this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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[–] grue@lemmy.world 212 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Translation: business-types are salty about Wikipedia not toeing the line on the fiction that executive pay "needs" to be obscene in order to "attract talent."

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 57 points 11 months ago

They don't like it when real life counters their narrative, and this shows that corporations can pay reasonable salaries to their executives.

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[–] penquin@lemm.ee 124 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Those are very reasonable salaries to me. What's insane and should never exist is those who make $200 million a year. Like who needs this much money? What are you gonna do with all of it? Does it even matter how much money you have after a certain amount? I think at a certain point it becomes some kind of disorder or a mental illness to pursue more and more money. Give me $100k a year and I'll be a happy, very happy camper.

Edit: to be more clear, I'm talking about where I live currently. $100k where I live would put me in a very comfortable spot financially. My bad, everyone.

[–] ares35@kbin.social 52 points 11 months ago (1 children)

yup. wikipedia's salaries aren't 'too low'--the others (mostly-publicly traded or dreaming-of-an-ipo) pay their top executives way too fucking much.

[–] stevehobbes@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

They are probably still a little low - but there’s a giant gap between $400k and $200M.

If you believe that a lot more lower level people should make $150-200k, their manager should probably make more, and their manager should probably make more, and their manager should probably make more, and the CEO should probably make more and all the sudden there isn’t a wide enough gap to pay those people more. Would you want to manage a bunch of people for $5k/yr more?

Money that isn’t paid to employees is paid to shareholders or squandered on stupid stuff.

Their CEOs should make more, and their regular employees should make more.

[–] Phlogiston@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Wait. Baked into your thoughts here is an idea that each middle manager up the chain deserves “more” and that isn’t substantiated.

Managing a bunch of people may/mayn’t be harder than doing a difficult job w/ customers or manual labor or whatever. In some cases it’s a relatively kooshy desk job compared to “being in the trenches”.

Yes, sometimes decisions at higher levels has more ramifications. This is why we want good talent in those roles. But it’s a cultural choice that we decide to pay them 100s of times more.

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[–] SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Honestly, today, with a family, house, car, etc... 100k isn't as much as it sounds.

[–] zaph@sh.itjust.works 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Dog I make less than 40k, it's exactly what it sounds like.

[–] xpinchx@lemmy.world 15 points 11 months ago

I don't make 100k, but me and my fiance make about 140k combined and that gets us a 1BR apartment in North Chicago and we share a car. We live better than when we each made about $40k but six figures isn't what it used to be.

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[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

$100k used to be a number to aspire to, growing up in the 90s and early 00s. But, nowadays (depending on location), $100k is not as much as you think. Especially if you're trying to support a family on it.

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[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

All that extra money seems to be a detriment. People seem to be less empathetic and just use that money to get more money.

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[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

$100k

Havs you done any math on this for where you live?

How about Dallas? Atlanta? Philly? Baltimore?

OK, let's pull the big ones: DC? Anecdote: was once offered a job inside the beltway for a little over $100k. Fuck no. $100k in DC is nothing.

How about San José? LA? San Fran? NY? Again, more places where $100k ain't much.

Single metrics don't tell us much.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

I agree with you 100% $100k in some states like NY or California don't mean shit, but where I live, I'd live a very comfortable life if I made $100k.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 77 points 11 months ago (7 children)

So they're making $150-300k per year, with more for severance. That is indeed relatively low compared to major tech companies.

The article's examples were Docusign (CEO made $85M) and Google (CEO made $225M).

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 44 points 11 months ago (2 children)

$150-300k makes sense. $225M does not. It's obscene and absurd.

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 21 points 11 months ago

the difference between $225M and 300k is $224.7M

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hell, even low 7-figures could make sense. Though even that's still high.

But Jesus Christ with these hundreds of millions, it's obscene.

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[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 72 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

In times like this, especially when the original twitter post gets ratio'd to shit, it's important to evaluate where they're getting their numbers. I see they post a link to Rumble. I've never heard of this before, what is it?

Rumble
Rumble is a video platform where you can watch live and on-demand content from various categories, such as news, politics, gaming, sports, viral, power slap and finance. You can also discover new creators, join communities, and support your favorite channels on Rumble.

Um... I don't know what Power Slap is but ok, it's a youtube clone.

All Videos
ALEX JONES EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW! Elon Brought Him Back... What's Next?!
Pentagon PANIC, Trump "Happening", Obama FEAR push, Cyber PUSH, Focus, Pray!
"HE'S BACK!!" Musk RESTORES Alex Jones On X…
NEWSMAX2 LIVE on Rumble

Oh fuck me it's a right wing nutjob site. This post is fucking dogshit, trashing Wikipedia because it helps counter their propaganda. Fuck that noise.

Happily other people noticed this fucking nonsense:

So I have no idea what the Lunduke Journal is, so I spent a couple minutes googling it to find its run by a Qanon guy and they themselves say their "tech satire" so... Maybe not someone you should trust with facts.

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[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 62 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If all other executives would earn as much as the guys from Wikipedia, the world would be a better place.

[–] kpw@kbin.social 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't care what their executives earn, but if those companies paid their taxes and stopped interfering with unionization efforts that would be nice.

[–] Ardiente@ttrpg.network 10 points 11 months ago

Por que no los dos ?

[–] eran_morad@lemmy.world 58 points 11 months ago (2 children)

These are eminently reasonable salaries. Compared to some of the parasites that I work with who get paid > $300K to do fuck all.

[–] DinosaurSr@programming.dev 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 23 points 11 months ago

Sure, but you actually have to work hard for your $60k. Don't want the $300k people to feel bad for firing you for not supporting their salary.

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[–] starcat@lemmy.world 57 points 11 months ago (3 children)

We'll look at that. I'm even MORE incentivized to donate, now

[–] catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca 15 points 11 months ago

Yeah donating is a lot easier to understand when wages are (low) 6 figures instead of 8 or 9.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I've been meaning to for years! I will as soon as I'm able to.

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 33 points 11 months ago (2 children)

US salaries are just completely bonkers. 500k is "mid-level facebook"? What the actual fuck? Europeans are getting completely shafted. They are the cheap, qualified, tech labor of the US.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 22 points 11 months ago

One reason tech companies are able to give absurd salaries is to suppress competition. If they can price everyone else out from good engineers, they can keep competition low.

[–] nexusband@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Well, we don't have these kind of tech...uh..."foundations" in Europe. But execs in other companies are getting 500k...

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[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 32 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Mozilla's CEO is paid $7m for running the "charity".

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[–] LWD@lemm.ee 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
[–] BallsInTheShredder@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

and are now injecting its extension directly into the browser! Firefox?

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Wikipedia's pages are created and edited by a community of volunteers, while the Wikimedia Foundation manages the website's technical backend.

Mind you, it's about doubled since, but they don't publish breakdownsThey have enough cash to operate wikipedia for more than 100 years according to the public IRS filings.

On the lower end, vice presidents Carol Dunn and Margaret Novotny were paid $241,438 and $242,379 respectively, the filing shows.

wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet, contains terabytes of information, doesnt host ads, and is entirely free to browse.

The CEO of Docusign, a company that JUST signs documents for you, made $85,940,000 this year," wrote another person, whose post garnered over 22,000 likes.

The encyclopedia is also one of the most important sources of training data for AI tools like ChatGPT, Nicholas Vincent, a professor at Simon Fraser University, told The New York Times.


The original article contains 606 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 34 points 11 months ago (9 children)

The CEO of Docusign, a company that JUST signs documents for you, made $85,940,000 this year," wrote another person, whose post garnered over 22,000 likes.

That just shows how grossly overpaid other executives are. The problem isn't that Wikipedia execs aren't paid enough, it's that other executives are paid way too much.

[–] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I stand by my opinion that CEO pay should be pegged to the "lowest" employee on the totem pole, everyone should ride the wave and spread out the earnings. Its just gross how it currently is.

[–] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Look up mondragon Spain. Its a town in Spain whose economy was struggling after WWII. They turned it around by adopting a cooperative business model. This means all employees are owners.

All employees get to vote how the company operates. Executives work for share holders right? With cooperatives, the share holders are employees creating a business Ouroboros where the boss and their boss have an interest in keeping employees Happy. Employees are invested in keeping the company profitable.

They have padded rules like CEO pay is tied to the lowest salary in the company. It can never be more than X amount of the lowest salary. If they want it to raise they have to increase all salaries in the company first.

They don't get filthy stinking rich. But what they have shown is that the people living there score happier than most. They also show that they are economically more resilient. For close to a 100 years they have withstood recessions and economic down turns.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative

[–] cryptosporidium140@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

That's a great idea. No more than x times lowest salary. We'd all get insane raises off that concept alone

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[–] aniki@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the reminder! Just donated!

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 9 points 11 months ago

The CEO made $780k with $600k of that being severance. She left Wikipedia a lot bigger and influential than when she started. Sure that is still a lot but there are much bigger fish to fry.

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