If it were, I don't know, three months severance, that would still be very generous, and I don't think most people would be very upset. We've all seen a ton of banners vaguely implying that Wikimedia is strapped for cash and needs your help, but they have enough to spend an extra six hundred grand for someone quitting?
I'm not saying this to diminish what the Wikipedia does, nor to suggest the pay was not earned. These people almost certainly could have earned more elsewhere, yet decided to align themselves with an organization that serves the greater good. What I am saying is it is (or should be) easy to see where these sentiments come from.
90% of households actually. Most people aren't USAians.
Nor I. But there's being treated well and then there's being showered with cash, which is how I'd read getting a severance package in excess of 1.5 your base comp for a full year when walking away to take another job.
Generally speaking, if I leave my current job for another job I don't expect any severance at all. If I was laid off I'd feel pretty good about getting six months of severance. There's no reality where I expect 18 months severance walking away to take another gig.
it might be completely misplaced though.
but more transparency might help in this case too. make the job have some standard salary, make the contract public, and allow people to submit their resumes and let the board pick the best candidate. again, this might be super naive (it is!), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work.
of course if it's a requirement to have the CEO live in the Bay Area, continue growing the WMF (and in general do a lot more than keeping Wikipedia working well), then it's not surprising that the candidate pool is drastically smaller, and the money involved is a lot more.
(of course, again, maybe it's worth talking about what the public wants Wikipedia and the WMF to be, but ... maybe it's up to those who donate?)
I could be wrong; you could have a religious view that suggests that Satan works his malfeasance through corporate influence.
We’re seeing human nature at play in the context of organizational dynamics. That’s hardly evil.
However, Wikipedia is a non-profit, and their messaging in their donation drives always sort of implied that they really needed these donations. Since Wikipedia is a non-profit, I do have higher aspirations of how they're going to allocate their funds: chiefly in making the highest quality freely-available knowledge resource even better.
If they had given these people a three month paid severance, I would not criticize them at all. That's very generous and there is value in making sure employees are treated well. 1.5x your annual salary though? I'm sorry, but there's "generous" and then there's "shady".
It highlights that it's not the standard. I don't feel particular joy that a person who is already treated well continues to be treated well. I feel joy when a person who isn't already treated well is treated well. Joy is not my default state; I don't feel it about status quo human situations.