For nearly half of households, the severance for the CEO represents over 10 years of income. Households, not people. A great many of those people would have never received severance pay of any amount. Of those who do, they would be fortunate to receive months of severance pay based upon earnings that are a fraction of what a CEO earns. Is it any surprised that some people would be upset? Factor in that the Wikipedia depends upon donations and volunteer labour, and it looks like some people are reaping a disproportionate amount of the rewards.
I'm not saying this to diminish what the Wikipedia does, nor to suggest the pay was not earned. These people almost certainly could have earned more elsewhere, yet decided to align themselves with an organization that serves the greater good. What I am saying is it is (or should be) easy to see where these sentiments come from.
This is some hardcore, nuclear-powered cherry picking. Economic inequality in the US is vast and though this one small example sounds pretty bad, it's trivial by comparison to the larger trends.
Sure, it's good to compensate employees well. I replied in a sister comment that it's not inherently bad for the salaries to be high at Wikimedia, but it does seem a little frustrating to see a 1.5x annual salary severance for quitting a job when it's donation money being used to fund that severance.
If it were, I don't know, three months severance, that would still be very generous, and I don't think most people would be very upset. We've all seen a ton of banners vaguely implying that Wikimedia is strapped for cash and needs your help, but they have enough to spend an extra six hundred grand for someone quitting?
Nor I. But there's being treated well and then there's being showered with cash, which is how I'd read getting a severance package in excess of 1.5 your base comp for a full year when walking away to take another job.
Generally speaking, if I leave my current job for another job I don't expect any severance at all. If I was laid off I'd feel pretty good about getting six months of severance. There's no reality where I expect 18 months severance walking away to take another gig.
it sounds like desire for prudence at a quasi-public foundation.
it might be completely misplaced though.
but more transparency might help in this case too. make the job have some standard salary, make the contract public, and allow people to submit their resumes and let the board pick the best candidate. again, this might be super naive (it is!), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work.
of course if it's a requirement to have the CEO live in the Bay Area, continue growing the WMF (and in general do a lot more than keeping Wikipedia working well), then it's not surprising that the candidate pool is drastically smaller, and the money involved is a lot more.
(of course, again, maybe it's worth talking about what the public wants Wikipedia and the WMF to be, but ... maybe it's up to those who donate?)
No. I'm disputing the idea that this qualifies as merely being "treated well." Treated extravagantly would be more accurate, and from the budget of a non-profit no less.
