170k for running a company? Shit. I wouldn’t do that. You can make just as much being a halfway competent developer, and it’s way less stress.
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SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Not trying to be a dick but the Executive Director can take a fucking pay cut.
I found a reddit thread from 4 months ago where he said his salary was $170k/year. I’m not saying he is making obscene money, but if that’s nearly 15% of all operating costs he can shave that down to $80k-$100k and still live comfortably if he’s willing to accept a more austere standard of living.
I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be paid well, but he’s getting a damn sight better pay than moderators and community managers who seem to make up 30% of the budget for multiple people.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 4 hours ago
I guess you live in the USA? No one makes this amount of money
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
A Senior Developer in any major city makes that amount of money.
FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 59 minutes ago
Funnily enough, it shows the localised amount.
For me in France it shows 50k€ to 69k€, so $58k to $80k at current exchange rates
It just confirms that this is USA only haha
Patch@feddit.uk 42 minutes ago
Just looked on that link for the UK. The average is listed as £63k, which is $85k.
So you’re not exactly disproving the point that that type of high salary is a US thing.
kayky@thelemmy.club 5 hours ago
It must not be that stressful if you have $170k leftover to pay yourself.
Most people work more stressful jobs for considerably less. We should stop giving CEOs a pass.
This shouldn’t need to be said, but most people are useful idiots so here we are.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You’re missing the point. There are easier jobs in the same industry for the same pay.
We’re not comparing tech CEO to roofers. We’re comparing them to other people in tech.
kayky@thelemmy.club 5 hours ago
Yeah, it’s all grifts for morons by scumbags.
Some idiots were really trying to peddle the lie that infosec.exchange costs $5000/month to host while of course providing no verifiable evidence, just “trust them bro.” It’s sad watching suckers lap it up without a second thought.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Depends on what that title actually means. Viewing it as a pie chart skews it so you don’t realize that $170k in USD is pretty mediocre for a Director of Engineering role. If the project dies without this person, and that’s what they need in salary to make it worth it to keep them there, then that’s what they get paid.
It’s not like they’re even making an obscene amount of money ffs. That’s a middling engineering salary, and this person is running the whole show. You should see what other “director” jobs at much shittier companies get paid. I think twice this amount would be a weak guess. If this person was a prick, they’d be milking that goat and taking all the free money.
This is an open source project backed by a non-profit foundation, granted, but this person is taking a massive pay cut just by working this job. Think about how that might impact their life to make that choice while trying to have a family.
$170k salary still won’t you a fucking house in this country unless you live in the middle of nowhere, and this person is almost certainly in a major tech hub city, so that money means diddly when trying to pay the bills. It’s barely above the poverty line in Silicon Valley after taxes for reference.
Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Exactly. I’m nowhere close to the top of the tech ladder, but I make more than that and still have to rent and will be renting for several more years. To buy an average house in this city, it would be like 7k/month without a 20% down payment. And household debt needs to be 30% of your total income so I would need to make $250k to even get approved for a loan for an average house in the city.
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
That’s probably because I live in another country which works very differently, so what I’ll say is not a judgement about the veracity of your comment, but I find incredible that $14’000 a month could be in any capacity considered a mediocre salary… the French president earns that in euros!
FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 4 hours ago
You don’t have to buy a house every year
ebolapie@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
No, but you do have to make enough to convince the bank to loan you the money to buy it.
FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 1 hour ago
if it’s a matter of years and not centuries then in fairly alright. In many countries nowadays, new borns will never have ownership of a house or flat.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
If they have to pay their Executive Director that much as a non-profit and are failing to meet their funding goals as a non-profit the amount he gets paid has fuck-all to do with where he lives, and has everything to do with him failing at his job to secure funding.
So we’re supposed to fund this guys lifestyle as people who donate to the project while the project itself twists in the wind? Give me a fucking break, dude. This is how you set your organization up for failure.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Please don’t be that person that runs in here, didn’t read the thing, and writes multiple paragraphs of stupidity. Just don’t do it.
You’re not “funding this guy’s lifestyle” (love how you assume it’s a guy). You’re paying a person a less than fair wage when they can be getting twice the money elsewhere for the same role.
This person is taking a drastic pay cut to run things AS THEIR JOB. It’s how they pay for things, and have kids, and a life. You’re making the assumption they are somehow bilking money out of this, and that’s not the case from that dollar amount.
You also didn’t seem to understand that because it’s a non-profit custodial arm of the project, that they are the ones keeping it alive for people like to bitch about this person making a salary ffs. Jeebus, some people, how dare they.
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
That dollar amount is higher than what several presidents of European countries earn. I’m sorry but if a project is based on donations from around the globe, you can’t then think of a salary that’s one of the highest in the world.
I read all of the comment chain and I perfectly understand that in San Francisco or LA the rent is huge and that people earn those numbers. If I’ll ever consider donating part of my Spanish salary, looking at that stupidly high number heavily disincentives me because what the fuck, living in one of the world’s most expensive places and expecting for people that live with a third of that money (with a salary that’s considered high!!) to donate is super entitled.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
To be fair, Joshua R. Simmons has since changed their name to Robin Riley and now goes by they/them pronouns which I did not notice noted anywhere on the matrix.org website. They’re still the same person who has been running the foundation for a long time, so I hope I can be forgiven for not realizing their updated pronoun status. So, you’re correct that they are no longer going by he/him pronouns, but I really don’t know much past that.
I mentioned in the original post that I found a reddit thread where they talked about their pay and the breakdown of finances. They pull in roughly a million a year, and 50% roughly goes to staffing, which means with 8 other people in the organization, everyone else is making about $60k a year if we’re going to talk about underpaying people for their jobs. That’s all the other executives and the entire trust and safety team.
Once again, if they’re failing at their job to keep the project funded, that’s when you make sacrifices to make it work.
rothaine@lemm.ee 17 hours ago
him failing at his job to secure funding
Is this thread not about a new attempt to secure funding?
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
unconfortable but true
Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Maybe. But $170K isn’t what it used to be, even 5 years ago. Especially if you have kids.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Does that matter if he is failing to secure enough funding to run the non-profit? If they’re risking shutting down major portions of what they do as the guiding foundation for the Matrix protocol, isn’t that literally his fault since he’s in charge? If the non-profit fails are all the people who donated their fucking money in hopes of it succeeding going to be happy that instead of being willing to take a haircut on pay to save the damn organization he was instead using their donated funds to fund his fucking lifestyle instead of, I don’t know, living in a more modest area and doing more of the foundation business remotely?
thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
i made 100k last year, so I feel I have a good grasp of what 60ish k more would be
imo you can just fuck off with this argument
kazerniel@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I’m not saying he is making obscene money
I am, that much money is obscene. Converted that’s like 125k GBP, you can buy a house for cash every 3 years in the UK from that much money O.o
thundermoose@lemmy.world 5 minutes ago
Employees have to pay for basically everything in the US, so salaries have to be a lot higher here. School, childcare, healthcare, retirement, you name it. Also, all those things are more expensive here because they’re provided by companies that need to make a profit. It sucks.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 hour ago
you can buy a house for cash every 3 years in the UK from that much money
yeah every 3 years is too much!
… well, tax so
every 5 years then!
… oh right rent he’d pay in the interim
fine every 7 years!
… ahhhh food costs money too!
okay okay every 8 years!
… i guess people do tend to pay bills
every 9 years!
… it’s not reasonable to be a shut in for those 6 years and being social costs money
every 10 years!
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I make only slightly less than that in American dollars and I’m not at all close to running a company. I’m very solidly lower middle class I will also not be buying a hour for another 5-6 years.
Exec@pawb.social 1 day ago
Now 9 wonder if there’s a similar report for Mozilla
QBertReynolds@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
You can pull the form 990 for any non-profit in the US pretty easily. Here’s Mozilla’s: projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/…/200097189
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
What’s with the “Trust and Safety” bit? And are the events really necessary?
Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Your solution to someone complaining that the boss is earning too much is to suggest they pay the other workers less (or not at all)?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I’m suggesting that their balance sheet looks off. Matrix should primarily be spending money on developers and infrastructure.
The boss earning what seems to be $170k isn’t a ton for that position, and it’s a fairly small piece of the pie. Even if the boss took no pay, they’re still spending a lot of money on non-development and hosting tasks. I would like to see “Other Staff” increase at the expense of everything except hosting costs.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Ah yes, exploit free labor. Capitalism’s favorite way to make money.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
My understanding is that Matrix is a nonprofit.
QBertReynolds@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Non-profit organizations still exist within the capitalist system. Just because they don’t pay out dividends to shareholders doesn’t mean they can’t be exploitative. If a non-profit makes a lot of money, the people who run it just increase their own salaries. Happens all the time. And yes, non-profits exploit labor all the time. Local arts councils are an easy example of this. Run an art show where the venue and food are donated. They take a fee at the door, ask for donations throughout, and require a cut of any art sold. If there’s a bar, they get a cut of that too. The artists who enabled the show to even exist did all their labor for free in exchange for exposure and maybe selling something. They see none of the take though. Sounds pretty capitalist to me.
Myro@lemm.ee 52 minutes ago
To be fair, that’s the lowest executive salary I’ve seen in a looong time.