[Foundation-l] WMF compensation practices

Sat Dec 31 19:45:34 UTC 2011

Erik Moeller, 30/11/2011 07:03:
 > On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Nathan  wrote:

[...]

 >> * The budget includes a whopping $14 million on staffing costs (at the
 >> planned 117 number of staff, that is nearly $120k per staff member)
 >
 > The 2010-11 staffing budget is $13.3M. [5] Staffing costs include
 > payroll taxes, recruiting costs, and benefits, and of course pay bands
 > for different roles vary significantly, but are consistent with
 > similar non-profit organizations, i.e. below the market rate paid at
 > for-profit companies.
 >
 > More background about the guiding principles of Wikimedia's
 > compensation practices can be found in [7].

[...]

 > [7] 
<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/2a/Wikimedia_Foundation_Compensation_Practices.pdf>

Thank you for mentioning this (and thanks to people who worked on it 
too), I found it very interesting.
What I don't understand, especially given the nature of the WMF staff 
(at large), is that there is no mention at all of international 
differences; I heard that they're somehow taken care of, but it would be 
very nice to have them briefly documented. As it is, this document would 
seem to be only about San-Francisco indefinite employees.
For instance: «benefits package for all staff, which includes medical,
dental, vision and life insurance» doesn't apply to non-USA based 
staffers, I guess (they might not even need one), but it's not said what 
happens to them; «Staff receive an annual vacation allotment, which 
ranges from 5-20 working days», but no mention of whether this is 
adjusted to local vacation/public holidays laws; there's nothing about 
notice periods for termination or non-renewal of contracts (another 
thing which varies a lot across countries).

Nemo

P.s.: I hope you'll be forgiving of my English terminology mistakes.