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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#121

Post by skeeter2020 »

tombert wrote: post #17
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…

To be fair, salaries going up isn't necessarily a sign of them "bloating". I've worked for startups before at a reduced salary, with the expectation that as they become more stable they'll bump up the salary to a correct number. In theory, people could have joined Wikimedia at a low salary while they were still struggling, and as they've become way more stable the salaries have gone up as a bit of a correction. That…

You don't join a startup with the expectation that your base salary is going to explode from the related growth; that's the equity lottery. Your startup salary might go from somewhat below to market, that's not waht's happening here.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#122

Post by lesuorac »

concordDance wrote: post #117
lesuorac wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Move to Canada, Germany, Australia or wherever.

> Move to Canada, Germany, Australia or wherever.

Your solution on how to cover a topic in a neutral fashion when there are more than 2 political parties is to move to a country where there are more than 2 political parties?

That doesn't seem like a productive comment.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#123

Post by stonogo »

lesuorac wrote: post #107
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Pretending the US has more than two political parties is a weird hobby. There are only two that matter, and it can't be any other way with the current federal election system. It's a problem worth fixing but Wikipedia is not relevant to any solutions.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#124

Post by fcol »

This reminds me a bad experience.

I worked very hard day in and day out for a startup and then quit bcz of bad management and got no severance (not blaming anybody). At the same time not good engineers got fired, they all got severance packages.

It's a good life lesson though

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#125

Post by bawolff »

starkparker wrote: post #101
AdamN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also there aren't many tech non profits - i imagine skillset is a little more specialized than your average non-profit.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#126

Post by bawolff »

gadders wrote: post #100

Why are they actually getting any severance at all? It looks like they resigned to take new jobs. They weren't sacked or made redundant.

Katherine left under questionable circumstances (right after a rebranding attempt that absolutely exploded). Who knows what really happened, but it seems plausible it wasn't her choice.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#127

Post by skeeter2020 »

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.

>> It's critical to compensate non-profit employees near the market rate otherwise you end up with sub-par performers

I hear this all the time for not-for-profits and government roles, it sounds good but just doesn't hold up. The leaders in these roles are not measured or held to the same metrics as private companies, they're not competing for the same jobs and they're not the same pool of candidates. The results prove this out: the metrics and tenure of "high paid" bureaucrats are no better than lower paid leaders at the orgs. The "we have to pay the same high comp to get the same high quality leaders" fallacy is misleading.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#128

Post by gadders »

ekianjo wrote: post #111
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The BBC is not neutral. They are the mouthpiece of the UK government.

Hardly. They're pro-immigration, anti-Brexit, anti-any cuts anywhere for anything. They're the voice of the Guardian-reading middle classes.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#129

Post by George83728 »

humanistbot wrote: post #80
oefrha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of very few jobs less neutral than Atlantic Council and U.S. Department of State. You don’t get invited to those boards without prior connections to some of the least neutral people on the planet.

>I can think of very few jobs less neutral than Atlantic Council and U.S. Department of State. What about any senior exec position at Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, or Microsoft? I hope you don't believe those organizations are 'neutral' either.

The State Department is maximally non-neutral, they are explicitly looking after American foreign policy interests. That is their raison d'etre. It simply is not possible to be less neutral than the State Department. They're as not-neutral as the US military.

Those corporations are not exactly shining examples of neutrality, but by simple virtue of being multinationals which do business in many countries, cooperating with and abiding by the laws of many governments, they are more neutral than the State Department itself. They are not explicitly and overtly set up to serve a single particular government, although there is good and ample reason to believe they covertly do so. I don't think anybody believes these corporations are strictly neutral, but to claim they're less neutral than the State Department is quite absurd.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#130

Post by Clent »

jackvalentine wrote: post #16
tombert wrote: post #5

Man, I've been fired by for-profit companies and felt lucky to get four weeks severance. It's upsetting that people working for a non-profit are getting 1.5x their salary, but I guess this is kind of what we get for believing that a non-profit is going to act better than an evil corporation.

I have the complete opposite read of the situation to you. I have no beef with people getting treated well by any kind of organisation.

Champions of executive's compensation is what the working class is fighting against. You lack of beef would classify you as their class traitor.
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