Michael Snow wrote:
... You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer?
No, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. If a typical working age American's immediate family suffers catastrophic medical expenses, it's most likely going to be one of their parents, who aren't covered by the Foundation's or any other employer's plan. Medicare only pays for 60 days of hospitalization, with copayments totaling about $30,000 for the following 60 days, and then it stops paying altogether. (See e.g. http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7768.pdf ) In any case, most Americans who enter bankruptcy because of medical expenses have on average about $45,000 of debt, which amounts to 2.2 years of the difference between the mean salary of Wikimedia and Mozilla Foundation junior software engineers. It's not like the difference between being able to save a loved one from bankruptcy and keeping them in the hospital when they need it would displace existing health insurance or even make a serious dent in retirement savings.
And that brings up another important point: What kind of talent does the WMF forgo by not being able to offer employees competitive retirement savings? I suggest that there are very good reasons that all the additional Glassdoor reviews in the past week didn't really move the needle in satisfaction or recommendation scores. If anything the Foundation should be exceeding market rate to make up for its inability to provide equity participation plans for retirement savings which commercial firms can offer.
Richard Symonds wrote:
I would object to the precedent being set that donors from around the world, however old or young, are able to directly decide the salaries of staff at the WMF....
I am not suggesting allowing donors to set salary levels, only to express their opinions as to whether they would object to the Foundation meeting market labor pay, or exceeding it to compensate for the inability to offer equity participation. Since the only objections raised against competitive pay have been that it would be an "irresponsible" use of donor's money, why not find out from the donor's whether they actually share that view? The worst that could happen would be that we would find that donors agree with the status quo.
I would also have an issue with donors being bombarded with emails...
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.
we should be saving our 'communication points' for something more important.
What might be more important that we haven't already asked in donor surveys of years past?
On Saturday, January 5, 2013, James Salsman wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
... You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer?
No, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. If a typical working age American's immediate family suffers catastrophic medical expenses, it's most likely going to be one of their parents, who aren't covered by the Foundation's or any other employer's plan. Medicare only pays for 60 days of hospitalization, with copayments totaling about $30,000 for the following 60 days, and then it stops paying altogether. (See e.g. http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7768.pdf ) In any case, most Americans who enter bankruptcy because of medical expenses have on average about $45,000 of debt, which amounts to 2.2 years of the difference between the mean salary of Wikimedia and Mozilla Foundation junior software engineers. It's not like the difference between being able to save a loved one from bankruptcy and keeping them in the hospital when they need it would displace existing health insurance or even make a serious dent in retirement savings.
This is a bad idea because it puts the responsibility of saving/investing that money on the employee.
Also without healthcare insurance simple everyday costs can be astronomical (prescriptions etc.).
So all that would happen is those employees would have to organise their own healthcare, and would probably not get as good a deal as the foundation can arrange.
And that brings up another important point: What kind of talent does the WMF forgo by not being able to offer employees competitive retirement savings? I suggest that there are very good reasons that all the additional Glassdoor reviews in the past week didn't really move the needle in satisfaction or recommendation scores. If anything the Foundation should be exceeding market rate to make up for its inability to provide equity participation plans for retirement savings which commercial firms can offer.
As a charity the foundation has a responsibility to balance hiring the best talent with spending too frivolously.
So the foundation should NOT throw money at staff without showing that paying extra would bring the charity significant increases in value.
I know programmers on a par with my talent who are perfectly content earning significantly less than I do. So this is not a case of "the best costs the most".
Richard Symonds wrote:
I would object to the precedent being set that donors from around the world, however old or young, are able to directly decide the salaries of staff at the WMF....
I am not suggesting allowing donors to set salary levels, only to express their opinions as to whether they would object to the Foundation meeting market labor pay, or exceeding it to compensate for the inability to offer equity participation. Since the only objections raised against competitive pay have been that it would be an "irresponsible" use of donor's money, why not find out from the donor's whether they actually share that view? The worst that could happen would be that we would find that donors agree with the status quo.
I would also have an issue with donors being bombarded with emails...
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).
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.
Please don't just throw out numbers like this unless you know what you are taking about.
Tom
we should be saving our 'communication points' for something more
important.
What might be more important that we haven't already asked in donor surveys of years past?
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Hoi, In my country health care insurance is compulsory. If anything this means that everyone can see a doctor and believe it or not, investment in health care is beneficial to the wealth of a nation.
I am appalled that people consider health care something that is best left to the individual. It means that everybody has to pay the same amount irrespective if they can afford it.
Please study the subject and YES, the WMF is in the USA however having a health care policy for its employees is a best practice if you care for your employees. Thanks, GerardM
On 5 January 2013 11:11, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
On Saturday, January 5, 2013, James Salsman wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
... You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer?
No, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. If a typical working age American's immediate family suffers catastrophic medical expenses, it's most likely going to be one of their parents, who aren't covered by the Foundation's or any other employer's plan. Medicare only pays for 60 days of hospitalization, with copayments totaling about $30,000 for the following 60 days, and then it stops paying altogether. (See e.g. http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7768.pdf ) In any case, most Americans who enter bankruptcy because of medical expenses have on average about $45,000 of debt, which amounts to 2.2 years of the difference between the mean salary of Wikimedia and Mozilla Foundation junior software engineers. It's not like the difference between being able to save a loved one from bankruptcy and keeping them in the hospital when they need it would displace existing health insurance or even make a serious dent in retirement savings.
This is a bad idea because it puts the responsibility of saving/investing that money on the employee.
Also without healthcare insurance simple everyday costs can be astronomical (prescriptions etc.).
So all that would happen is those employees would have to organise their own healthcare, and would probably not get as good a deal as the foundation can arrange.
And that brings up another important point: What kind of talent does the WMF forgo by not being able to offer employees competitive retirement savings? I suggest that there are very good reasons that all the additional Glassdoor reviews in the past week didn't really move the needle in satisfaction or recommendation scores. If anything the Foundation should be exceeding market rate to make up for its inability to provide equity participation plans for retirement savings which commercial firms can offer.
As a charity the foundation has a responsibility to balance hiring the best talent with spending too frivolously.
So the foundation should NOT throw money at staff without showing that paying extra would bring the charity significant increases in value.
I know programmers on a par with my talent who are perfectly content earning significantly less than I do. So this is not a case of "the best costs the most".
Richard Symonds wrote:
I would object to the precedent being set that donors from around the world, however old or young, are able to directly decide the salaries
of
staff at the WMF....
I am not suggesting allowing donors to set salary levels, only to express their opinions as to whether they would object to the Foundation meeting market labor pay, or exceeding it to compensate for the inability to offer equity participation. Since the only objections raised against competitive pay have been that it would be an "irresponsible" use of donor's money, why not find out from the donor's whether they actually share that view? The worst that could happen would be that we would find that donors agree with the status quo.
I would also have an issue with donors being bombarded with emails...
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).
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.
Please don't just throw out numbers like this unless you know what you are taking about.
Tom
we should be saving our 'communication points' for something more
important.
What might be more important that we haven't already asked in donor surveys of years past?
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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 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.
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.comjavascript:;>
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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