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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

To take a global perspective: Would you be happy to donate to charity that uses the money to pay executives 10x-100x your salary?

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I would be happy. I'm not an executive so I don't get executive pay. The executive salaries at Wikimedia seem low compared to what you can earn at a similarly sized business.

The thing is, what exactly does something like Wikipedia need executives for? What strategic shifts does it need to adapt to? What new product lines does it need to move the entire org around to create? What hard decisions does it need to make to shut stuff down?

It's not really a business.

You're giving a business definition of a few responsibilities for an executive and then saying it's a poor fit. Now try giving an NGO definition of an executive to see if it's a better fit and if they have any significant responsibilities.

Non-profits shut down all the time. If you're concerned about a lasting impact you'll pay for a talented executive team.

Under what circumstances would Wikipedia shit down, if it still has money for operational expenses?

The biggest set of responsibilities charites I didn't list is sales (aka donations). But Wikipedia doesn't do more good work (as donors think of it) the more money they get. It doesn't scale up much that way.

Mismanagement could help those funds disappear pretty quickly. It's rare that any kind of organization or business needs no governance.

Only "mismanagement" used as a euphemism for self-dealing or embezzlement, which is what I think many people suspect is occurring now on some level. Wikipedia has a small, constrained remit and if no one ever edited it again, it would still be very useful for decades.

Not only that. Name a big business or big NGO that runs well and has zero leadership.

Valve?

Valve may have a flat or open structure but GabeN is their god. Find a better example.

It's this question about value for skills or resentment for income inequality? For the latter, wikimedia would have to move somewhere with lower labor rates yet is somehow to keep talent from leaving for better paying places.

It depends. If the charity is doing amazingly good things and the executives in question are making a big impact on being able to do those good things, then yes I'd be fine with that.

I would be happy to donate considering the value I get from their work. Given the market where they operate, the salary and severance is actually low in my opinion. I would like them to pay their people well.

Where are you getting 10-100x? None of the salaries in the linked article are even over $1M. As the upthread poster explains, these numbers are merely FAANG-competetive. None of these Wikemedia execs are making more than they would in a routine private sector position of the same seniority.

You’d struggle to find one that doesn’t.

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