On 5 June 2016 at 02:28, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, 5 June 2016, Greg Varnum gvarnum@wikimedia.org wrote:
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Not to put too fine a point on it... But are you saying that Sue remained the most highly paid contractor to the WMF, and at a significantly higher rate than when she was the actual ED, until FIVE DAYS ago? That is, well beyond any 'transition period' (and in fact longer than the employment of the person who replaced her)?
Yes, this jumped out for me. I can understand paying out a 12 month golden handshake on the way out, and paying a previous CEO for a few days or weeks support during handover, but continuing to pay out at an eye-watering equivalent salary of $300,000 per annum, was a super-duper bonus for Sue.
However this is wrapped up in the normal "nothing to see here, move-along" WMF PR speak, these lottery prize level payouts have been a terrible, terrible deal in terms of the WMF delivering on its goals and values. I certainly did not see Sue saying anything in public to help avoid or repair any of the WMF board's strategic disasters in its highly public annus horribilis. I doubt that in truth she did much more in private, sorry, it's just not credible that the WMF has all its strategic manipulators hidden away in private rooms as if this were a court for the Borgia family.
I am utterly convinced that the WMF would do exactly as well, and possibly even better, by paying a CEO slightly less than it currently pays it's head of legal, certainly it would be rather stupid to pump up the interim CEO's salary by three times to match the celebrity CEO salaries that the WMF seems to have locked itself into.
Fae