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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#101

Post by starkparker »

AdamN wrote: post #53
cornholio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do that at a startup for stock compensation, with the expectation that your risk will be rewarded in the future. A non-profit is not your future cashcow, you don't own it, you either work for current salary or you forgo payment because you believe in the cause. There is no scenario where non-profit workers get to cash out to compensate for previous struggling - except when that non-profit has been captured by a g…

It's critical to compensate non-profit employees near the market rate otherwise you end up with sub-par performers, martyrs, having the vision co-opted by the wealthy who can afford to be underpaid, or the young who leave disillusioned. The Gates foundation pioneered this approach and imho it's the right way to operate in the sector.

Asking tangentially, earnestly, and with a genuine lack of knowledge: are $404k and $311k the market rate for the base compensation of a CEO and COO of a non-profit at Wikimedia's scale?

EDIT: Found at least one source on US non-profits that excludes healthcare and university roles which skew numbers: https://analytics.excellenceingiving.com/2021-2022-nonprofit...

Suggesting $364k compensation for the CEO a nonprofit with $50M+ revenue. Wikimedia Foundation reports $150M+: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#102

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

thecopy wrote: post #19
andersrs wrote: post #14

Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they mi…

>politically neutral What does politically neutral mean?

Both sides think you're biased. That's how the BBC does it.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#103

Post by darth_avocado »

AdamN wrote: post #53
cornholio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do that at a startup for stock compensation, with the expectation that your risk will be rewarded in the future. A non-profit is not your future cashcow, you don't own it, you either work for current salary or you forgo payment because you believe in the cause. There is no scenario where non-profit workers get to cash out to compensate for previous struggling - except when that non-profit has been captured by a g…

It's critical to compensate non-profit employees near the market rate otherwise you end up with sub-par performers, martyrs, having the vision co-opted by the wealthy who can afford to be underpaid, or the young who leave disillusioned. The Gates foundation pioneered this approach and imho it's the right way to operate in the sector.

Getting people market rate is fair, but that’s

1. for regular employees. 2. Assuming market rate is fair and not minimum wage

There is no reason executive pay needs to follow market rate dynamics at a non profit. Otherwise you’ll have underpaid and free labor while executives milk the cow at 100x median pay rates and generous golden parachutes.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#104

Post by renewiltord »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #84
humanistbot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volunteers don't run the servers, they don't handle donation processing for small donors or sweet talk the egos of large donors, they don't respond to lawsuits from people upset about how they are portrayed on Wikipedia. Then all those employees need HR, IT, janitors, etc., and then there are executives who run the organization. If you were a regular Wikipedia editor, you'd know there is a ton of resistance among vol…

Of course if you're comparing to a strawman where they pay everyone that'd be a bad idea that I wouldn't approve either. Nothing Wikipedia currently does with its money justifies the sums they are getting. If they decided to use that money to generate content, I'd imagine that would work more like normal encyclopedias instead of volunteer based. Where they would seek out actual experts, and only in scientific fields…

I think the people who want "actual experts" should go read encyclopedias built by actual experts. That user segment need not be targeted by Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is what it is because of volunteer editors like me. It is not feasible to convert it to be majority "expert" so if it attempted to do so, the cost would be exorbitant and the users who prefer "expert-written work" will not be satisfied until it is complete since the presence of volunteer work will be considered by them a bad thing.

Those users will be concerned that they do not know which articles are "expert"-written and WP will lose volunteers who get upset that they can't correct "expert" works.

It's best that Wikipedia not attempt to be a thing it is not.

Encyclopedia Britannica does exist. There is no reason that Wikipedia needs to enter that space.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#105

Post by chasd00 »

rob74 wrote: post #13
scrollaway wrote: post #7

To put into perspective: the Wikimedia Foundation manages one of humanity’s greatest achievements. I thought it was an open secret that they’re pretty flush with cash overall despite the constant nag for justadollar’. I dunno, maybe I’ve been desensitised but these numbers are not horribly shocking to me, and when put in the context of the immense value the project brings to the rest of the world… I mean come on, loo…

One of humanity's greatest achievements, built by unpaid volunteers - so yes, some might find it shocking that none of the money from the donations that Wikipedia asks for year after year goes to these volunteers, while quite a lot of it is spent on large salaries and even larger severance packages.

The money we donate also goes to lots of random causes not related to wikipedia. I wonder what percent of the budget goes to actual wikipedia hosting and maintenance costs.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#106

Post by tchaffee »

detaro wrote: post #57
lallysingh wrote: post #47

It looks like the CEO of Wikimedia gets paid roughly as much as a Staff/Senior Staff-level FAANG engineer. That looks about right. And they got 6 months severance. Also comparable. I don't get why people are upset. Somehow everyone working for a nonprofit should bring home less money to their families. In truth what that assumption would mean is that nonprofits get less skilled people.

To take a global perspective: Would you be happy to donate to charity that uses the money to pay executives 10x-100x your salary?

I would be happy. I'm not an executive so I don't get executive pay. The executive salaries at Wikimedia seem low compared to what you can earn at a similarly sized business.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#107

Post by lesuorac »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #102
thecopy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>politically neutral What does politically neutral mean?

Both sides think you're biased. That's how the BBC does it.

How do you do this in a country with more than 2 political parties such as the United States [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#108

Post by barrkel »

tchaffee wrote: post #106
detaro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take a global perspective: Would you be happy to donate to charity that uses the money to pay executives 10x-100x your salary?

I would be happy. I'm not an executive so I don't get executive pay. The executive salaries at Wikimedia seem low compared to what you can earn at a similarly sized business.

The thing is, what exactly does something like Wikipedia need executives for? What strategic shifts does it need to adapt to? What new product lines does it need to move the entire org around to create? What hard decisions does it need to make to shut stuff down?

It's not really a business.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#109

Post by Firmwarrior »

vkou wrote: post #93
thecopy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>politically neutral What does politically neutral mean?

I call anyone who agrees with my politics, or keeps quiet about theirs politically neutral.

A wise man once said, "You're either with us, or you're with the enemy"

I think that sums up US politics pretty well since 2016

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#110

Post by version_five »

thecopy wrote: post #19
andersrs wrote: post #14

Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they mi…

>politically neutral What does politically neutral mean?

It's not possible if you want to do any analysis. Maybe if you just report statistics and limit your reporting to a set of uncontroversial fields. Best you could hope for in a think tank would be setting orthogonal to the main thrust of either side, like libertarian or something - some version of free software advocacy could also work.
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