• Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I would never have guessed that an app like signal would spend almost 20 million in salaries. I wonder what is the salary of the executives.

    • kariunai@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      I wonder what is the salary of the executives.

      Wonder no more, they have it in their 2022 tax filing:

      Compensation

      Key Employees and Officers Base Related Other

      Jim O’leary (Vp, Engineering) $666,909 $0 $33,343

      Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) $665,909 $0 $8,557

      Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) $444,606 $0 $20,500

      Graeme Connell (Software Developer) $444,606 $0 $35,208

      Greyson Parrelli (Software Developer) $422,972 $0 $35,668

      Jonathan Chambers (Software Developer) $420,595 $0 $28,346

      Meredith Whittaker (Director / Pres Of Signal Messenger) $191,229 $0 $6,032

      Moxie Marlinspike (Dir / Ceo Of Sig Msgr Through 2/2022) $80,567 $0 $1,104

      Brian Acton (Pres/Sec/Tr/Ceo Sig Msgr As Of 2/2022) $0 $0 $0

      from https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840

    • wintermute@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      It’s not only salaries:

      about half of Signal’s overall operating budget goes towards recruiting, compensating, and retaining the people who build and care for Signal. When benefits, HR services, taxes, recruiting, and salaries are included, this translates to around $19 million dollars per year.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Crazy how decentralization improves both, but they are vehemently against that. I trust them in terms of privacy, but their insistence on centralization, blocking third party apps, removing SMS, and refusal to support fdroid, I’m not a fan of the direction they’ve gone recently.

  • Poutinetown@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    The cost of these registration services for verifying phone numbers when people first install Signal, or when they re-register on a new device, currently averages around $6 million dollars per year.

    That’s pretty crazy. Wonder which third party providers they are using. Maybe the identity verification methods we have today is due for some significant changes?

    • verysoft@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that to be the bulk of their spending. Maybe they should remove the need for phone numbers now they removed SMS.

      • Poutinetown@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        SMS is dead, so they will need to move on eventually. Most carriers are moving towards high data plans now. I mainly use it for verification, although I’d rather use more secure methods.

        • u_tamtam@programming.devOP
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          8 months ago

          Well, if SMS is dead then RCS is what we get instead, and there’s no difference to us (and probably higher costs for Signal & al.)

          And there are wayyyy too many things that depend on SMS for it to be dead any time soon, too :)

          • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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            8 months ago

            Also Signal cannot add RCS support, because Google Jibe servers won’t allow other app than Google Messages… And you must use them because native RCS support for Android is halted for years… And you cannot install some module with RCS support yourself because of anti-Unix monolitic Android userspace architecture…

            Man, there are so many things done wrong.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    waaahh centralizing millions of slightly-privacy-aware people’s metadata on Amazon’s servers costs a lot of money, waaah

  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    20M USD for 50 employees? ~400+k per employee is nuts!

    There are European engineers working at private companies for less 20% (1/5th) of that - if even that! They aren’t worse than their American counterparts. Signal could increase their team sizes by at least 30%, maybe even 50% if they hired engineers and other employees from Europe.

    If signal paid 100k for European engineers to work on opensource software, mate, they’d have absolute no problems retaining them. I personally don’t know a single engineer earning 100k on the European mainland. Not one.

    Edit: seriously, wtf. I’m all for paying employees well and it’s great that Signal has a dedicated workforce, but 400k? I’m fine canceling my donation. My jaw is still on the floor.

    • ironeagl@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      It’s not only salaries:

      about half of Signal’s overall operating budget goes towards recruiting, compensating, and retaining the people who build and care for Signal. When benefits, HR services, taxes, recruiting, and salaries are included, this translates to around $19 million dollars per year.

  • gr522x@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Ended my donations to Signal after discovering they choose Google Hosting Services over open source and privacy respecting alternatives.