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I’m kind of tired of the $2mm CEO pay that people have been complaining about. Ok, maybe you think that the current CEO hasn’t lived up to their responsibility

I’m kind of tired of the $2mm CEO pay that people have been complaining about. Ok, maybe you think that the current CEO hasn’t lived up to their responsibility so the pay is unearned. That may be a reasonable argument but has nothing to do with the amount the CEO is paid. The reality is that the leader of a not for profit organization competes in the same job market as those for for profit organizations. So if you want someone decent to do a good job then you need to pay them the market price. Now one thing some may point to is that occasionally the not for profit CEO is paid too much even relative to the for profit CEO. But this is misleading because for profit CEOs get paid in many other ways. Stock options, bonuses, promises of future profits, buying them a place to stay, an airplane, etc. Now, there is a different argument that CEOs in the US overall are paid too much. But that’s a wholly different issue that needs to be resolved at a macro level and cannot be resolved at an individual organization level.

leetcrew 6y ago
> The reality is that the leader of a not for profit organization competes in the same job market as those for for profit organizations. So if you want someone decent to do a good job then you need to pay them the market price. I'm not sure how true this is. people that work at non-profits often don't view jobs at for-profits as acceptable substitutes unless they really need the money. the belief that they are making the world a better place (or at least the image of doing so) is part of the compensation package. the real bidding war is among other non-profits.
- elcritch 6y ago
  A good example of what your saying is Jimmy Whales. He claims to have taken no salary from Wikimedia [1], despite running one of the top internet sites by traffic. Wikipedia makes a fair chunk in donations, but none of their execs make more than about $200k or $300k, IIRC. If anything, a top exec making $2 million at a tech non-profit might be actively attracting the wrong leadership to run Mozilla. Same with the other top execs. If Firefox share was increasing, perhaps you'd have a case otherwise. I kinda hope someone creates a viable Firefox fork and backing org, with better stewardship as I've long been a Firefox fan. 1: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1118168799876976640?lang=en https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1118168799876976640?l...
moron4hire 6y ago
I think things would be a lot better in the non-profit world if they actually did compete for talent with profit-earning companies. But the truth is, they don't. With a few rare exceptions (like Harvard's foundation, which has come under a lot of scrutiny over just how successful it's been), NGOs by and large end up with the leftovers. The folks who weren't really able to get jobs anywhere else. For employees of NGOs, they end up with bottom-barrel, barely subsisting wages. For administration, they're ususally cronies of someone in charge of appointments. A handout to some other, successful executive's spouse, or sibling, or college buddy. CEOs and directors talking about "competitive salaries" are just part of the ever growing problem of NGOs being siphons of money from donors to these "elite adjacent" individuals.
pizzazzaro 6y ago
I hear ya that the job market for CEOs is what it is. That sounds like a system that needs subverting or circumventing. Perhaps management from other Non-profit organizations with a less market-driven culture can prove more fertile ground. Recruit a new CEO from somewhere like the EFF's management. Find someone willing to take a relatively middle class salary of $150K with good benefits, but who will gleefully use their newfound authority in efforts for Internet Freedom. The node.js monoculture in browsers actually scares me. The code from chromium inside firefox (not just widevine) actually scares me. The spyware and "pocket" inside firefox actually scares me. Give me leadership worth trusting, and I'll happily follow. Give me leadership that understands the bottom-up nature of FLOSS software leadership, and finds creative ways to encourage it, rather than gatekeep independent developers out. Give me leadership that isnt just another goddamned Russian Nail Factory tale, using "independence" as branding while they take money to set our default search engine to an abusive content scraper. How will they make money? The VPN service is popular. The notes application was nice. The premium services were/are legit nice - and I want to hear about them from... Not the browser itself, aside from an update-page. A firefox-branded adblock option? That keeps 1-in-10 ads, but replaces them with "thank you" notes and links to tutorials? That takes proactive lead on maintaining the effort to block ads, and subvert anti-adblock measures? And canvas fingerprinting subversion? All in a single, user-friendly but deeply-customizeable addon? I'd pay money for that, especially if it comes with the mullvad/wireguard VPN using a simplified frontend. I'd love to see the firefox VPN have an experimental double-hop option (mullvad does this stable-ly already) where the entry-point is automatically securely-selected. And has a few white-noise features for use with wifi (and user-selectable on cell-data) to obifuscate against traffic correlation analysis. There is sooo much potential in the firefox organization. But to see is squandered this way? Is heartbreaking.

leetcrew 6y ago

> The reality is that the leader of a not for profit organization competes in the same job market as those for for profit organizations. So if you want someone decent to do a good job then you need to pay them the market price. I'm not sure how true this is. people that work at non-profits often don't view jobs at for-profits as acceptable substitutes unless they really need the money. the belief that they are making the world a better place (or at least the image of doing so) is part of the compensation package. the real bidding war is among other non-profits.

elcritch 6y ago
A good example of what your saying is Jimmy Whales. He claims to have taken no salary from Wikimedia [1], despite running one of the top internet sites by traffic. Wikipedia makes a fair chunk in donations, but none of their execs make more than about $200k or $300k, IIRC. If anything, a top exec making $2 million at a tech non-profit might be actively attracting the wrong leadership to run Mozilla. Same with the other top execs. If Firefox share was increasing, perhaps you'd have a case otherwise. I kinda hope someone creates a viable Firefox fork and backing org, with better stewardship as I've long been a Firefox fan. 1: https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1118168799876976640?lang=en https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1118168799876976640?l...

moron4hire 6y ago

I think things would be a lot better in the non-profit world if they actually did compete for talent with profit-earning companies. But the truth is, they don't. With a few rare exceptions (like Harvard's foundation, which has come under a lot of scrutiny over just how successful it's been), NGOs by and large end up with the leftovers. The folks who weren't really able to get jobs anywhere else. For employees of NGOs, they end up with bottom-barrel, barely subsisting wages. For administration, they're ususally cronies of someone in charge of appointments. A handout to some other, successful executive's spouse, or sibling, or college buddy. CEOs and directors talking about "competitive salaries" are just part of the ever growing problem of NGOs being siphons of money from donors to these "elite adjacent" individuals.

pizzazzaro 6y ago

I hear ya that the job market for CEOs is what it is. That sounds like a system that needs subverting or circumventing. Perhaps management from other Non-profit organizations with a less market-driven culture can prove more fertile ground. Recruit a new CEO from somewhere like the EFF's management. Find someone willing to take a relatively middle class salary of $150K with good benefits, but who will gleefully use their newfound authority in efforts for Internet Freedom. The node.js monoculture in browsers actually scares me. The code from chromium inside firefox (not just widevine) actually scares me. The spyware and "pocket" inside firefox actually scares me. Give me leadership worth trusting, and I'll happily follow. Give me leadership that understands the bottom-up nature of FLOSS software leadership, and finds creative ways to encourage it, rather than gatekeep independent developers out. Give me leadership that isnt just another goddamned Russian Nail Factory tale, using "independence" as branding while they take money to set our default search engine to an abusive content scraper. How will they make money? The VPN service is popular. The notes application was nice. The premium services were/are legit nice - and I want to hear about them from... Not the browser itself, aside from an update-page. A firefox-branded adblock option? That keeps 1-in-10 ads, but replaces them with "thank you" notes and links to tutorials? That takes proactive lead on maintaining the effort to block ads, and subvert anti-adblock measures? And canvas fingerprinting subversion? All in a single, user-friendly but deeply-customizeable addon? I'd pay money for that, especially if it comes with the mullvad/wireguard VPN using a simplified frontend. I'd love to see the firefox VPN have an experimental double-hop option (mullvad does this stable-ly already) where the entry-point is automatically securely-selected. And has a few white-noise features for use with wifi (and user-selectable on cell-data) to obifuscate against traffic correlation analysis. There is sooo much potential in the firefox organization. But to see is squandered this way? Is heartbreaking.