Erik I am glad you are still around and keeping an eye on things. I believe that, with the audience the Foundation has access to, it could save a lot of money by hiring people who love Wikipedia and want to work for it. I don't think its true that the only way to get seasoned developers is to wave a large carrot (aka $$$) in front of their face. I believe there exist experienced developers who would gladly give a year of their life, working at a lower wage, to work on Wikipedia.
The only way to access these people is to ask them directly - with a We're Hiring banner, for example. On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Erik Moeller <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/1/9 Brian <[email protected]>: > > 800,000 / 30,000 = 26. Is that not a fair wage? If the Foundation only > plans > > to hire three developers to work on this project then it must be spending > > the money on something else entirely. > > First of all, we're hiring three people because we already have two. > We've hired Naoko, and we will allocate Trevor full-time to the > project. > > Secondly, base salaries if we hire locally (which we do, in this > case), are obviously much higher. See payscale.com and other sites to > get an idea of salaries in various parts of the world. That does not > include recruitment, benefits, equipment, office space and supplies, > staff development and travel, administrative overhead such as payroll, > etc. Plus the other costs we've budgeted, such as research costs for > usability tests, allocation of experienced on-staff developers to > support the project, etc. > > Thirdly, if you were to hire remotely at lower salaries, you'd simply > incur much of the cost you'd save in salaries in other ways, > especially management, oversight, and travel. This is especially true > for a project of this complexity where you're not just handing some > set of specs over to an outsourcing firm. (You of all people, > advocating for a complex tool like Semantic MediaWiki, should > appreciate that.) > > There are isolated projects that can be managed well by giving them to > experienced remote developers. For a project of this scope, complexity > and importance, I believe it's critical to have a local team that can > fully focus on the project and collaborate with the core staff in San > Francisco on an as-needed basis. > -- > Erik Möller > Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation > > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- You have successfully failed! _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
