This is normal for “nonprofit” companies. The former head of Mozilla was paid 6.1 million in 2024.
I love signal and use I daily but I will admit the lack of self hosting is the biggest red flag for me. And that the servers are all in USA.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any alternatives that are as readily accessible and easy to set up to others. XMPP I guess is really the best bet for true privacy but a lot of people I talk to would be unable to grasp how to set it up and use it correctly.
Tbf they are probably renting in california lol, their ‘pwese donate we need it’ always felt about as legitimate as 'hello from jimmy at wikipedia, we’re about to shut down the website, everyone please send $1 to the wikipedia guy, 432 evergreen tereace’
We need to find a way to fund critical FLOSS. No, not like that!
40,000$ per month is way more than anyone will ever need. For sure I would stop donating, from the top of my 1,400€ per month.
I agree that’s quite a lot of money. I’m not sure what if any the cap should be. I guess my attitude is that if they are bringing in so much money, and everyone working there is getting a fair cut… then power to them? I don’t donate either, though I’ve been using Signal since before it was called that. I remember when they first introduced calling as a companion app called Red Phone.
I think that’s precisely what this is questioning : is this helping fund critical FOSS?
What if a fraction of that money instead went to Signal infrastructure? Wikimedia? FSF which initially made GNU PG? FSFE? NLNet which supports Delta Chat? Sovereign Tech Fund? etc rather than individuals?
I don’t think anybody is criticizing that hard working people contributing to a good project are well paid. I believe the question is rather what’s the cost to OTHER projects when there is 1 project, not an umbrella projects which funds others (again like NLNet or the Sovereign Tech Fund).
What model are we reproducing and what’s the risk?
FWIW the question isn’t new. It happens also with Mozilla with the compensation of its C-suite staff, not the “random” software engineer.
I think it clearly is helping. Signal is a mature, polished project. It is first-class. The infrastructure is obviously well-funded. As for other projects, I also wish they had more money but I don’t think it’s useful to criticize Signal for the fact that they don’t.
If we’re going to continue doing capitalism, we need to celebrate when people who are responsible for quality products are paid comfortably but not so much that their pay disrupts other peoples’ status.
700k very much qualifies in today’s world.
Stop being crabs in a bucket.
Guy who wants to continue doing capitalism
If you want to change capitalism structure, tearing down privacy tools is not the way to do it.
How much does the equivalent salary at Whatsapp pay?
The average WhatsApp Inc. executive compensation is $221,139 a year.The median estimated compensation for executives at WhatsApp Inc. including base salary and bonus is $221,114, or $106 per hour. At WhatsApp Inc., the most compensated executive makes $450,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $53,000
https://www.comparably.com/companies/whatsapp-in/executive-salaries
Seriously so much this!!!
These people have a great product and they should be paid enough to keep them from seeking other sources of income. That’s how we got Facebook. Plus having the numbers publicly available is a big plus.
You guys are out of your gd minds I’m not going to sit here and explain what a mode of production is to you, or that executives are not proletarians. Jesus H. Christ
If we’re going to continue doing capitalism
You missed part of my post.
If shit was spread equally, everyone would make >$500 grand a year.
You ought to be tormented by ghosts of Filipino tuna fishermen for such a remark. Firstoids are completely delusional.
That is a wild amount of hate.
FWIW not on income but on top wealth, Musk has $792 Billion (ffs…) so ~$1000B and we are 8.4B Earthlings so ~10B. If we were to spread equality his wealth (which I’m all for) it would “only” gives each of us ~$100. Conclude from that what you will but to me it’s just a reminder of just how many people we are. A lot.
PS: this isn’t about income and it might be totally different there. If you have a better metric and approximation I’d be all ears.
Sallaries should act as a motivator for better leadership, so these wages, at least in norwegian context, seems to be too high, too corrupting.
I’m really trying hard to see the point that’s being made. Is it just the “high” salaries, or is there some other implication? The OP seems to be insinuating that Signal is a honeypot or something. I am going to need a lot more proof than, “hey, these guys work at a non-profit and they aren’t underpaid!” Given that most tech jobs offer stock options in addition to normal salary, it would make sense that base salary should be higher at a non-profit (where stock options don’t exist). Their salary structure also seems much flatter than other non-profits that I saw within the propublica link.
What am I missing here?
We already know it’s a honeypot, this is circumstantial evidence about their role in sapping donations from the wider open source ecosystem. Keep donating to them if you don’t value your money.
Can you provide some evidence for your claims? You’ve even linked to another post where you say you’re here to educate people but all I’m seeing are assertions with no basis and insults.
honeypot
You mean Proton
I always thought it was Tuta that was the honeypot.
We already know it’s a honeypot
Oh?
Yeah that’s why you guys focus on shit like “I was able to convince my grandma to use it” - you don’t understand what is wrong with Signal technically.
No, I focus on that because it’s real. It sounds like you don’t get out much, just judging by how you talk to people. So let me lay it out for you. People are resistant to change and you have to convince them. You aren’t good at that, which is why you’re so mad. I’m trying to get information to help convince people I know and love, which is why I’m asking for more information from the person who seems to know a lot. However you also seem to be bad at providing resources to back your claims up.
No, not everyone who fails to relate to your American experience “fails to get out much”. It’s more than you’re incapable of understanding why someone would avoid centralizing “privacy services” in countries that run the global capitalist surveillance state. What you’re doing is derailing the thread + demanding spoon feeding + begging the question. Your motivation is a wounded ego because someone said you made a bad choice—one that is as easy to fix as installing and uninstalling services.
Jesus Christ dude. I’m talking about how you are immediately hostile to everyone in this thread. Get over yourself.
Get some good software on your devices that doesn’t have a lifespan according to the goodwill of the feds, and have a wonderful morning.
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I don’t know the intricacies of signal as a company or if they support any bad actors or whatnot, but I do hate to see flack for non-profit leaders and employees getting paid competitive salaries. Like if people are actually worth that much in the economy, why not try to stack the team so they’re incentivized to do well? Especially in the shit pot that is America.
I would be curious to see the spread of overhead between salaries and fundraising, outreach, etc to actually get their product out there. Because if those are balanced in favor toward actually running the business, marketing it well, and fundraising, I’d say these people more than deserve these salaries.
The company asks for donations while receiving funding from the US government and scraping metadata from activists. You people are absolute marks.
and scraping metadata from activists
You have proof on that?
A CEO should be paid enough to live comfortably if you work at a non-profit, but if you need to be paid market rate then you’re probably not passionate about the position. When your job is fulfilling a public good rather than delivering shareholder value, that and a decently generous salary should be reward enough.
That said, I think Signal is better than Mozilla on this front, because they don’t have a long history of terrible decisions each of which coming with increased executive compensation.
EDIT: Also the CEO of Mozilla made 6-7 million per year (haven’t checked the new CEO though). Way more than Meredith Whittaker’s $750,000. So honestly Signal is an order of magnitude better on this front.
CEOs need to be constantly threatened with execution by a dictatorship of the proletariat
Also maybe no stock options like other corps? So more salary compensation
And now let’s focus on the only player who is a bit transparent instead of asking how are the others…
Why are they transparent again? Because they’re a US-run NGO operation to trick activists into using police software that leaks their data. NGOs aren’t some kind of anticapitalist freedom fighters, guys, neither is christian charity. There is a reason why the US government and big tech throws its weight around with these things and it’s not altruism.
Ah another hitpiece on Signal huh? They must be doing a lot right.
we calling signal a multi billion dollar company now
the whole context here are the insane payouts for the execs
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I don’t know why you think I would care what some random troll on the internet tags me as. Sounds like you should work on your narcissism.
Those are normal salaries for a tech company.
those are not normal salaries for people working on regular open source projects though
well yes, taking millions from the US government to dupe people like you into slathering yourself in metadata is the right move. redditors will justify anything once locked into the circlejerk
Signal is the only way I’ve been able to get my friends and family onto an E2E messaging app. Before this, they were all using SMS and WhatsApp. Signal is how we survived ICE in Minneapolis and organized to stop a bunch of jackbooted fascists from kidnapping all of our neighbors and deporting them to unknown countries. I have a lot of respect for the folks at Signal as a result.
I get that you all are on better platforms or whatever, but I don’t appreciate the dismissive shit that I’m seeing in these replies. Especially when it’s about one of the first privacy-oriented apps that normies get started with. You have some information about Signal that shows it’s shitty or a honeypot? Great, then post it. I’d genuinely love to see it (and not in a “post it so I can argue with you like an annoying redditor” kinda way). But this shit about high salaries at a non profit is not convincing to me and none of your replies here are doing your cause any service.
Literally all the shit talking in this thread is all from that guy. Lots of shit talking, didn’t link a single source to back it up.
The shittalking will continue until the encryption improves. It’s MY thread and you can’t have it!
my family and friends are intractable
You’re probably annoying + not my problem. You clearly aren’t very knowledgable about this, so I doubt you would even be able to explain it to them. XMPP and Delta Chat are easier to set up. You’re just arguing that laziness is a virtue.
Signal is how we survived ICE in Minneapolis
Serious “it was revealed to me in a dream” shit that most people would think was excessive if I made it up as a joking example of Signal defenders. Signal is funded by the US government and collects + leaks metadata. The US government uses metadata to target hacking of the device itself. Metadata is more valuable for surveillance than message content, it is used by police + intelligence to fabricate evidence of “terror networks” including teenagers in Chicago texting each other. Minneapolis drove out ICE because they had guns and physically planted themselves between the psychos and the people they wanted to terrorize. If they were stupid enough to use Signal (or encouraged by people like you) or bring their phones downtown, they will be mopped up before they can do anything useful. Fortunately for the feds, Americans barely even bother to walk around with signs.
The ability of these companies to operate centralized services in countries that serve gag orders should make things obvious, but fortunately you people have been trained by social media to require epistemological proof of wrongdoing.
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How does this compare to salaries for comparable positions at comparable for-profit companies?
It’s kinda the point of donations that they can afford to hire people whose labor costs that much.
“President of Signal getting paid less than a principal engineer” must be the take here.
The same argument applies to Wikipedia: it’s a blessing these people accept working for <1M. They could easily get a job for triple the salary elsewhere but choose to forfeit it for principles.
Way better than Mozilla.
Coughing baby versus coughing baby
I could also make a lot of money stealing peoples organs but its a blessing that I don’t do that
Isn’t 1M per year upper middle class in america now?
Oh look the Americans are here to pretend that highly-paid tech workers are normal human beings. I wonder if that has anything to do with the demographics of the Reddit-fuelled Hitler instances. Worth consideration. 🤔
Damn, I don’t think I’ll make 1M in my lifetime combined.
My nephew, uncle and I have all had medical bills at $1M each
That’s because you live in Europe and stretching a month’s paycheck is easier than a week’s and the Euro is an strogner currency with better anti-gouging laws.
To sum up, 70k euros a month is a lot.
70k euros a month is insane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage
To sum up, 70k euros a month is a lot.
Even 10k euro per month is a lot and will be far better than most other people in Europe and allow you to live more than comfortably.
not my circus, not my monkeys
but them positions… as mr. cici famously quipped, that’s alot of buffers
you really need a VP of eng and then a director of eng and further liaisons until you reach an actual engineer for a shop that has one product?
again, what do I care, spend it in good health
This is basically a parody of the problems with NGO corporate compensation, yes, but I feel like everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room & wishing goodwill to people making e2ee messaging that is only safe for the US government to use. Ask yourself, would the German prime minister even trust this shit?
It’s not like Delta Chat main development team is even exempt from this, not sure if OP is aware of this but they want the EU to save them. Fat chance guys! Open source developers need a workers government or total independence, or they will discover they are political tools that can be dispensed with when no longer necessary. Just look at the recent pressure on Linux to eject Russian developers.
LMAO @ everyone who would have denied this was true groveling at the feet of the US government’s spectacularly abd inexplicably generous Open Technology Fund after devoting 3000 comments to bashing what remains of Firefox for [checks notes] making the UI better so the community doesn’t need to spend their time making sidebars and vertical tabs… You guys are worms. Today I get to be the rock. 🥴
It’s a branch of the US military-intelligence-propaganda-industrial complex. Or was—I’m not sure if Trump’s executive order to eliminate it stuck.
JDPON Don strikes again. People got their hopes up too much when he acted like he was axing USAID programs. Just a change of management and perhaps some messaging.
