6 ms·

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 a

by 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?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kaba0 5y ago
  You are not donating to a person. Also, how much does a company CEO make in Sweden typically? Also, how is it relevant? Should every company move to Thailand because it is cheaper there?
  - sorenjan 5y ago
    That comparison was aimed at the average salary of ~120k for all employees. And maybe there's a middle ground between moving everyone to Thailand and having a non profit operating on donated money based in the most expensive area in the world?
    - kaba0 5y ago
      If an existing talent-pool is located there, why exactly should they move? Is a small inefficiency a failing of a non-profit? No company is a perfectly efficient profit-making machine (even though for-profits like to drop morals for profit), why are we feeling tricked by a non-profit wasting some negligible percentage of donations, especially that 100% efficiency is frankly impossible?
      - jiofih 5y ago
        What talent pool? Wikipedia is not running any cutting edge tech that requires CS or research talent. We are feeling tricked because it’s about 5% efficient right now.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        "A small inefficiency"?!? They're paying two to three times as much as they would have to pay anywhere else. That's not a "small" inefficiency, it's a pretty huge one.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    I don't know if it's accurate, but several sites have it at 1,908K krona, which is about 230K USD. Add in the sector - I would imagine that tech CEOs earn more, even in Sweden - and cost of living, and 300K USD doesn't really seem that over the top.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Seems like it’s Eurpoean incomes that are insanely low, why not get outraged about that? Your attitude creates a race to the bottom.
  - sorenjan 5y ago
    We get by just fine. Education, health care, vacation, parental leave, child care, a house and two cars. What else do you need? It's not about a race to the bottom, it's the vast differences in pay in the same society. If the median real salary is $35 000, why should a 25 year old web developer make 3X that? Some software engineers act like what they do is so much more important and difficult than what everyone else do, it's a bit disturbing. Of course, people in finance are even worse.
    - TomVDB 5y ago
      Your POV is one way of looking at it. Another one is that the companies that we work for make insane profits despite the sky high compensation. In isolation, without major legislation that depresses those profits too, it at least makes more sense to share the spoils with the shareholders and the employees than with the shareholders alone. I didn’t think it would happen at the time, but compensation saw a significant jump in the years after the compensation cartel (Apple, Google, Intuit etc.) was broken up.
      - iSnow 5y ago
        >Another one is that the companies that we work for make insane profits despite the sky high compensation. I guess that's at the core of the discussion. Wikipedia isn't seen by many as yet another tech company there to make insane profits.
    - munchhausen 5y ago
      As a SWE in the EU who is eyeing the software industry in the US with considerable envy, I would not say we get by just fine, at all. I don't see how you could afford all the things you mentioned on an average SWE salary in Europe. I have a very much above average SWE salary, and don't seem to be in any danger of getting a house and two cars anytime soon. I rent and don't have any cars, actually. Healthcare is free, for the bare essentials. I pay a crazy amount per year for (private) healthcare, because the standard, mandatory insurance covers just about nothing of what I actually need. Consider that every month, I pay into the government healthcare system a lump sum which is approximately equivalent to the median salary in my country. This doesn't buy me any benefits - I get the same minimal coverage as everyone else. Socialism at its finest. I'd be OK with it if the money actually went towards worthy causes. That is not the case, however - I am pretty sure most of the healthcare budget goes towards funding an antiquated, insanely oversized bureaucratic system. There's a whole social class of bureaucrats on the government payroll, who do pretty much nothing at all - you won't find them in the office after 3PM - who collect a meager but secure salary for their utter lack of effort and general uselessness. More and more, I am jaded by the illusion of a "fairer" society in the EU, which often ends up being just a case of "everyone is guaranteed to get the same low-quality treatment".
- hugi 5y ago
  If you pay average salary you get average work (or below). Good programmers in Germany do not work for €50.000. I'm based in Iceland and do contract work for German companies, and I assure you none of the people I work with are even close to €50.000. Perhaps because they're not average but good. Here in Iceland €50.000 might possibly get you a recent graduate. Myself, I wouldn't hire a programmer at that low pay though, graduate or not. A couple of my friends (good programmers, not "average") who have moved to Sweden and Denmark get similar salaries to what they got up here in Iceland. Higher salary gets you talented people.
  - corty 5y ago
    You can pay 100kEUR to a European and get a top 10% developer, or you can pay 100kEUR in the US and get a mediocre one.
    - mratsim 5y ago
      In Europe healthcare doesn't eat your salary like in the US.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        So why should Wikipedia supporters donate to wildly overpriced American healthcare?
- humanlion87 5y ago
  If the employees/CEO live in San Francisco I don't think paying them European salaries will be fair right? They wouldn't be able to afford rent with ~50k range salary. I think your argument makes sense if Wikipedia had been founded/has their HQ in Germany and was paying San Francisco salaries with their donations.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    What's to say an online encyclopaedia has to be run from San Francisco?
- louis___ 5y ago
  > Why should I donate to people who earn more than twice my salary? If one look for reasons not to donate, they can always be found by thousands. I find it beautiful that there is such a site as Wikipedia, that is free and open, and I am happy to contribute a tiny bit to it.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    If you go back to the start of this discussion, this is not about not being happy for paying to support Wikipedia. I’d be happy to do that too. It’s the fact that they are begging for donations while hoarding $300M in cash, and only 5% of your donation goes towards Wikipedia itself. The rest is on the hands of a foundation for them to use at will.
rightbyte 5y ago
> It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. The reason Wikipedia is amazing is the user generated content and community moderation/admin.
- 20after4 5y ago
  Operating a network at the scale of Wikimedia's is no small task. AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network (and paying the people who maintain them). It's also worth noting that many of Wikimedia's staff are remote. I think more of the engineers are based in Europe than in the US and salaries are scaled somewhat based on the cost of living in each employees city/region. Wikimedia salary is almost certainly lower than the big tech companies but still pretty good for a non-profit and the benefits provided are very good if not quite up to the google level of luxury. Disclosure: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation as a software engineer, however, I don't really know much about the financial details. Disclaimer: This is just my personal opinion / observation and not representative of my employer.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    > AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network It’s like you walked into this discussion without reading any of it. That is precisely the issue - less than 10% of the budget goes towards operating Wikipedia, and they’re still begging for money.
    - 20after4 5y ago
      I did read a substantial portion of the discussion before posting. I just don't believe that it's true that less than 10% goes to operating Wikipedia. Paying for legal staff who defend lawsuits and advocate for legal reforms that matter is part of "operating Wikipedia." Paying SREs to be on-call for incident response, plus routine upgrades of servers and racking new hardware is all part of "operating Wikipedia." Absolutely essential parts of operating Wikipedia certainly account for a lot more than 10% of the budget. Sure there is a lot of overhead and I'm sure some expenditures are non-essential. I just can't agree with your assessment. The overhead and excesses are quite certainly nowhere near 90%.

by hugi 5y ago

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?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaba0 5y ago
You are not donating to a person. Also, how much does a company CEO make in Sweden typically? Also, how is it relevant? Should every company move to Thailand because it is cheaper there?
- sorenjan 5y ago
  That comparison was aimed at the average salary of ~120k for all employees. And maybe there's a middle ground between moving everyone to Thailand and having a non profit operating on donated money based in the most expensive area in the world?
  - kaba0 5y ago
    If an existing talent-pool is located there, why exactly should they move? Is a small inefficiency a failing of a non-profit? No company is a perfectly efficient profit-making machine (even though for-profits like to drop morals for profit), why are we feeling tricked by a non-profit wasting some negligible percentage of donations, especially that 100% efficiency is frankly impossible?
    - jiofih 5y ago
      What talent pool? Wikipedia is not running any cutting edge tech that requires CS or research talent. We are feeling tricked because it’s about 5% efficient right now.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      "A small inefficiency"?!? They're paying two to three times as much as they would have to pay anywhere else. That's not a "small" inefficiency, it's a pretty huge one.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  I don't know if it's accurate, but several sites have it at 1,908K krona, which is about 230K USD. Add in the sector - I would imagine that tech CEOs earn more, even in Sweden - and cost of living, and 300K USD doesn't really seem that over the top.
FredPret 5y ago
Seems like it’s Eurpoean incomes that are insanely low, why not get outraged about that? Your attitude creates a race to the bottom.
- sorenjan 5y ago
  We get by just fine. Education, health care, vacation, parental leave, child care, a house and two cars. What else do you need? It's not about a race to the bottom, it's the vast differences in pay in the same society. If the median real salary is $35 000, why should a 25 year old web developer make 3X that? Some software engineers act like what they do is so much more important and difficult than what everyone else do, it's a bit disturbing. Of course, people in finance are even worse.
  - TomVDB 5y ago
    Your POV is one way of looking at it. Another one is that the companies that we work for make insane profits despite the sky high compensation. In isolation, without major legislation that depresses those profits too, it at least makes more sense to share the spoils with the shareholders and the employees than with the shareholders alone. I didn’t think it would happen at the time, but compensation saw a significant jump in the years after the compensation cartel (Apple, Google, Intuit etc.) was broken up.
    - iSnow 5y ago
      >Another one is that the companies that we work for make insane profits despite the sky high compensation. I guess that's at the core of the discussion. Wikipedia isn't seen by many as yet another tech company there to make insane profits.
  - munchhausen 5y ago
    As a SWE in the EU who is eyeing the software industry in the US with considerable envy, I would not say we get by just fine, at all. I don't see how you could afford all the things you mentioned on an average SWE salary in Europe. I have a very much above average SWE salary, and don't seem to be in any danger of getting a house and two cars anytime soon. I rent and don't have any cars, actually. Healthcare is free, for the bare essentials. I pay a crazy amount per year for (private) healthcare, because the standard, mandatory insurance covers just about nothing of what I actually need. Consider that every month, I pay into the government healthcare system a lump sum which is approximately equivalent to the median salary in my country. This doesn't buy me any benefits - I get the same minimal coverage as everyone else. Socialism at its finest. I'd be OK with it if the money actually went towards worthy causes. That is not the case, however - I am pretty sure most of the healthcare budget goes towards funding an antiquated, insanely oversized bureaucratic system. There's a whole social class of bureaucrats on the government payroll, who do pretty much nothing at all - you won't find them in the office after 3PM - who collect a meager but secure salary for their utter lack of effort and general uselessness. More and more, I am jaded by the illusion of a "fairer" society in the EU, which often ends up being just a case of "everyone is guaranteed to get the same low-quality treatment".
hugi 5y ago
If you pay average salary you get average work (or below). Good programmers in Germany do not work for €50.000. I'm based in Iceland and do contract work for German companies, and I assure you none of the people I work with are even close to €50.000. Perhaps because they're not average but good. Here in Iceland €50.000 might possibly get you a recent graduate. Myself, I wouldn't hire a programmer at that low pay though, graduate or not. A couple of my friends (good programmers, not "average") who have moved to Sweden and Denmark get similar salaries to what they got up here in Iceland. Higher salary gets you talented people.
- corty 5y ago
  You can pay 100kEUR to a European and get a top 10% developer, or you can pay 100kEUR in the US and get a mediocre one.
  - mratsim 5y ago
    In Europe healthcare doesn't eat your salary like in the US.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      So why should Wikipedia supporters donate to wildly overpriced American healthcare?
humanlion87 5y ago
If the employees/CEO live in San Francisco I don't think paying them European salaries will be fair right? They wouldn't be able to afford rent with ~50k range salary. I think your argument makes sense if Wikipedia had been founded/has their HQ in Germany and was paying San Francisco salaries with their donations.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  What's to say an online encyclopaedia has to be run from San Francisco?
louis___ 5y ago
> Why should I donate to people who earn more than twice my salary? If one look for reasons not to donate, they can always be found by thousands. I find it beautiful that there is such a site as Wikipedia, that is free and open, and I am happy to contribute a tiny bit to it.
- jiofih 5y ago
  If you go back to the start of this discussion, this is not about not being happy for paying to support Wikipedia. I’d be happy to do that too. It’s the fact that they are begging for donations while hoarding $300M in cash, and only 5% of your donation goes towards Wikipedia itself. The rest is on the hands of a foundation for them to use at will.

rightbyte 5y ago

> It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. The reason Wikipedia is amazing is the user generated content and community moderation/admin.

20after4 5y ago
Operating a network at the scale of Wikimedia's is no small task. AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network (and paying the people who maintain them). It's also worth noting that many of Wikimedia's staff are remote. I think more of the engineers are based in Europe than in the US and salaries are scaled somewhat based on the cost of living in each employees city/region. Wikimedia salary is almost certainly lower than the big tech companies but still pretty good for a non-profit and the benefits provided are very good if not quite up to the google level of luxury. Disclosure: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation as a software engineer, however, I don't really know much about the financial details. Disclaimer: This is just my personal opinion / observation and not representative of my employer.
- jiofih 5y ago
  > AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network It’s like you walked into this discussion without reading any of it. That is precisely the issue - less than 10% of the budget goes towards operating Wikipedia, and they’re still begging for money.
  - 20after4 5y ago
    I did read a substantial portion of the discussion before posting. I just don't believe that it's true that less than 10% goes to operating Wikipedia. Paying for legal staff who defend lawsuits and advocate for legal reforms that matter is part of "operating Wikipedia." Paying SREs to be on-call for incident response, plus routine upgrades of servers and racking new hardware is all part of "operating Wikipedia." Absolutely essential parts of operating Wikipedia certainly account for a lot more than 10% of the budget. Sure there is a lot of overhead and I'm sure some expenditures are non-essential. I just can't agree with your assessment. The overhead and excesses are quite certainly nowhere near 90%.