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Ignoring for now the severance package, the salary seems pretty low for a CEO of such a large foundation. $400-500K is about the salary range of a senior-staff engineer at FAANG and their responsibility is way lower.

One of the issues with non-profits is that people expects the employees/management to be there for the cause and to be happy with lower salaries. This seems to incentives IMO one of the following: - only already rich people to apply - high turnover - people with less experience or options to apply

Having a generous severance package that for example requires you to work for at least x amount of years might solve some of those pitfalls?



It might be normal in the little bubble that is the Bay area. This just goes to show what a poor choice that is as a location to operate from.

500K would be about our staffing and office cost here in Berlin. We're a mere eight people.

And Wikimedia actually has an office here. One of their largest offices outside of SFO according to this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_offices. I've been there. Nice place.

Look, this is just the tip of the ice berg: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikim...

This spells it out. This is foundation is spending tens of million on salaries and sitting on a quarter billion in assets. That's some spectacularly inefficient spending no matter how you look at it. I would call it shameless. And then they do the yearly thing of holding out their hand for donations because boohoo all the money is gone. Again!

But at least they are transparent about enriching themselves.


A senior staff engineer at FAANG makes decisions on the implementation of features which have effects on 8+ digits of revenue. It's mostly downside risk: if you don't do it right, then the lack of availability costs a lot.


And you don’t think Wikipedia has that level of impact?




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