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ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

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Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#91

Post by swiftcoder »

mort96 wrote: post #82
swiftcoder wrote: post #65

> raised concerns about the proposed $300,000 salary for arXiv’s new CEO, saying it seemed high Is a mid-to-high engineering salary outlandish for a CEO of what is likely to be a fairly major non-profit? Even non-profits have to be somewhat competitive when it comes to salary, and the ideal candidate is likely someone who would be balancing this against a tenured position at a major university

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

Even in the states, it’s more a distortion caused by the big tech centres. A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer.

And while academic salaries are generally not great, tenured professors at big universities tend to make a fair bit (plus a lot more vacation time and perks than is normal in the US)

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#92

Post by ACCount37 »

Frankly, the only beef I have with arXiv as is: its insistence on blocking AI access.

I had to tell my AI to set up an MCP for "fetch while bypassing arXiv's rate limit" so that it doesn't burn 40k tokens looking for workarounds every time it wants to look at a paper and gets hit with a "sorry, meatbags only" wall.

Very annoying, given how relevant arXiv papers are for ML specifically, and how many of papers there are. Can't "human flesh search" through all of them to pick the relevant ones for your work, and they just had to insist on making it harder for AIs to do it too.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#93

Post by mort96 »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #6
dataflow wrote: post #3

This sounds terrible. Of course there's a huge risk of it becoming made for-profit. It almost makes you wonder if the academic publishers are behind this push somehow. Could they not have made it into some legal structure that puts universities at the top? Say, with a bunch of universities owning shares that comprise the entirety of the ownership of arXiv, but that would allow arXiv to independently raise funds?

> Of course there's a huge risk of it becoming made for-profit. The article says that "it will become an independent nonprofit corporation", and as OpenAI's failed attempt showed, converting a non-profit to a for-profit organization is either really hard or impossible. > Could they not have made it into some legal structure that puts universities at the top? As a corporation (even a non-profit one), it will have a bo…

Is your argument really that "OpenAI was an independent nonprofit corporation and it worked out great, Arxiv will remain just as non-profit as OpenAI"?

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#94

Post by gucci-on-fleek »

mort96 wrote: post #93
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course there's a huge risk of it becoming made for-profit. The article says that "it will become an independent nonprofit corporation", and as OpenAI's failed attempt showed, converting a non-profit to a for-profit organization is either really hard or impossible. > Could they not have made it into some legal structure that puts universities at the top? As a corporation (even a non-profit one), it will have a bo…

Is your argument really that "OpenAI was an independent nonprofit corporation and it worked out great, Arxiv will remain just as non-profit as OpenAI"?

No, my argument is that OpenAI could make billions of dollars if they converted from a non-profit to a for-profit, and they only succeeded after years of effort and because they had already structured the company into separate for-profit and non-profit entities. And even after all this, the non-profit still controls the majority of the for-profit entity.

So if OpenAI with billions of dollars only partially succeeded at converting to a for-profit business, then that suggests that organizations with fewer resources (like arXiv) have much worse odds.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#95

Post by Hendrikto »

swiftcoder wrote: post #65

> raised concerns about the proposed $300,000 salary for arXiv’s new CEO, saying it seemed high Is a mid-to-high engineering salary outlandish for a CEO of what is likely to be a fairly major non-profit? Even non-profits have to be somewhat competitive when it comes to salary, and the ideal candidate is likely someone who would be balancing this against a tenured position at a major university

For anybody outside the SV, and especially outside the US, this seems high, yes.

arXiv does not need to and should not optimize for “shareholder value”, which is at least nominally the justification for outlandish CEO pay packages.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#97

Post by renewiltord »

HappyPanacea wrote: post #87
mort96 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

Yes the obvious play is to move human labor to cheaper countries like France (including CEO of course).

The reason the French can’t build these things is the same reason they shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge. It’s a preprint PDF host. Just make your own if you can run this one.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#98

Post by dev_l1x_be »

mort96 wrote: post #82
swiftcoder wrote: post #65

> raised concerns about the proposed $300,000 salary for arXiv’s new CEO, saying it seemed high Is a mid-to-high engineering salary outlandish for a CEO of what is likely to be a fairly major non-profit? Even non-profits have to be somewhat competitive when it comes to salary, and the ideal candidate is likely someone who would be balancing this against a tenured position at a major university

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

So is the living cost. Insurance, housing, etc. A better comparison is PPP.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#99

Post by 0x3f »

mort96 wrote: post #82
swiftcoder wrote: post #65

> raised concerns about the proposed $300,000 salary for arXiv’s new CEO, saying it seemed high Is a mid-to-high engineering salary outlandish for a CEO of what is likely to be a fairly major non-profit? Even non-profits have to be somewhat competitive when it comes to salary, and the ideal candidate is likely someone who would be balancing this against a tenured position at a major university

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

Not everywhere. Switzerland exists. Also cost of living is a thing so if anything US/CH just ramp up to match that. The rest of Europe has high CoL but terrible salaries. Asia has bad salaries but low CoL (on average).

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#100

Post by 0x3f »

HappyPanacea wrote: post #87
mort96 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

Yes the obvious play is to move human labor to cheaper countries like France (including CEO of course).

The net salary in France might be low but the overall cost of hiring is quite high. Besides, why go to the middle when you can just find even cheaper places, if that's your prime metric?
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