- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Step 1. Make it federative Step 2. Stop fucking hosting your shit on Amazon servers. Step 3. Profit
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.
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
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.
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.
Fr. Fuck signal for removing SMS support
Was split off, called ‘Silence’.
There were two SMS mistakes by Signal:
I haven’t been able to trust them since the get go, to be honest. Their whole stance against federation is… FUDdy to stay polite: https://gultsch.de/objection.html
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?
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.
They are working on that! :)
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.
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 :)
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.
waaahh centralizing millions of slightly-privacy-aware people’s metadata on Amazon’s servers costs a lot of money, waaah
Make the server open source maybe?
Ehhhh
Signal lost a lot of my love when they removed SMS support
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.
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.
True. Even so, 300k or 250k per employee is at least 3 times the salary of a European engineer.
Ended my donations to Signal after discovering they choose Google Hosting Services over open source and privacy respecting alternatives.
Yeah man fuck Signal, they stabbed by dog the other day