18 ms·

The expenses for operating Wikipedia.com would be around $10m. Their $112M expenses include the sky high executive compensation, money sent to the fund, million

by jiofih 5y ago

The expenses for operating Wikipedia.com would be around $10m. Their $112M expenses include the sky high executive compensation, money sent to the fund, millions spent on fundraising itself, and financing a host of programs not directly related to Wikipedia. I stopped donating because of this - definitely want to contribute to keeping Wikipedia online, I don’t necessarily want to give my money to a larger foundation running all kinds of other projects and wielding that cash as a political tool.

zozbot234 5y ago
Wikipedia is not a dot-com. And their executive compensation is hardly "sky-high"; it amounts to a FAANG middle manager's salary, for a positive impact on the world that's easily as high as that of any FAANG.
- bomdo 5y ago
  For others interested in this, Wikimedia salaries are all public [0]. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
  - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
    None of those salaries are high compared to running a private company in a big American city.
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    As someone who worked in a sandwich shop to survive while going to college($7.5/hr, 30 hrs/week), I can't imagine the universe some people live in where an income of $375,000 doesn't seem sky high. It's like there is a section of people who live in a different world. I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more. Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over 5x median income. Those who say it's not a lot are disconnected from the way that most people in the country and the world live.
    - nlitened 5y ago
      On the same HN front page there has _just_ been a "senior developer drunk post", where a guy was complaining that full stack developers are being paid peanuts, and they deserve a compensation of at least 500k USD—and the comments were cheering "amen to that". I don't understand anything about US IT salaries anymore.
      - MonkeyClub 5y ago
        Oh, but US IT salaries are very easy to understand! They're too high, though not high enough. We've become the new priesthood. People who complain that sacrificing one calf to us each year would do well to be reminded that we're not demanding one child per year.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        https://www.amazon.com/Priests-Programmers-Technologies-Engineered-Landscape/dp/0691130663/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=programmers+and+priests&qid=1622477305&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Priests-Programmers-Technologies-Engi...
        MonkeyClub 5y ago
        Spot on!
      - jiofih 5y ago
        That’s a joke. $200k is a high developer salary if you ignore the TC amounts thrown around which are due to stocks popping in the past 3 years.
      - javagram 5y ago
        Probably not the same people writing comments, but also I think everyone has a bias towards being told people with their job should be paid more :-)
      - pirate787 5y ago
  - potamic 5y ago
    Chief of Community Engagement Chief Community Officer Chief Talent and Culture Officer Chargée d'affaires Chief Global Development Officer Chief Creative Officer Chief Communications Officer Chief Revenue Officer VP of Strategic Partnerships 55 million USD in annual salary expenses seems a bit high, even more so for a non-profit. I have seen startup unicorns spend less on salaries. I think there really needs to be some scrutiny into how funding is being spent. Looking at the list of execs there I really have to question what role they play and how their compensation is justified. It's not just their individual salary either. At their level they have entire organizational hierarchies working under them and the collective salaries can add up. What precisely are they contributing to the movement? I can't imagine the kind of things Wikipedia needs to do that needs such roles. These guys should be focusing on product and tech primarily. They have a solid product which hasn't changed in years and a strong brand. They have a singularly unique and special thing in this world and need to protect it as sacred. They need to focus on maintaining and scaling this system for eternity instead of experimenting and branching offshoots into community engagement, strategic partnerships, ambassadoring and all that crap.
    - chasil 5y ago
      In my youth, my parents spent quite a bit of money on a Funk & Wagnal's encyclopedia set. I do not regret my $20 donation, as I've received far more in return. However, this seems like excessive marketing for an organization that does not produce a physical product (unlike Funk & Wagnal's). I have seen less online criticism of WikiPedia accuracy of late; perhaps this is the result of the marketing dollars. If true, it is good, but it could likely be done with marketing efforts a fraction of the size.
    - SirSourdough 5y ago
      It’s a community-edited encyclopedia with thousands of contributors and billions of users, I feel like community engagement is very central to that. Global development also seems central to scaling their core product. Communications is likewise no surprise for an organization of their scale and global importance. Obviously there’s a debate to be had about what and how much Wikipedia should engage in other ventures but even for their core work a lot of these roles seem pretty reasonable...
  - ksec 5y ago
    Since they dont have any Sub Coordinate, it seems those C title are basically doing everything themselves. Edit: I think that Salaries are for Top Executive only. There are 450 [1] in Wikimedia. In the case 55M isn't that much. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Anything above 100K is sky-high, and you need to have drunk a lot of the SF kool-aid to think anything else. That the cost of living in SF is so high that a wage like that doesn't cover basic living costs is not because the wages aren't high enough.
  - apercu 5y ago
    Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot of money.
    - bluescrn 5y ago
      It's still sky-high to most of the world outside the US
      - Joker_vD 5y ago
        It seems that the wealthiest countries also have higher cost of living (for the same level of life). I guess it kinda makes sense in a way.
      - reader_mode 5y ago
        Not true at all, most Western Europe 100k$ (80k EUR) is barely above average, you'd still be firmly middle class even on two such incomes, sky high would be at least twice that much.
        bluescrn 5y ago
        Median income in the UK is just over £30k (about 35k EUR)
        5y ago
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Who decides of the compensation?
  - jmkb 5y ago
    The last person to edit the page, of course! ;)
- h_anna_h 5y ago
  Maybe a foundation that begs for donations from everyone in the world (even these who make $3/h) and pretends that they are going to go bankrupt without your donation should not be giving its management FAANG wages.
- jiofih 5y ago
  Wikipedia is a non-profit foundation. $374k is a pretty damn good salary for a foundation.
  - mratsim 5y ago
    If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits. A sense of purpose alone won't let you lodge in cities with high cost of living. If anything, I dare say running a non-profit usually requires a lot more skills, especially people skills and passion than a tech job. I'm not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there is this sense of entitlement when you talk to people that because you work at a non-profit you should work for free. If I give my valuable time to contribute to the world at large, I expect to be able to have decent living conditions.
    - plutonorm 5y ago
      What do they have to do? Their only job is to keep the servers running. Everything else is a task they invented for themselves to earn more money.
      - malka 5y ago
        beg to us every year.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits. Same line used in defense of corporate board hiring practices, and as in that case, stated without evidence to support the claim.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      "If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits." Oh come on! What talent do they need that a million much lower paid people don't have?
    - jiofih 5y ago
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  The list linked by a sibling seems to top out at mid 300s, many FAANG ~2 YoE SWE make around that much.
- fridek 5y ago
  FWIW Wikimedia salaries linked by bomdo in reply are all topped by entry level from https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon,Google&track=Software%20Engineering%20Manager https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon,Google&track... At entry level you typically manage a two-pizzas sized team in one fairly limited domain. "Have this desk and a bunch of people, figure out how to run a worldwide wiki" would be a typical senior manager/director assignment (a.k.a. middle management). If we set aside an argument about IT salaries fairness, I think people at Wikimedia deserve some thanks for taking a salary cut to undeniably make a difference on the world.
zhdc1 5y ago
I was expecting to see semi-outrageous, border line unjustifiable executive salaries after reading this comment and clicking on the direct link below. I guess there's a chance that executive compensation went up significantly after 2018, but nothing I saw looks out of place for an organization as large as Wikipedia. ~300k for a San Fransisco-based CEO and an average salary of ~120k for all employees employees seems fairly reasonable to me.
- sorenjan 5y ago
  What exactly is that CEO doing for that money? What important strategic decisions are there to make at Wikipedia? Why do they have to be San Francisco based? The annual real median personal income in the US in 2019 was $35,977[0], how can anyone think that $120k isn't a lot? Why should people around the world donate their hard earned money so that some employees in America can have Silicon Valley salaries? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
  - wizardofmysore 5y ago
    They probably need to pay a good salary to be able to hire folks who would otherwise join a FAANG.
  - hugi 5y ago
    I think it's absolutely great that Wikipedia is able to pay competitive salaries in a good location. It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. I consider my donations well spent.
    - sorenjan 5y ago
      The average software developer salary in Germany is €50 000 per year, just to take one western country as an example. I doubt Wikipedia would be much worse with European developers. American IT salaries are not the norm, and they're a bit insane. When your budget consists of donations, I think it's disrespectful to spend it on frivolous things like San Francisco salaries. The average programmer salary in Sweden is $50 000. Why should I donate to people who earn more than twice my salary?
jimmont 5y ago
Interesting to see the cultural expectations across business types. Most of the successful management are so grossly overcompensated they cannot humanly imagine the magnitude yet this criticism of a different entity type captures what is an arguably reasonable critical perspective toward compensation. The social contract has become distinctly warped in the States.
baby 5y ago
> The sky high executive compensation After looking, I realized that I made more than them at my previous job just being an engineer.
xtat 5y ago
I just took a look and laughed-- you think $200-300k for an exec is _high_ ???
jiofih 5y ago
Everyone is focusing on salaries (my mistake to list it first), but really that’s a minor expense and I have no qualms with people being paid market rates in a non-profit. 90%+ of the cash goes to fund the other foundations’ programmes, that’s the core of the issue.

by jiofih 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago

Wikipedia is not a dot-com. And their executive compensation is hardly "sky-high"; it amounts to a FAANG middle manager's salary, for a positive impact on the world that's easily as high as that of any FAANG.

bomdo 5y ago
For others interested in this, Wikimedia salaries are all public [0]. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  None of those salaries are high compared to running a private company in a big American city.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  As someone who worked in a sandwich shop to survive while going to college($7.5/hr, 30 hrs/week), I can't imagine the universe some people live in where an income of $375,000 doesn't seem sky high. It's like there is a section of people who live in a different world. I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more. Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over 5x median income. Those who say it's not a lot are disconnected from the way that most people in the country and the world live.
  - nlitened 5y ago
    On the same HN front page there has _just_ been a "senior developer drunk post", where a guy was complaining that full stack developers are being paid peanuts, and they deserve a compensation of at least 500k USD—and the comments were cheering "amen to that". I don't understand anything about US IT salaries anymore.
    - MonkeyClub 5y ago
      Oh, but US IT salaries are very easy to understand! They're too high, though not high enough. We've become the new priesthood. People who complain that sacrificing one calf to us each year would do well to be reminded that we're not demanding one child per year.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        https://www.amazon.com/Priests-Programmers-Technologies-Engineered-Landscape/dp/0691130663/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=programmers+and+priests&qid=1622477305&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Priests-Programmers-Technologies-Engi...
        MonkeyClub 5y ago
        Spot on!
    - jiofih 5y ago
      That’s a joke. $200k is a high developer salary if you ignore the TC amounts thrown around which are due to stocks popping in the past 3 years.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Probably not the same people writing comments, but also I think everyone has a bias towards being told people with their job should be paid more :-)
    - pirate787 5y ago
- potamic 5y ago
  Chief of Community Engagement Chief Community Officer Chief Talent and Culture Officer Chargée d'affaires Chief Global Development Officer Chief Creative Officer Chief Communications Officer Chief Revenue Officer VP of Strategic Partnerships 55 million USD in annual salary expenses seems a bit high, even more so for a non-profit. I have seen startup unicorns spend less on salaries. I think there really needs to be some scrutiny into how funding is being spent. Looking at the list of execs there I really have to question what role they play and how their compensation is justified. It's not just their individual salary either. At their level they have entire organizational hierarchies working under them and the collective salaries can add up. What precisely are they contributing to the movement? I can't imagine the kind of things Wikipedia needs to do that needs such roles. These guys should be focusing on product and tech primarily. They have a solid product which hasn't changed in years and a strong brand. They have a singularly unique and special thing in this world and need to protect it as sacred. They need to focus on maintaining and scaling this system for eternity instead of experimenting and branching offshoots into community engagement, strategic partnerships, ambassadoring and all that crap.
  - chasil 5y ago
    In my youth, my parents spent quite a bit of money on a Funk & Wagnal's encyclopedia set. I do not regret my $20 donation, as I've received far more in return. However, this seems like excessive marketing for an organization that does not produce a physical product (unlike Funk & Wagnal's). I have seen less online criticism of WikiPedia accuracy of late; perhaps this is the result of the marketing dollars. If true, it is good, but it could likely be done with marketing efforts a fraction of the size.
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    It’s a community-edited encyclopedia with thousands of contributors and billions of users, I feel like community engagement is very central to that. Global development also seems central to scaling their core product. Communications is likewise no surprise for an organization of their scale and global importance. Obviously there’s a debate to be had about what and how much Wikipedia should engage in other ventures but even for their core work a lot of these roles seem pretty reasonable...
- ksec 5y ago
  Since they dont have any Sub Coordinate, it seems those C title are basically doing everything themselves. Edit: I think that Salaries are for Top Executive only. There are 450 [1] in Wikimedia. In the case 55M isn't that much. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Anything above 100K is sky-high, and you need to have drunk a lot of the SF kool-aid to think anything else. That the cost of living in SF is so high that a wage like that doesn't cover basic living costs is not because the wages aren't high enough.
- apercu 5y ago
  Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot of money.
  - bluescrn 5y ago
    It's still sky-high to most of the world outside the US
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      It seems that the wealthiest countries also have higher cost of living (for the same level of life). I guess it kinda makes sense in a way.
    - reader_mode 5y ago
      Not true at all, most Western Europe 100k$ (80k EUR) is barely above average, you'd still be firmly middle class even on two such incomes, sky high would be at least twice that much.
      - bluescrn 5y ago
        Median income in the UK is just over £30k (about 35k EUR)
        5y ago
ekianjo 5y ago
Who decides of the compensation?
- jmkb 5y ago
  The last person to edit the page, of course! ;)
h_anna_h 5y ago
Maybe a foundation that begs for donations from everyone in the world (even these who make $3/h) and pretends that they are going to go bankrupt without your donation should not be giving its management FAANG wages.
jiofih 5y ago
Wikipedia is a non-profit foundation. $374k is a pretty damn good salary for a foundation.
- mratsim 5y ago
  If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits. A sense of purpose alone won't let you lodge in cities with high cost of living. If anything, I dare say running a non-profit usually requires a lot more skills, especially people skills and passion than a tech job. I'm not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there is this sense of entitlement when you talk to people that because you work at a non-profit you should work for free. If I give my valuable time to contribute to the world at large, I expect to be able to have decent living conditions.
  - plutonorm 5y ago
    What do they have to do? Their only job is to keep the servers running. Everything else is a task they invented for themselves to earn more money.
    - malka 5y ago
      beg to us every year.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits. Same line used in defense of corporate board hiring practices, and as in that case, stated without evidence to support the claim.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "If you want to attract the best talents you also need sufficient benefits." Oh come on! What talent do they need that a million much lower paid people don't have?
  - jiofih 5y ago
haliskerbas 5y ago
The list linked by a sibling seems to top out at mid 300s, many FAANG ~2 YoE SWE make around that much.
fridek 5y ago
FWIW Wikimedia salaries linked by bomdo in reply are all topped by entry level from https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon,Google&track=Software%20Engineering%20Manager https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon,Google&track... At entry level you typically manage a two-pizzas sized team in one fairly limited domain. "Have this desk and a bunch of people, figure out how to run a worldwide wiki" would be a typical senior manager/director assignment (a.k.a. middle management). If we set aside an argument about IT salaries fairness, I think people at Wikimedia deserve some thanks for taking a salary cut to undeniably make a difference on the world.

zhdc1 5y ago

I was expecting to see semi-outrageous, border line unjustifiable executive salaries after reading this comment and clicking on the direct link below. I guess there's a chance that executive compensation went up significantly after 2018, but nothing I saw looks out of place for an organization as large as Wikipedia. ~300k for a San Fransisco-based CEO and an average salary of ~120k for all employees employees seems fairly reasonable to me.

sorenjan 5y ago
What exactly is that CEO doing for that money? What important strategic decisions are there to make at Wikipedia? Why do they have to be San Francisco based? The annual real median personal income in the US in 2019 was $35,977[0], how can anyone think that $120k isn't a lot? Why should people around the world donate their hard earned money so that some employees in America can have Silicon Valley salaries? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
- wizardofmysore 5y ago
  They probably need to pay a good salary to be able to hire folks who would otherwise join a FAANG.
- hugi 5y ago
  I think it's absolutely great that Wikipedia is able to pay competitive salaries in a good location. It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. I consider my donations well spent.
  - sorenjan 5y ago
    The average software developer salary in Germany is €50 000 per year, just to take one western country as an example. I doubt Wikipedia would be much worse with European developers. American IT salaries are not the norm, and they're a bit insane. When your budget consists of donations, I think it's disrespectful to spend it on frivolous things like San Francisco salaries. The average programmer salary in Sweden is $50 000. Why should I donate to people who earn more than twice my salary?

jimmont 5y ago

Interesting to see the cultural expectations across business types. Most of the successful management are so grossly overcompensated they cannot humanly imagine the magnitude yet this criticism of a different entity type captures what is an arguably reasonable critical perspective toward compensation. The social contract has become distinctly warped in the States.

baby 5y ago

> The sky high executive compensation After looking, I realized that I made more than them at my previous job just being an engineer.

xtat 5y ago

I just took a look and laughed-- you think $200-300k for an exec is _high_ ???

jiofih 5y ago

Everyone is focusing on salaries (my mistake to list it first), but really that’s a minor expense and I have no qualms with people being paid market rates in a non-profit. 90%+ of the cash goes to fund the other foundations’ programmes, that’s the core of the issue.