Salaries

[Smiley]

Wikimedia Foundation salaries

Have they stopped publishing figures or have they just forgotten to update the page?

$55,634,913 in 2019

Looks like the WMF will be spending roughly $85 million on wages this year.

[Smiley]

Möle Man made a mil!

[Smiley]

Ah, the 2020-21 figures are listed in another table:

$67,857,676 - Total
$52,020,082 - Projects
$9,732,820 - General & Admin
$6,104,774 - Fundraising

Can't see the current number of employees anywhere.
Anyone know?

[tarantino]

wmf says more than 550.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

There are exactly 550 listed. 219 with photos, 231 are camera shy.

[Smiley]

They only needed eleven in 2009.

[Smiley]

What did Katherine Maher do in 2019 that warranted being paid $387,770?

Why does a website created and administered by millions of people working for free need five hundred employees?

[Giraffe Stapler]

Why does a website created and administered by millions of people working for free need five hundred employees?

Ah, I think you've made the all too common mistake of thinking that the WMF is just Wikipedia. The WMF is much, much more (although I can't really think of anything worth mentioning outside of Wikipedia). That's why it is important to make sure that the public understands the difference between Wikipedia and the WMF, which they will do by renaming the WMF to "Wikipedia".

[Midsize Jake]

I've always just assumed that for each employee they actually need, they have to hire about ten more employees to clean up the mess made by the first one.

[Bezdomni]

[...]
This is, of course, the cue for Mr. Bezdomni to come in and make a cagey reference to Minassian Media.

Consider it done!

Möle Man made a mil!

such small fry.

[Boing! said Zebedee]

Why does a website created and administered by millions of people working for free need five hundred employees?

It happens when a non-profit has way more money than it needs and only has to account to itself for it.

[Smiley]

WMF salary costs

What please was the 2019 salary cost per WMF employee,
per the most recent Wikimedia Foundation Form 990?

According to the linked Form 990, the WMF had salary costs of $55,634,913
(page 1, line 15, "Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits") in 2019,
and a total of 291 employees (page 1, line 5).

On the face of it, this makes for an average salary cost of over $191K per employee.

Is this the correct figure, or if not, what is the correct calculation for the average
salary cost per employee in 2019? Are there estimates for more recent years?

Thanks, --Andreas, 01:04, 17 February 2022


Hi Andreas - I am six weeks into the job and have seen your questions
about salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation in various public forums.
I would like to try and give you a response.

What interests me most is understanding the motivations for your questions
so that I can attempt to share appropriate information.

You are welcome to contact me directly at miskander(_AT_)wikimedia.org
for a conversation as I won’t respond further here.

What I can share is the following:

blah, blah, blah...

Calculating an average salary based on the Form 990 is highly misleading. It produces totals that match our highest-paid employees, as you see on the 990 form. This is true of many organisations, not only the Wikimedia Foundation. As we will not release non-public salary information in public forums, we accept that this number is much higher than the true average salary. We currently have over 500 staff all over the world that are in a wide variety of job types and levels, each of which are paid differently and by location. An average is difficult to calculate and while it may provide a data point, it lacks meaning for evaluating our performance as an organisation. An average salary cost, even based on non-public data, is not useful for most of the issues that concern me most. We hire in over 50 countries, which is a reflection of our values as a global movement, but introduces complexity in ensuring we can offer competitive packages that will attract mission-driven talent, and especially engineers who we need to support the technology obligations of the Foundation. People are the biggest investment we make in supporting the Wikimedia projects and community, so this is a topic of critical importance to me. Finally, I have also checked that we are in line with other open knowledge organisations (e.g., Mozilla, Creative Commons, EFF) in the financial, salary, budget, and staff information that we publish. MIskander-WMF 14:54, 17 February 2022

[Smiley]

Fiscal year ending June 2020

$387,770       Katherine Maher (CEO/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR)
$289,356       Jaime Villagomez (CFO & Treasurer)
$282,752       Janeen Uzzell (Chief Operating Officer)
$273,080       Valerie D'Costa THRU 1119 (Chief of Community Engagement)
$252,117       Lisa Seitz (Chief Advancement Officer)
$237,992       Anthony Negrin (Chief Product Officer)
$212,977       Anthony Sebro (DEPUTY GC, VP, & INTERIM SEC.)
$212,528       Heather Walls (Chief Creative Officer)
$202,482       Joady Lohr (Director, Human Resources)
$193,557       Margaret Novotny (Senior Director, Design)
$191,603       Anthony Le (Controller)
$184,729       Erika Bjune from 72019 (Interim Chief Technology Offic)
$77,054       Amanda Keton from 92019 (General Counsel & Secretary)

What do these people actually do to earn their $ix-figure $alaries?
Does anyone know?

[Smiley]

Who are the other 21 contractors on 100k or more?

[Bezdomni]

[...] competitive packages that will attract mission-driven talent, and especially engineers who we need to support the technology obligations of the Foundation.

In each of the last two posts I see well over $2 million *not* spent on the short-order techno-wizardry of full-stack FLAC-AJAX cooks.

Maybe it's like the Plantation Ball finals where the half-time "volunteers" were asked to dance for "exposure"? 1

wmf says more than 550.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

There are exactly 550 listed. 219 with photos, 231 are camera shy.

Now that Langley isn't running the show anymore I see they've added a picture.

Still no mention of Craig Minassian or Jove Oliver (of MoveCom fame) in the list of staff and contractors.

---

1 In the end, after much pressure, I gather they were paid minimum wage. §

[Bezdomni]

Oh dear, Craig had a salary cut in 2020.



Good thing he's still making $205K at his day job.

Here he is talking about how the CGI is up and running again (seemingly focused on NYC for their global initiatives, probably just because it's an nyc radio station).

I saw SJ reprimanding Andreas somewhere (found it: §) for "conspiratorial" thinking regarding Minassian.