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An engineer costs $500k a year. Salary, benefits, office space, equipment, hr, legal, and other overhead. The engineer will only see a fraction of that, of cour
by yareal 2y ago
An engineer costs $500k a year. Salary, benefits, office space, equipment, hr, legal, and other overhead. The engineer will only see a fraction of that, of course.
If you told me it took a hundred engineers to run Wikipedia I'd say, that's not totally unreasonable. Features, design, api, scaling, moderation, there's a ton for engineers to be doing.
- sciurus 2y agoYour overall point still stands, but FWIW Wikimedia pays less than its peers. To compare two active listings Senior Security Engineer at Mozilla (https://boards.greenhouse.io/mozilla/jobs/5803609 https://boards.greenhouse.io/mozilla/jobs/5803609): $124,000 to $199,000 plus bonus Senior Security Engineer at Wikimedia (https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/5890112 https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/5890112): $105,000 to $164,000
- yareal 2y agoThe rule of thumb is that employees cost the company double what they pay the employee. So, still hundreds of thousands per employee.
- JimDabell 2y agoAn engineer doesn’t cost $500k/yr. An engineer who lives in one of the highest cost-of-living places on earth costs $500k/yr. There’s absolutely no reason Wikimedia needs to pay that much.
- riku_iki 2y ago> highest cost-of-living places on earth costs $500k/yr. There’s absolutely no reason Wikimedia needs to pay that much. those places also have highest talent pool.
- JimDabell 2y agoThere’s more talented developers outside of high CoL places than inside. The comparison is not with one other place, the comparison is with the entire world.
- smsm42 2y agoIt doesn't. Even with insurance, etc. I doubt they spend this much. They pay below market for most positions I've seen (though their benefits are on a good level) so even with taxes, overheads and all I don't see where 500k would come from.
- threecheese 2y agoHire only the lowest cost employees, I demand it! You’ve mildly annoyed me with that banner each of the thousands of times I’ve used your free world-library over these decades, and I’m done putting up with it!
- JimDabell 2y ago> Hire only the lowest cost employees, I demand it! Nobody said that. There’s a difference between “don’t hire the top 1% most expensive developers in the world” and “hire only the lowest cost employees”. Wikipedia can comfortably avoid the extremes on either end of the spectrum.