We need to find a way to fund critical FLOSS. No, not like that!
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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40,000$ per month is way more than anyone will ever need. For sure I will stop donating, from the top of my 1,400€ per month.
I think that's precisely what this is questioning : is this helping fund critical FOSS?
What if a fraction of that money instead went to Signal infrastructure? Wikimedia? FSF which initially made GNU PG? FSFE? NLNet which supports Delta Chat? Sovereign Tech Fund? etc rather than individuals?
I don't think anybody is criticizing that hard working people contributing to a good project are well paid. I believe the question is rather what's the cost to OTHER projects when there is 1 project, not an umbrella projects which funds others (again like NLNet or the Sovereign Tech Fund).
What model are we reproducing and what's the risk?
FWIW the question isn't new. It happens also with Mozilla with the compensation of its C-suite staff, not the "random" software engineer.
Sallaries should act as a motivator for better leadership, so these wages, at least in norwegian context, seems to be too high, too corrupting.
If we're going to continue doing capitalism, we need to celebrate when people who are responsible for quality products are paid comfortably but not so much that their pay disrupts other peoples' status.
700k very much qualifies in today's world.
Stop being crabs in a bucket.
Guy who wants to continue doing capitalism
Seriously so much this!!!
These people have a great product and they should be paid enough to keep them from seeking other sources of income. That's how we got Facebook. Plus having the numbers publicly available is a big plus.
You guys are out of your gd minds I'm not going to sit here and explain what a mode of production is to you, or that executives are not proletarians. Jesus H. Christ
If shit was spread equally, everyone would make >$500 grand a year.
You ought to be tormented by ghosts of Filipino tuna fishermen for such a remark. Firstoids are completely delusional.
I barely use social media at all besides lemmy and the level of smarmy belligerence you've used throughout this thread makes me wanna download signal out of spite.
Maybe take a day off mang.
I'm really trying hard to see the point that's being made. Is it just the "high" salaries, or is there some other implication? The OP seems to be insinuating that Signal is a honeypot or something. I am going to need a lot more proof than, "hey, these guys work at a non-profit and they aren't underpaid!" Given that most tech jobs offer stock options in addition to normal salary, it would make sense that base salary should be higher at a non-profit (where stock options don't exist). Their salary structure also seems much flatter than other non-profits that I saw within the propublica link.
What am I missing here?
I don’t know the intricacies of signal as a company or if they support any bad actors or whatnot, but I do hate to see flack for non-profit leaders and employees getting paid competitive salaries. Like if people are actually worth that much in the economy, why not try to stack the team so they’re incentivized to do well? Especially in the shit pot that is America.
I would be curious to see the spread of overhead between salaries and fundraising, outreach, etc to actually get their product out there. Because if those are balanced in favor toward actually running the business, marketing it well, and fundraising, I’d say these people more than deserve these salaries.
A CEO should be paid enough to live comfortably if you work at a non-profit, but if you need to be paid market rate then you're probably not passionate about the position. When your job is fulfilling a public good rather than delivering shareholder value, that and a decently generous salary should be reward enough.
That said, I think Signal is better than Mozilla on this front, because they don't have a long history of terrible decisions each of which coming with increased executive compensation.
EDIT: Also the CEO of Mozilla made 6-7 million per year (haven't checked the new CEO though). Way more than Meredith Whittaker's $750,000. So honestly Signal is an order of magnitude better on this front.
CEOs need to be constantly threatened with execution by a dictatorship of the proletariat