On its 10th anniversary, Signal’s president wants to remind you that the world’s most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It’s free. It doesn’t track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it’s a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.
  • sailingbythelee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    This is a very rude question, but on this subject of being lean, I looked up your 990 and you pay yourself less than some of your engineers.

    Yes, and our goal is to pay people as close to Silicon Valley’s salaries as possible, so we can recruit very senior people, knowing that we don’t have equity to offer them. We pay engineers very well. [Leans in performatively toward the phone recording the interview.] If anyone’s looking for a job, we pay very, very well.

    So, I googled their tax filing out of curiosity. It’s true that Meredith pays herself much less than her engineers, which is great. What I was rather shocked to see is that they pay their software developers enormous salaries. They’re listing developers making over $400,000 per year, with their VP making over $660,000 per year. Now, I’m all for the value-creators making more money than the CEO. I just had no idea that software developers make that kind of coin. I was thinking of donating to Signal, but I’m kind of weirded out by those astronomical salaries.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      7 months ago

      That’s inline with Silicon valley salaries. Basic houses cost 2mil there, so it’s not completely outrageous.

      As an example, openai pays all its engineers 300k flat+500k/yr in some stock based asset. Another example is Netflix, who are notoriously a very fickle employer, but salaries start in the 400k range and go up from there.