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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#161

Post by akolbe »

bawolff wrote: post #126
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.

There was this post last year on Wikipedia by Victoria Doronina, one of the WMF trustees:

"The Board has done its main job - changed the CEO."

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village...

Victoria explicitly referred to the Knowledge Equity Fund in that post, which appears to have been Uzzell's and Maher's brainchild.

The Knowledge Equity Fund became very controversial last year when people realised it was set up to funnel millions of dollars of Wikipedia donations to non-Wikimedia social justice causes via Tides Advocacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Janeen announced on 14 May 2021, two weeks after Katherine had left, that she was going to leave the WMF and devote herself to racial equity and technology causes:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

She started as CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers on 7 July 2021, just one week after her last day with the WMF.

Including the $325K severance, she pocketed over half a million dollars for half a year's work and went straight to her next job.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#162

Post by mikeryan »

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.

Executive compensation packages work differently and tend to be much more bonus driven.

Frequently these types of severance packages are to make up some sort of assumed bonus and ensure no compensation based contract disputes later.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#164

Post by caycep »

Granted, I'm looking at these salaries, from over in the healthcare sectors where CEOs and executives (whose value many of us find questionable) make $5 mil salaries, even for being CEO of a "nonprofit hospital/foundation", and have way larger golden parachutes to boot. I'd say it's (relatively) admirable the Wikimedia board is stressing out about severances from $300-500k.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#165

Post by bawolff »

One thing to consider is that katherine became CEO at a very turbulant time at WMF. The previous ceo (lila) was extremely unpopular and facing a staff revolt [1]. Morale was terrible. Maybe katherine had a big severence agreement because she was walking into a shit show.

[1] https://www.mollywhite.net/timelines/wikimedia/

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#166

Post by barrkel »

tchaffee wrote: post #116
barrkel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're giving a business definition of a few responsibilities for an executive and then saying it's a poor fit. Now try giving an NGO definition of an executive to see if it's a better fit and if they have any significant responsibilities. Non-profits shut down all the time. If you're concerned about a lasting impact you'll pay for a talented executive team.

Under what circumstances would Wikipedia shit down, if it still has money for operational expenses?

The biggest set of responsibilities charites I didn't list is sales (aka donations). But Wikipedia doesn't do more good work (as donors think of it) the more money they get. It doesn't scale up much that way.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#167

Post by bawolff »

akolbe wrote: post #75
IceWreck wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about development costs ?

You mean for software features and the like? Some good work has been done there in the background – it's not stuff that readers would notice, but contributors do. It wouldn't be fair to say that all the money has been mis-spent – there are lots of people working at the Foundation who are doing good work and who are not getting rich – especially bearing in mind the cost of living in parts of the US (though this begs t…

Note - many wmf staff do not live in the usa. Some who do do not live in expensive parts of the usa.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#168

Post by madeofpalk »

concordDance wrote: post #119
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.

People are upset because it was working fine 10 years ago when execs were paid a fraction of the amount. They're upset because wikipedia asks for donations every year even though they've collected enough money to run wikipedia off interest from treasury bonds.

What was FAANG developer salaries like 10 years ago? Was that 'working fine'?

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#169

Post by RugnirViking »

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...

Idk I live in a place like that I find there are still two broad groups of parties that rarely make coalitions a large distance across the divide. It's not like there is only one axis of politics but there is a sort of broad undercurrent of older/conservative and younger/change broad split.

But speaking to your point, there is no reason at all why a two party system is required to have a rule of thumb that if everyone thinks you're biased you're on the right track...

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#170

Post by lallysingh »

akolbe wrote: post #73
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.

18 months' severance. US$623,286 when their last full year's base compensation was $400K. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Wikim... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikim...

Oh yikes, staff with a larger severance. I'm not surprised, I can't imagine it's easy to find a new CEO job after losing your last one.
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