zlacker

> Top tier managers earn between $300,000 and $400,000 a year, and dozens are employed exclusively on fund-raising.

Can someone corroborate this claim? Cause any way you look at it, these salaries are unethical for a non-profit organisation.

>>bjourn+(OP)
What is an ethical salary for a non-profit organisation?

>>andrej+A
Apparently not for profits are obligated to pay under market to be ethical. Not something I'd heard of.

>>bjourn+(OP)
Those salaries are at or below market for high-level execs in Silicon Valley, especially considering they can't offer stock options. The people capable of managing the large software projects Wikimedia needs can make more at other tech companies.

>>bjourn+(OP)
These people can earn millions in executive positions of for-profit companies, why would they work for this supposed company of yours that pays "ethical" salaries?

>>tlb+E2
And why should Silicon Valley be any benchmark? Shouldn't they aim to some cheaper locale? Maybe Eastern Europe or Africa?

>>Ekaros+W2
Wikimedia is based in Silicon Valley (San Francisco, really), so they're competing with other employers in the region for talent.

The reason they shouldn't move their HQ somewhere cheap is the same reason Apple or Google shouldn't: there isn't the concentration of tech talent there.

>>tlb+N3
Do they need some special talent? Are they doing something that any solid group of engineers could not do?

>>vultou+H2
For the love of Wikipedia. Just like the hundreds of thousands of people who edit articles for no pay at all. It makes no sense believing that building an online encyclopaedia can be done for free but that managing it would require top dollar salaries.

The implication of your comment is that Wikipedia wouldn't function it if didn't generously compensate its executives because it would fail to attract competent staff. That view has been vindicated by, for example, European left-wing parties who cap their politicians' and administrators' salaries at the national median. No evidence suggests that left-wing parties therefore attract less qualified candidates than right-wing parties.

>>bjourn+(OP)
Easy to corroborate. Here, in the Form 990 tax return:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikim...