If you know nothing about surveys or statistics it is probably a good idea
not to describe a properly calculated metric (yes, I sat down and did the
math) as absurd, and then claim efficacy of your own informal survey.
Just sayin.
Incidentally I am not sure your point about the glassdoor reviews really
rebuts mine re the value of paying more money.
If we pay more to the current staff will they be a lot more productive
(hint; this doesn't often equate in the way you'd expect) or wil lthose
hard problems become easier?
And does increased wage offerings attract more competent staff? Again, this
does not always work out as you expect.
James, please don't take this the wrong way but all of your contribution so
far seems to be "Google educated", without any practical experience to
guide your words. I'm sorry if that is not the case, but you do appear to
be rolling out a lot of the "rookie" viewpoints on many different fronts.
Tom
On Saturday, January 5, 2013, James Salsman wrote:
Again, I am not suggesting canceling anyone's
health insurance or
replacing it with increased salary. I am only trying to say that in
the case of when a parent or sibling faces catastrophic medical
expenses in the U.S., just over two years of the difference between
typical junior software engineer pay at the Wikimedia and Mozilla
foundations is the same amount that the average American who enters
bankruptcy because of medical expenses has in debt.
On 5 January 2013 11:11, Thomas Morton
<morton.thomas@googlemail.com<javascript:;>>
wrote:
> So the foundation should NOT throw money at staff without showing that
> paying extra would bring the charity significant increases in value.
If the nine reviews added to
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wikimedia-Foundation-Reviews-E38331.htm
over the past two weeks does not establish that, then I can't imagine
anything will.
>> A representative sample of 384 donors is
sufficient to establish the
>> answer with 95% confidence. I am not suggesting asking all however
>> many million there have been.
>
> I call this number the magic 384, it's a common rookie mistake when
> designing surveys for a million people.
>
> With a sample size of 384 you do get 95% confidence, with a confidence
> interval of 5%. So the data is fairly meaningless (if 49% of your
> respondents say X then that could represent anything from 44 to 54
percent
> of the population).
If my preliminary informal survey of a much smaller number of donors
is representative, then the results will be much closer to 100%
agreeing that the Foundation should meet or exceed market pay than
50%.
> You need around 12000 for any solid degree of
confidence. And I believe
we
> have a lot more than a million donors across
a wide variety of cultures.
That is absurdly excessive. There has never been a Foundation donor
survey of more than 3,760 donors, and that number was only chosen
because of a requirement to measure fine grained demographics in
categories for which few respondents were expected. 384 is plenty to
resolve a yes/no or below/meet/exceed question at the 95% confidence
level unless anyone has any actual evidence that the result is likely
to be close.
I am convinced that if asked, donors would think it is irresponsible
to pay so little that Oracle employees are more satisfied.
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