Wikipedia is not a dot-com. And their executive compensation is hardly "sky-high"; it amounts to a FAANG middle manager's salary, for a positive impact on the world that's easily as high as that of any FAANG.
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more.
Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over 5x median income. Those who say it's not a lot are disconnected from the way that most people in the country and the world live.
I don't understand anything about US IT salaries anymore.
They're too high, though not high enough.
We've become the new priesthood. People who complain that sacrificing one calf to us each year would do well to be reminded that we're not demanding one child per year.
In reality, the number of developers making $500K is relatively small. Even in California, the median developer compensation is a fraction of that. FAANG companies can have admission rates that are more selective than Ivy League universities, and they don’t even hire in most cities in the US.
This causes a lot of compensation confusion and anxiety for young people who grow up reading HN comments and snarky Reddit posts when their first job offers don’t come anywhere near the $300K to $500K range that they read about online. It also causes a lot of grief for developers who think they’re overworked and underpaid because it seems like everyone on HN casually acts like $500K is the going rate for being able to spin up a React project.
I've heard this comparison before, but I'm not sure how meaningful it is because the Ivies charge an application fee. There isn't much cost to applying to FAANG and hoping for the best.
Are they really that talented, or are they just good at whiteboarding algorithm questions that they almost never actually use on the job?
These companies that spend $300K or more on their developers aren’t keen on keeping under-performers around, either.
The idea that you can bluff your way into a FAANG job by memorizing enough LeetCode problems yet by somehow remaining an under qualified programmer is a myth.
I am from Brazil, mentioned in the article. I see wages of 60k USD year as a dream job (by the way, if you need a C or Lua dev, and don't want me to relocate to an expensive place to live, I am for hire, for that price tag, I really need it. I currently make around 11k USD year)
I do think that the sky high salaries are ridiculous compared to societal contributions of, say, a nurse or a teacher. But I also like very much that I get them for doing a job that I still do with a small on my face.
Personally I recently quit my high paying industry job and moved to an engineering heavy PhD position (HPC), because I enjoy solving complex problems.
I got into this line of work because it's fun. It's still fun. If I didn't get paid I'd do it for free, although "it" would be lime green hobby projects rather than the productive and tasteful work people employ me to do.
Huh, this is interesting, maybe in some areas of America? But broadly speaking... Outside of America, no. Take a look at even senior dev salaries in Canada.
They're equivalent to master's of social work positions, oftentimes less. Having had education and work experience in both social work and computer science, I can tell you that if you want a stable, low-stress job that requires an "easy" degree, that MSW degree will serve you far better.
Not to mention that remote work is still rare. So that 90k senior AI research job, requiring a Phd at the Autodesk office in Toronto is... not great. Most computer scientists I know are happy with being middle class and just really enjoy the subject matter. Maybe this is rare in your area of the world?
Why do they deserve that much compensation exactly?
The people who to my mind deserve high compensation are people who are risking their lives to help people, such as firefighters (who are often sadly volunteers and don't get paid anything), front line nurses and doctors, teachers in inner city schools or third world countries, Peace Corps volunteers, etc.
People whose job it is to hobnob with other high-paid execs over expensive lunches and give orders should be at the bottom of the pay ladder, not at the top.
I live in Canada. I earn much less than USD $375K/yr. But can we agree that I am very connected with how people live in other parts of the world?
Good. Now let me tell you that were my employer to ask me to move my family to the US, ANYWHERE in the US, I would want way more than $375,000/yr to duplicate the lifestyle we have now.
That’s just how it works when you move from a place with a safety net to one where losing your job could mean certain death.
And in my family’s case, I am not exaggerating: My partner is a cancer survivor. What would we have done if we were living in the US? Hire lawyers to fight with insurance companies for her treatment? What if I was laid off and lost my benefits right when she was diagnosed?
SHUDDER.
Were I to live in the US, I would want to be stinking, immorally rich. It’s the only way to insure yourself against disaster.
She'd go on Medicaid. Anyway, quit watching so much TV. It's just propaganda.
But I don’t watch TV. I do things like read HN. Where I recall an essay on the front page a few years back where a wealthy tech founder cashed out and then tried to buy health insurance for their family.
Despite being wealthy, they reported that basically, it was impossible to get insurance that met their needs. They did not say “no problem, the whole family got medicaid.”
Now tell me: How many people in the US had medical bankruptcies last year? How about the year before? Or the year before that?
I’ll let you tell me, since you believe that I only watch propaganda on television, and you believe you have all the answers. What are these medical bankruptcies, if medicaid solves all problems?
Is all this propaganda spread by smug Canadians to boost immigration? I think not, but if you’re prepared to cite some numbers showing that nobody ever loses their home because of cancer or some other major health problem, I’ll gladly read what you share.
Even if they were paid ten times less (or a hundred times less, for execs making millions per year), there'd be lines of people a mile long willing to take their place, and probably do their job just as well if not even better.
Corporate boards and investors are deluding themselves that they need to pay astronomical rates to get people who can do these jobs.
It won't seem so sky-high once your universe also has $4k per month one-bedroom apartments and $2M single-family homes.
Of course, this only makes your point even stronger.
I am a software engineer who used to live in the Bay Area but now live in Europe. In my country, my family is living off of a salary of 30000 (Euros, or about 36k USD). (This is my wife's salary, I'm not currently working). Our income officially puts us below the poverty line, so we pay 0% in income taxes.
With this 30k, about 50% goes to housing, about 1/6 goes to special needs schooling for one of my two children (they both need it, but the younger one's school is currently free), and the remaining 1/3 is for food and bills and misc. expenses.
We own a small, fuel efficient car that my wife drives while I bike or take public transportation. Our entire apartment runs on an average of 250W (servers, laptops, cell phones, electric stove) because everything is energy efficient. (LED lighting, double-pane windows, good applicances) We pay 10 euros a month for gigabit internet, 200+ channels, and unlimited calling to 150+ countries.
We live comfortably in a large (100 m^2) four bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood (working class, but nice). We eat well, we can afford to go to restaurants occasionally, and even take the occasional vacation.
While we're not currently saving any money, because we have money saved up, we're not living hand to mouth, even though "technically" we are.
If we wanted to return to San Francisco, the budget would look something like this:
* 60k Schooling for both kids
* 60k Four bedroom apartment or split home
* 30k Food, car, bills
Chief Community Officer
Chief Talent and Culture Officer
Chargée d'affaires
Chief Global Development Officer
Chief Creative Officer
Chief Communications Officer
Chief Revenue Officer
VP of Strategic Partnerships
55 million USD in annual salary expenses seems a bit high, even more so for a non-profit. I have seen startup unicorns spend less on salaries. I think there really needs to be some scrutiny into how funding is being spent.
Looking at the list of execs there I really have to question what role they play and how their compensation is justified. It's not just their individual salary either. At their level they have entire organizational hierarchies working under them and the collective salaries can add up. What precisely are they contributing to the movement?
I can't imagine the kind of things Wikipedia needs to do that needs such roles. These guys should be focusing on product and tech primarily. They have a solid product which hasn't changed in years and a strong brand. They have a singularly unique and special thing in this world and need to protect it as sacred. They need to focus on maintaining and scaling this system for eternity instead of experimenting and branching offshoots into community engagement, strategic partnerships, ambassadoring and all that crap.
However, this seems like excessive marketing for an organization that does not produce a physical product (unlike Funk & Wagnal's).
I have seen less online criticism of WikiPedia accuracy of late; perhaps this is the result of the marketing dollars. If true, it is good, but it could likely be done with marketing efforts a fraction of the size.
Obviously there’s a debate to be had about what and how much Wikipedia should engage in other ventures but even for their core work a lot of these roles seem pretty reasonable...
The ones that made it through were specifically the ones that embraced and prepared for change, by running parallel long-shot projects and branched out from doing whatever they were doing before.
Sure, some of these positions sound a bit surprising. But, having checked just the last one, it existed only for a part of 2016. So, eh, what's your point again?
Edit: I think that Salaries are for Top Executive only. There are 450 [1] in Wikimedia. In the case 55M isn't that much.
A sense of purpose alone won't let you lodge in cities with high cost of living.
If anything, I dare say running a non-profit usually requires a lot more skills, especially people skills and passion than a tech job.
I'm not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there is this sense of entitlement when you talk to people that because you work at a non-profit you should work for free. If I give my valuable time to contribute to the world at large, I expect to be able to have decent living conditions.
Same line used in defense of corporate board hiring practices, and as in that case, stated without evidence to support the claim.
Oh come on! What talent do they need that a million much lower paid people don't have?
100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"?
$80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago.
Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot of money.
That is the figure for "programmers and software development professionals", anyway.
Sky high is at least top 1%. Maybe top 5% in high income areas.
In Eastern Europe you begin to approach this at 80k.
Upper middle class maybe. People in the upper class don't need to work.
But rent is getting crazy here, a 60 sqm apartment will cost you 1300+ utility.
For example here [1] you can see some reliable statistics for France, see page 2 (it's in French but the plots are easy to understand). The median salary (annual before taxes) when starting is 35k€, and roughly increases by 1800€/year. So it only reaches 40k€ after 3 years. It reaches 50k€ after 8 years only.
Also all engineers have Masters in continental Europe. You can't be an engineer without one. It's nothing special.
[1] https://www.iesf.fr/offres/doc_inline_src/752/IESF_Synthese_...
But Italy and Spain aren't really what I would consider Western Europe, they are the less developed parts and I admit I have no experience with France and know nobody who works there.
Yeah, well, you're American, right?
You really are living up to it in many ways.
If Wikipedia(1) is semi-accurate, no (ZERO) major European county surpasses this. Not even Switzerland which clocks in at 70k EUR. And that's average, the mean is even lower due to skew by those making top money.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
And slap 20-25% VAT on top.
That money is really not that much, a generalist MD would make that for eg.
To be considered sky high in my book you need to be actually rich - able to afford luxuries such as own a luxury home, driving a premium car, be able to rent a yacht for a vacation - you need to be making >150k for your income to be noteworthy, otherwise you're just doing well off - higher middle class.
Sorry but there's nothing sky high about earning 80k EUR per year and living in London, Zurich, Oslo, Amsterdam, Munich, etc. you barely stand out, especially if you socialise with other college educated workers, you're probably the norm or below it for career people.
[1]: https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/user_upload/HTML/2019/einko...
PS: Data is for Germany.
> Also from the diagram, 75% of the population are earning less than 10,400 EUR while 25% are earning more than 10,400 EUR.
If 25% of the city is making more money than you you are not rich by any definition.
I have friends living in Munich, friend is a SW engineer, makes 75k, his wife has her own business so I'm not sure how much she makes, they are very much middle class lifestyle and can't afford to live in the wealthy areas.
Sorry to burst your bubble but you're not rich if you make 80k/year, you're just (maybe upper) middle class, even in EU.
[1] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=982&loct....
Edit: Also it's completely unclear to me how this point relates to your initial gross misrepresentation of compensation in western Europe.
OP suggested that 100k$/year not being noteworthy is a uniquely SV/US thing - it is not. Any place worth living in Europe will take that much to live comfortably (note. 100k USD = 80k EUR)
/s
Upper class income only seem lackluster compared to the perverse 0.1% incomes and the housing bubble.
You know how many people live in Iowa?
How did you get these costs? You can get a French Chateau with that much money. https://www.prestigeproperty.co.uk/french-chateau-for-sale-2...
I paid $340k for this house 13 years ago. I thought that was far too expensive but I didn't have a choice.
Wikimedia is a global foundation, so they don't have to live in the US even.
They could have easily hired someone from a country with a much lower cost of living.
I'm also a Principal SWE and my salary is well below $200k, though there are years with bonuses, etc.. that I reach $200k
I would guess that they co-evolved in a vicious cycle of inflation. But I know very little of economics.
At entry level you typically manage a two-pizzas sized team in one fairly limited domain. "Have this desk and a bunch of people, figure out how to run a worldwide wiki" would be a typical senior manager/director assignment (a.k.a. middle management).
If we set aside an argument about IT salaries fairness, I think people at Wikimedia deserve some thanks for taking a salary cut to undeniably make a difference on the world.