[Foundation-l] Foundation too passive, wasting community talent

[Milos Rancic]

On 04/05/2011 10:59 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> We really do underspend horribly in the tech area, compared to what we
> need. That $14-16m from the fundraiser could be gobbled up in a
> moment. In my day job, I work for a tiny, tiny publisher with an
> approximately negligible web presence; two sysadmins, several
> developers, about the same number of support staff; our department's
> budget is bigger than WMF's entire budget. This mainstream website,
> this *social institution*, still runs on cheese and string and crossed
> fingers. Brilliant devs get paid at charity scale, not at what they
> could get at Facebook or Google (which is fine, 'cos everyone needs
> career progression, and a couple of years' WMF is resume gold).

Money is not an issue. Put the finger anywhere in Eastern Europe and you
can take [already employed] best programmers for 20-50k EUR who would be
loyal to WMF up to their retirement (if they don't need to go to SF).
Put the finger anywhere in India (which has four or more times more
inhabitants than Eastern Europe) and you can get similar ones for 5-10k.