The $200,000 average salary for each employee is plain wrong. If you look at 2019 Form: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/8/85/Wikimedia_Foundation_2019_Form_990.pdf In that form, there is a section (Section VII) for the highest paid employees and requires WMF to report any employee who was paid more than "$100,000 from the organization and any related organizations". And only 11 people in all of WMF were paid more than $200,000 in that FY and the highest paid employee took a little less than $400,000, and in total with the rest it was only 12 were paid more than $100,000 (at least according to the form).
There are lots of complicating factors, including the fact that most WMF "employees" live outside of the US and thus are hired through the Employer of Record (EoR) system. So they show up as contractors in the list of staff and I'm not sure where their expenses show up in Form 990. Staff compensation gets adjusted to where they live and usually (virtually all but not sure) it's less than salaries paid in the bay area due to the fact that simply living in SF (and bay area) is expensive. If you combine total expenses of WMF with personnel expenses (~80M) and divide that to 400 (~ number of staff in 2019), you might get $200,000 per person but that includes data center expenses, buying hardware expenses, network expenses, money paid for renting offices, electricity bills of the dcs and offices, travel expenses, basically anything you can imagine except grants. (In my volunteer capacity, It's weekend) On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 2:38 AM Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think there is any such source. In another thread, Andreas also > states that there are over 800 WMF and affiliate employees (which is > probably true); however, that would mean that *just salaries* would come to > more than the 2021-22 annual budget.[1] (i.e. - 800 employees x $200,000 > each = $160 million; 2021-22 budget is $150 million. That is taking the > smaller number of "over 800 employee" from the other post and "over > $200,000 per employee" from this one.) While I have no doubt that salaries > and benefits make up the majority of expenditures in both the WMF itself > and the WMF and affiliates together, I think these statements are > exaggerations. > > Risker/Anne > > > [1] > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022 > > On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 20:04, Alex Monk <kren...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Do you have a source for that number? >> >> On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 20:38, Andreas Kolbe <jayen...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> As for nobody at Wikimedia profiting off the free content created by >>> volunteers, that is relative. WMF salary costs currently average over >>> $200,000 per employee. In most parts of the world, that would be considered >>> wealthy. A minor issue in the grand scheme of things, certainly, but still >>> relevant to us here at least. >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines >> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/AW6WDMV66RGYVAGCKMNYHXVHV5KFNRLK/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/TDLU5RAG57LL74Z65D3DL24WFO6WV6YV/ > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org -- Amir (he/him)
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/MAJIC34YZL5TJNJKQQFI2GWYDJJDPQH5/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
