6 ms·

What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Have you donated money to Mozilla or Wikipedia?

Leparamour 5y ago
>What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? More expensive doesn't mean better, it most likely just means putting someone in charge whose primary metric is short-term profit.
tokai 5y ago
> What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? The rates have bubbled, and do not reflect the value CEO's provides for their organisations. > Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Yes. A dedicated person, at home - in a bathrobe, approving code merges would do.
- 57844743385 5y ago
  Right. So a company with 750 employees should be run at discount rates by someone sitting in a bathrobe in their kitchen .
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    And I'm sure that person will do an excellent job negotiating the next default search contract worth several hundred million dollars.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Considering that contract was originally negotiated when exec salaries were much lower... likely yes, s/he would do a better job. It's very plain that Baker and her friends have lost the ideological hunger and now are just in it for the money they can make before it all goes bust.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        What are you talking about? The contract is constantly renegotiated, and the only recent one that Baker was in charge for saw the same terms after the previous contract dropped over a hundred million dollars a year.
        toyg 5y ago
        The point is that the whole system was thought out and initiated before exec salaries spiralled. There is no visible correlation between exec compensation and this type of negotiation.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        The amount the execs negotiated is reflected in their salary, the last year we have the CEO salary was shortly after they negotiated a new deal with Yahoo worth over a hundred million dollars more per year seeing them get a raise. I doubt that Baker is getting anything near Beard's salary given she negotiated it right before the layoffs.
        toyg 5y ago
        > The amount the execs negotiated is reflected in their salary No it isn't - salary is salary, and these deals existed when the Mozilla CEO was not paid as much. By her own admission, at one point Baker just went "fuck it, other CEOs get paid multiples, why not me?", so now she brings home $3m per year, with the whole exec structure likely benefiting in similar fashion (because why only the CEO?). See: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html but it's on wikipedia too. That's $3m that could pay for a dozen engineers at Bay-Area salaries, or 30-60 in cheaper locations - maybe enough to match (or surpass) Google's continuous push for new specifications that forces everyone else to play catch-up all the time, as well as stacking the standard committees where Mozilla is systematically overpowered. > I doubt that Baker is getting anything near Beard's salary You're right, she's making 3x Beard's salary. Even with 7 years of inflation, that's a lot more. Mitchell Baker has given a lot to Mozilla, but she's now very clearly decided it's her time to cash in.
elaus 5y ago
What salary does the CEO of Wikipedia get and would increasing their salary to "market rates" improve Wikipedia or make it more viable?
- abbe98 5y ago
  In 2019 the salary for Wikimedia Foundation's CEO was $387,770. https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salar...
  - 57844743385 5y ago
    Sounds too low. They should pay more.
- twic 5y ago
  Wikimedia doesn't have a CEO, but the executive director is paid $387,770, the CFO is paid $289,356, and there are nine other people paid over $150,000: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie... Hey, maybe if they paid them more, they could start running ads too!
martius 5y ago
I would expect more transparency on the objectives of C-levels and how their compensation is impacted when they don't meet these objectives. I'm not saying they are doing a bad job, but I really can't say if they've been doing a good job either.
Levitz 5y ago
Many don't donate to either Mozilla or Wikimedia for the same reason. Both companies are known for their big products, Firefox and Wikipedia, and both suffer from a chronic insistence on funding projects their userbases don't support.
vadfa 5y ago
They had an extremely competent CEO who was more than happy to work for a price below market rates, but he was a conservative, so they sacked him. Now Mozilla has what it deserves.
- foobar33333 5y ago
  It wasn't "because he was a conservative". It was because he was funding a campaign to limit peoples rights and and everyone / every website was running a campaign to tell users to get off Firefox if they want to stop funding this. It would have destroyed Mozilla if they did nothing.
  - vadfa 5y ago
    No it wouldn't have. The outraged were a minority and have a short attention span. I'm sure Firefox would be doing better today with him at the helm. But we'll never know.
- maleldil 5y ago
  Being a Conservative is one thing, but he was/is (he hasn't publicly gone back on his stance AFAIK) homophobic. Eich had to go.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    Inflexible people are less likely to compromise. The article and thread is all about how Firefox continues to be compromised. One day people might start to see being inflexible and principled and not giving in might be a better characteristic than being easily compromised and selling out at every turn. Even when some principles are problematic. It's a cost benefit analysis ultimately and there are objectivly bad principles would could make this swing the other way of course. I'm thinking of RMS as the model for this mainly too. Many here said he should go, but the FSF actually got the most members when they did, because some saw RMSs inflexibility as a strength.
  - vadfa 5y ago
    Many people misunderstand the meaning of the word "conservative", which is proof of how much the overton window has moved. If you want to progress on social issues, you are not a conservative, but a progressive. Those two things are completely incompatible. If you support gay marriage, you cannot be a conservative. You want to "progress" on social issues, which makes you a progressive. He did not support gay marriage, which makes him a conservative and nothing else. There also is a big difference between not wanting gays to marry and being homophobic. I don't want people to be able to marry tables, and that does not make me a tablephobic. I'm not disgusted or afraid of tables, but I don't think they should be able to be part of the sacrament of marriage. >he hasn't publicly gone back on his stance AFAIK If, as a tech worker, you told me to publicly declarate my stance on a political issue, I would rightly tell you to sod off.

Leparamour 5y ago

>What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? More expensive doesn't mean better, it most likely just means putting someone in charge whose primary metric is short-term profit.

tokai 5y ago

> What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? The rates have bubbled, and do not reflect the value CEO's provides for their organisations. > Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Yes. A dedicated person, at home - in a bathrobe, approving code merges would do.

57844743385 5y ago
Right. So a company with 750 employees should be run at discount rates by someone sitting in a bathrobe in their kitchen .
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  And I'm sure that person will do an excellent job negotiating the next default search contract worth several hundred million dollars.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Considering that contract was originally negotiated when exec salaries were much lower... likely yes, s/he would do a better job. It's very plain that Baker and her friends have lost the ideological hunger and now are just in it for the money they can make before it all goes bust.
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      What are you talking about? The contract is constantly renegotiated, and the only recent one that Baker was in charge for saw the same terms after the previous contract dropped over a hundred million dollars a year.
      - toyg 5y ago
        The point is that the whole system was thought out and initiated before exec salaries spiralled. There is no visible correlation between exec compensation and this type of negotiation.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        The amount the execs negotiated is reflected in their salary, the last year we have the CEO salary was shortly after they negotiated a new deal with Yahoo worth over a hundred million dollars more per year seeing them get a raise. I doubt that Baker is getting anything near Beard's salary given she negotiated it right before the layoffs.
        toyg 5y ago
        > The amount the execs negotiated is reflected in their salary No it isn't - salary is salary, and these deals existed when the Mozilla CEO was not paid as much. By her own admission, at one point Baker just went "fuck it, other CEOs get paid multiples, why not me?", so now she brings home $3m per year, with the whole exec structure likely benefiting in similar fashion (because why only the CEO?). See: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html but it's on wikipedia too. That's $3m that could pay for a dozen engineers at Bay-Area salaries, or 30-60 in cheaper locations - maybe enough to match (or surpass) Google's continuous push for new specifications that forces everyone else to play catch-up all the time, as well as stacking the standard committees where Mozilla is systematically overpowered. > I doubt that Baker is getting anything near Beard's salary You're right, she's making 3x Beard's salary. Even with 7 years of inflation, that's a lot more. Mitchell Baker has given a lot to Mozilla, but she's now very clearly decided it's her time to cash in.

elaus 5y ago

What salary does the CEO of Wikipedia get and would increasing their salary to "market rates" improve Wikipedia or make it more viable?

abbe98 5y ago
In 2019 the salary for Wikimedia Foundation's CEO was $387,770. https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salar...
- 57844743385 5y ago
  Sounds too low. They should pay more.
twic 5y ago
Wikimedia doesn't have a CEO, but the executive director is paid $387,770, the CFO is paid $289,356, and there are nine other people paid over $150,000: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie... Hey, maybe if they paid them more, they could start running ads too!

martius 5y ago

I would expect more transparency on the objectives of C-levels and how their compensation is impacted when they don't meet these objectives. I'm not saying they are doing a bad job, but I really can't say if they've been doing a good job either.

Levitz 5y ago

Many don't donate to either Mozilla or Wikimedia for the same reason. Both companies are known for their big products, Firefox and Wikipedia, and both suffer from a chronic insistence on funding projects their userbases don't support.

vadfa 5y ago

They had an extremely competent CEO who was more than happy to work for a price below market rates, but he was a conservative, so they sacked him. Now Mozilla has what it deserves.

foobar33333 5y ago
It wasn't "because he was a conservative". It was because he was funding a campaign to limit peoples rights and and everyone / every website was running a campaign to tell users to get off Firefox if they want to stop funding this. It would have destroyed Mozilla if they did nothing.
- vadfa 5y ago
  No it wouldn't have. The outraged were a minority and have a short attention span. I'm sure Firefox would be doing better today with him at the helm. But we'll never know.
maleldil 5y ago
Being a Conservative is one thing, but he was/is (he hasn't publicly gone back on his stance AFAIK) homophobic. Eich had to go.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Inflexible people are less likely to compromise. The article and thread is all about how Firefox continues to be compromised. One day people might start to see being inflexible and principled and not giving in might be a better characteristic than being easily compromised and selling out at every turn. Even when some principles are problematic. It's a cost benefit analysis ultimately and there are objectivly bad principles would could make this swing the other way of course. I'm thinking of RMS as the model for this mainly too. Many here said he should go, but the FSF actually got the most members when they did, because some saw RMSs inflexibility as a strength.
- vadfa 5y ago
  Many people misunderstand the meaning of the word "conservative", which is proof of how much the overton window has moved. If you want to progress on social issues, you are not a conservative, but a progressive. Those two things are completely incompatible. If you support gay marriage, you cannot be a conservative. You want to "progress" on social issues, which makes you a progressive. He did not support gay marriage, which makes him a conservative and nothing else. There also is a big difference between not wanting gays to marry and being homophobic. I don't want people to be able to marry tables, and that does not make me a tablephobic. I'm not disgusted or afraid of tables, but I don't think they should be able to be part of the sacrament of marriage. >he hasn't publicly gone back on his stance AFAIK If, as a tech worker, you told me to publicly declarate my stance on a political issue, I would rightly tell you to sod off.