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The salaries of Wikimedia executives are sparking an online debate about tech sector wages
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Technology
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In times like this, especially when the original twitter post gets ratio'd to shit, it's important to evaluate where they're getting their numbers. I see they post a link to Rumble. I've never heard of this before, what is it?
Rumble
Rumble is a video platform where you can watch live and on-demand content from various categories, such as news, politics, gaming, sports, viral, power slap and finance. You can also discover new creators, join communities, and support your favorite channels on Rumble.
Um... I don't know what Power Slap is but ok, it's a youtube clone.
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Oh fuck me it's a right wing nutjob site. This post is fucking dogshit, trashing Wikipedia because it helps counter their propaganda. Fuck that noise.
Happily other people noticed this fucking nonsense:
He says elsewhere that it’s a “liberal cesspool” so you know where is problem really is.
Also the CEO makes $400k if anyone just wanted that information. I had to listen to 60% of that dudes video to get to that point.
This doesn't seem insane to me. It's high for the average joe, but it's not competitive at all with other big tech CEO total comp.
Everyone is pointing out the comparison of Wikipedia's salaries to other tech companies, but they're missing the point that the person they're arguing with is NOT coming from a good faith position. They are hoping to feed on your distrust of the rich and powerful, in an attempt to convince you to work against your interests and the common good.
They hope their calls of "Wikipedia owners make too much money!" leads to "We should dismantle Wikipedia by boycotting donations!" and then to "We should sell Wikipedia to the last surviving Koch brother!"
Yeah he's disingenuous as hell, but also I don't see a ton of his Qanon-leaning audience as big donators to Wikipedia anyway.
They're the kind of people that back weird shit like Conservapedia.
It's not his audience I'm worried about (not in this context anyway). I'm worried about the people who aren't aware of who his audience is.
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This lunduke recently posted the same shit against Mozilla, and sadly a lot of ppl here in lemmy are buying their crap and started bashing Mozilla for everything, at least in the posts I saw recently. I think ppl still believe that free software should be made from free labor.
The dude does not even seem to know what a nonprofit is.
Their calculation of Wikipedia being able to run for 100 years is if you removed everyone's salary. Not sure you would get many people working 40+ hours a week for free voluntarily.
So they're making $150-300k per year, with more for severance. That is indeed relatively low compared to major tech companies.
The article's examples were Docusign (CEO made $85M) and Google (CEO made $225M).
$150-300k makes sense. $225M does not. It's obscene and absurd.
the difference between $225M and 300k is $224.7M
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If all other executives would earn as much as the guys from Wikipedia, the world would be a better place.
I don't care what their executives earn, but if those companies paid their taxes and stopped interfering with unionization efforts that would be nice.
Por que no los dos ?
These are eminently reasonable salaries. Compared to some of the parasites that I work with who get paid > $300K to do fuck all.
So eh, you guys hiring?
Sure, but you actually have to work hard for your $60k. Don't want the $300k people to feel bad for firing you for not supporting their salary.
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We'll look at that. I'm even MORE incentivized to donate, now
I've been meaning to for years! I will as soon as I'm able to.
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Mozilla's CEO is paid $7m for running the "charity".
So? If that’s what she’s worth then you either hire her, or put up with second best. You may think CEOs are paid too much overall - I’m not disagreeing, but let’s not pretend people who work for charities should all take charity salaries. If you want to build a world class product, hire world class people - they’re not cheap.
I cannot fathom the indignation.
If the first one on the list was so expensive and so counterproductive, I can't imagine the rest...
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US salaries are just completely bonkers. 500k is "mid-level facebook"? What the actual fuck? Europeans are getting completely shafted. They are the cheap, qualified, tech labor of the US.
One reason tech companies are able to give absurd salaries is to suppress competition. If they can price everyone else out from good engineers, they can keep competition low.
Well, we don't have these kind of tech...uh..."foundations" in Europe. But execs in other companies are getting 500k...
Last I checked GAFAM exist in Europe but don't pay close to what they pay their US counterparts. European companies also have CEOs that earn millions but still pay their software devs way below 100k€/year.
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Thanks for the reminder! Just donated!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Wikipedia's pages are created and edited by a community of volunteers, while the Wikimedia Foundation manages the website's technical backend.
Mind you, it's about doubled since, but they don't publish breakdownsThey have enough cash to operate wikipedia for more than 100 years according to the public IRS filings.
On the lower end, vice presidents Carol Dunn and Margaret Novotny were paid $241,438 and $242,379 respectively, the filing shows.
wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet, contains terabytes of information, doesnt host ads, and is entirely free to browse.
The CEO of Docusign, a company that JUST signs documents for you, made $85,940,000 this year," wrote another person, whose post garnered over 22,000 likes.
The encyclopedia is also one of the most important sources of training data for AI tools like ChatGPT, Nicholas Vincent, a professor at Simon Fraser University, told The New York Times.
The original article contains 606 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The CEO of Docusign, a company that JUST signs documents for you, made $85,940,000 this year," wrote another person, whose post garnered over 22,000 likes.
That just shows how grossly overpaid other executives are. The problem isn't that Wikipedia execs aren't paid enough, it's that other executives are paid way too much.
I stand by my opinion that CEO pay should be pegged to the "lowest" employee on the totem pole, everyone should ride the wave and spread out the earnings. Its just gross how it currently is.
Look up mondragon Spain. Its a town in Spain whose economy was struggling after WWII. They turned it around by adopting a cooperative business model. This means all employees are owners.
All employees get to vote how the company operates. Executives work for share holders right? With cooperatives, the share holders are employees creating a business Ouroboros where the boss and their boss have an interest in keeping employees Happy. Employees are invested in keeping the company profitable.
They have padded rules like CEO pay is tied to the lowest salary in the company. It can never be more than X amount of the lowest salary. If they want it to raise they have to increase all salaries in the company first.
They don't get filthy stinking rich. But what they have shown is that the people living there score happier than most. They also show that they are economically more resilient. For close to a 100 years they have withstood recessions and economic down turns.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative
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The CEO made $780k with $600k of that being severance. She left Wikipedia a lot bigger and influential than when she started. Sure that is still a lot but there are much bigger fish to fry.
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