On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjes...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Nov 20, 2010, at 6:00 PM, Noein wrote: > >> Thank you everybody for explaining your views. >> Most of the US inhabitants who answered me seem to be living and >> believing in a hierarchical and competitive world where the highest >> ranked ones- who are praised as gods - take from the lowest ones - who >> are just good enough to give their money and effort. As a matter of >> fact, their society seems organized to maximize money and it is echoed >> in their opinion about how to manage this huge collaborative effort >> about knowledge called Wikipedia. > > I think this is a gross misrepresentation of what I've seen from the replies > so far. I think a more accurate representation is that you place transparency > as a higher priority than personal privacy, even when such transparency is > beyond what is necessary and would cause harm to the individual, on the sake > of principle; you also seem unwilling to accept that employees can be paid a > competitive salary and provide a valuable service to the foundation that > merits such a salary ...
Incidentally, San Francisco and surrounding area is not an especially cheap area to live in. For those unfamiliar with the area, here are some housing prices for the area that the office is located in: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=soma&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms= I'm sure everyone is used to doing the math of whether it's possible to live somewhere on a given salary or not (take off 25-35% for taxes, figure in rent, add internet and cell phone, figure that you might need to eat occasionally etc. etc.). I think that it is fair to state that the WMF is not enabling extravagant lifestyles. If we were, then that would be something to worry about. But we're not. But this is basically beside the point, which is that the major decision is deciding whether or not the WMF should hire someone to do a particular job -- do we need a staff person in that role? What would that role contribute to the whole organization? -- then finding the right person for that role. Once that's done I'd argue we have a moral imperative to pay that person a fair and comfortable living wage, one that indicates that we value both them and their work; while also not abusing the trust of those who donate their own hard-earned money to fund the organization, and recognizing that as a nonprofit none of us are in the business to get wealthy and that often we must in fact scrape by on a shoestring. However, each person in the organization is an investment -- and as such the organization should take care of them and pay for them fairly, if possible, even if it's generally not at all up to market rate. >From personal experience -- spending quite a bit of time at the office and with the staff -- I can say without reservation that our staff is devoted and exceptionally hardworking; we ask a lot of the staff, and we get a lot, too. -- phoebe, speaking for herself only p.s. the Board is not involved in setting anyone's compensation, except Sue's; but I don't think these principles are controversial. pp.s. if you want to feel outraged about capitalism, please go see the movie "Inside Job"! The scale of how horrifically wall street behaves will both make you apoplectic (as it did me) and will perhaps put everything else in perspective. ppp.s. in the U.S., typically speaking, employees who work for government (state or federal) generally have their salaries disclosed since they are paid for with public (taxpayer) money; for instance, my own salary is public because I work for a public university. Employees of private businesses and non-profits generally have confidential salaries and have the expectation of confidentiality: it is actually considered quite rude and inappropriate to discuss or disclose how much someone makes, and goes against standard HR practice to disclose such information. The exception is for the officers of public companies (i.e. those with shareholders), and the officers of nonprofits who must file 990s. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
