I don't work for the Foundation, but my understanding is that the HR folks there - and I'm sure many others across the organisation - have thought a lot about the staff (and salary) implications of being an international project with a US HQ. One particular question that seems to come up is about whether salaries should be adjusted to the cost of living in a particular region, which I personally agree with for the reasons that Felipe outlined.
I do find this comment interesting: "WMF already has many employees that are based in countries where such immoral employment conditions dominate." I don't know who determines whether employment conditions are moral or otherwise? As a (not entirely random) indicator, the minimum required paid maternity leave in the U.S. is zero weeks, whereas in Romania it's a year.
Lucy
On Wed, 19 Apr 2023 at 13:05, wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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- Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour (Felipe Schenone)
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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:22:21 -0300 From: Felipe Schenone schenonef@gmail.com Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Reflecting on my listening tour To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: < CABbLfopUW11bTNCSFGbE8Dq6TgXvJjofeiZfm-tyGXo68kvJYw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="00000000000042bac405f99b5eed"
Just to put things into perspective, in Argentina, earning USD 4000 a month means you're the fucking king. You can rent almost any place you want, buy food and all necessities, eat out everyday, and have enough left over to buy some land or a house in a few years. By contrast, a quick Google search suggests that renting a 1-bedroom apartment in NYC costs around USD 4000, while in Silicon Valley costs around USD 2500. I may be wrong, but judging from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries I can see that nowadays, WMF salaries don't go below USD 200,000 per year, or USD 16,000 a month.
Rather than morally bankrupt, I'd argue that bringing salaries of even USD 5000 per month to people in countries like mine would be an economic bonanza and a smart use of resources, a win-win situation. Regarding labor laws, many non-US countries, like mine, have quite stringent labor laws (such as Argentina, due to a long history of syndicalism). Perhaps it's just a matter of finding countries that balance both criteria. I'm not sure that expanding development to cheaper countries is the solution to all of WMF software problems, but I think it could help a lot.
On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 8:55 AM Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
or the 3am meetings
On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 19:49, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Hiring people because they are in such countries as the basis for saving money is morally bankrupt, yet we'll happily draw from the pool of donations that primarily come from those more expensive countries. Much like we talk about equity but decide that some places arent worth
engaging
in because its too far to travel leaving others to shoulder the burden
of
travel.
On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 19:35, Felipe Schenone schenonef@gmail.com wrote:
Yet in some countries, like mine, paying for food, renting a place, buying a house, etc. is far cheaper than in the US, so paying a lower salary (in USD) wouldn't amount to a lower standard of living at all,
and
doesn't feel immoral, at least to me.
On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 8:00 AM Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Either we make software development cheaper somehow (move the WMF to
Romania or something)
Hiring in countries with the worst labour laws and cheapest minimum wages is totally immoral. Especially in a community where equity is
part of
our culture we must endeavour to ensure that employees/contractors regardless of where they live paid fairly and equally subject to
skills and
responsibilities of the role. WMF already has many employees that are based in countries where such immoral employment conditions dominate.
On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 05:49, Dan Garry (Deskana) djgwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with much of what Amir has said here, except one little
bit...
On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 20:52, Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:
> And even if a software would have an owner, it used to be that the > team was under so much pressure to produce new things instead of > maintenance that the software would practically be without a
maintainer (or
> worse, as even volunteers couldn't unofficially take the role). I
can
> example a few. >
I think pressure on a team to deliver new things is *one* reason why this situation has come about, but it's far from being the only one.
Here's
a few others off the top of my head:
- Owning so many things that even if there was zero pressure to
deliver new features, the team still couldn't maintain everything
that they
own.
- Incredibly powerful and incredibly complex features that teams
are afraid of touching lest they break them and make community
members
angry.
- Conservatism and fear of community outrage causing reluctance to
deprecate functionality.
- Lack of understanding of the impact of the feature.
- Lack of a clear roadmap (a list of bug reports and feature
requests is not a roadmap).
There's more but those are some that come to the top of my head. And, not everyone one of those always applies to every situation, e.g. I definitely don't think all of the items in your list should be
deprecated!
This causes the path of least resistance to be, for everyone
involved,
to leave things in limbo and hope for the best.
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