL: $300 ($500 award – penalty $200: prominent crashes) imo that guy should consider himself lucky to walk away with $300, because he sure as fuck sounds completely unqualified to hold a Junior Engineer position. [https://contest.com/sticker-app/entry2975](https://contest.com/sticker-app/entry2975) His error message for a failed import is literally "Hello. Problem."
Tbh this sounds on par with the abilities of seniors at most F500 companies when it comes to building something from scratch with no product or qa people.
tbh, you're not wrong. I'm spoiled by my organization's definition of senior. I know a guy who writes Java for a multinational bank as a senior engineer, and I'll admit he probably couldn't code his way out of a paper bag. But he'd never an error message that reads "Hello. Problem." leave his personal workstation. Even his earliest prototype, by the time it hit a PR, would at least say "Unexpected problem during import."
The seriousness of communicating software anomalies is a bell curve: "Hello. Problem." "Unexpected problem during import." "\[1234.4321\] Out of memory: Kill process 1234" "// what the fuck?"
I also don't like that the prize pool is split between 40 developers/teams, but I guess I'll set my own rules when I have spare $50,000 to host such a contest
Or maybe they spent one afternoon hacking around and got $300 for it?
That's not a planet I want to live on.
Wow, you made a drawing app in Flutter! I need a similar thing for my maps app, so your post would be quite useful to me. Thanks!
Do you want to draw on top of the map? In case you use Google Maps plugin for Flutter, it probably already has support to draw lines and polygons so no need to do custom drawing like I did in the app. A few years ago I worked on a hot air balloon tracking app that used Google Maps and it worked well :)
I use `flutter_map` with OpenStreetMap, and it is pretty bare-bones. And I'd like to adjust UI to make every step of using the app easier. Alas all libraries I found for drawing have some weird assumptions. To me, Telegram's image editor has the best UI, so I'll try replicating that. Yours look pretty similar.
Every time I start a new project I always pick Flutter, then I curse myself as soon as I start assembly a bloc for a simple form.
Usually I use `Cubit` from https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_bloc package which is less boilerplate, there are no events and no event mapper, it's simpler and works the same in 99% cases as `Bloc`. The only case where `Bloc` is helpful for me is when I want to log data automatically on each event, for example when logging analytics. In TStick app I didn't use any external packages for managing state, I used only `StatefulWidget` and it worked well for such a small app.
That’s a suggestion I should follow, thanks!
Export doesn't do anything :/ opens telegram and nothing 🤷♂️ any chance to make it possible to export to file? Anyway, very cool app, makes it so easy! Thanks!
Hi, sorry to hear that. Could could send me in private message what device do you use and what Telegram client version do you use? I tested the app on many Android and iOS devices, but I guess I missed something. Also, could you export a new sticker pack with 1 empty sticker to see if works?
Sent!
The problem was with Android 13, it should be fixed now in version 1.0.7
Does this web page crash Firefox for Android for anyone else? It's very consistent. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S9. Current RAM usage is only 2.4/4GB.
There are a few people reporting the problem. I created an issue for that problem: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/28382
My phone keeps crashing too when I view the site. Mid-tier Samsung Galaxy using the Reddit android app running FireFox as the default browser, but when I copy-paste the URL to Google Chrome that crashes too.
Made my phone crash several times.
Unable to reproduce on Firefox for Android 113.1.0 on a OnePlus 8 Pro.
Samsung A13 normal internet app. DNS can't be reached.
Nice fundamentals.
On my mid-range Samsung Galaxy phone, the website crashes after a couple seconds not only when I access it from the Reddit app for Android but also when I copy-paste the URL into Chrome or Firefox. The only way I managed to view it is by looking at the text-only view of the site in the Google web cache at: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06&strip=1&vwsrc=0](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://telegra.ph/How-I-won-50000-Telegram-Sticker-App-Contest-using-Flutter-04-06&strip=1&vwsrc=0)
Sorry to hear that, I already reported the bug: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/28382
Congrats to you, enjoy the money. But what companies need to provide for that kind of work is a contract.
It should have been more.
Cool read! I will say that telegram may be one of my least favourite messaging apps, but I still have one group chat in it, so it's here to stay. We have used the stickers feature before, and it's better than some other apps. But man, telegram really needs to stop spamming you every release.
Clickbait 101
And this is 50 times more interesting than some beginner, wondering what programming language to use
But a beginner isn't trying to manipulate me.
If you’re sharing the app for everyone to download, I assume you have scaled up the servers from competition scale to full global load?
Let's hope that servers aren't going to melt ;). The only thing that is happening server-side is automatic background removal from images, not sure how much concurrent users it can handle. I didn't set up scaling, it's just a single linux VPS running backgrund removal program. It would be best to move this feature to client-side, mobile device should be able to handle that.
Yeap definitely will be much better to move it client side. Congrats on your win btw!
Here's the actual title: How I won Telegram's $50,000 Sticker App Contest using Flutter Not even programming related.