Why Is 508.dev a Co-Op?

508.dev LLC is a software co-op, also known as a software cooperative . Our business structure differs from traditional corporations in many ways, but the largest differences involve ownership, profit, and decision making. As a co-op, all members are partial owners of 508.dev, and our value is that no member should profit off the labor of another member. Furthermore, we employ a consensus-based decision making framework that ensure all members have the ability to steer the direction of our co-op, help us explore interesting new directions, and ensure we stick to our values.

There are a great many reasons we felt this was the best structure for us, beyond just ethical considerations. For example, 80% of co-ops survive their first 5 years of business, compared to only 44% of other business structures. Not only does this ensure continued employment for us all, it can also lend our clients confidence that we’ll be around for the long term to continue servicing the applications we build.

A large reason we prefer this structure is based around the nature of the engineering services industry. Oftentimes, services firms offer “high value offshore engineering,” then bill clients perhaps only 10 or 20 percent under domestic rates, then turn around and only pay 20% of the rate to the talent. The people being hired aren’t stupid, they’re engineers after all! They’re aware of the massive margins being kept by our competition and it leads to resentment, lack of ownership, poor performance, and also means that clients aren’t getting the maximum potential of the talent. Since 508.dev is a co-op, all of our members have a say in what happens with our margins after cost. This lets us set razor-thin margins, since any profit will be redistributed back to our members anyway. At time of writing that margin is usually around 15%, though you can view our up to date pricing on our website .

Long term, we believe our unique business structure will allow us to self-fund R&D so we can become a products company. With a steady income stream, our long term hope is to provide a sustainable income for our members so that we can explore the bleeding edge of tech and product spaces.

If you’re interested in learning more about our services, feel free to check out our website, or shoot an email to hello@508.dev!