this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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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.
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
I mean, without browsing levels.fyi or anything like that you can get 4 to 10 software engineers for 1 million (anything from 100k to 250k depending on location, experience, etc.).
Not all employees are engineers but that would imply 80 to 200 staff for the 20 million they state.
That's only the component paid to the actual staff though. There are additional costs like Healthcare, unemployment, social security, etc, and other benefits that may not be included in wages (though some portion may be deducted from salaries), but they are including in that statement / summary.
For an app like signal you would/should be at the top of that range. You want to acquire and maintain talent. Not every dev has the chops.
It says that they have 50 full time employees.
It's not only salaries:
Still, the cost equals almost 400 000 dollars per employee. That is a LOT of money. Even half that (twice the employees or half the cost) would still be a lot.
Believe me, one seriously awesome software developer for 400k achieves more than 10 shitty ones at 100k each.
I don't need to believe, I work with these guys on a daily basis (not the Signal guys, but devs) and I know your statements to be true. Still, I very much doubt that they need 50 devs with that salary. It's a chat app! Of course they have other people too, like marketing, project leads, blah blah - still doesn't put the price into my mind.
They develop a lot of software themselves. They aren't just throwing together a few established libraries and call it a day like 80% of software development. They also take the hard and correct way every time instead of the fast, easy and bad way. Quote from the article:
Yes, I agree it's a lot.
I think that with "recruiting" and "HR services" they mean outsourced services, so maybe not all of it goes directly to the employees.
~~Don't forget the CEO's salary is $5.7M. If you subtract the CEO's and other execs' salary from those $20M total, the salary of ordinary employees would probably way less than $200k.~~
That is not that much in this industry.
I've got roughly 25 years in the software development industry and depending on what talent market you're working in, that 400k may not even be enough for one engineer or architects salary.
Ok so how do they get these 19 million dollars? The app is free right?
They don't sell user data right? So... How will this app ever be profitable? Charging for it may convince some small number of users but not enough to cover 19 million costs.
Donations and grants from particulars and organizations or funds. You can do a one-time or recurring donation directly from the app.
It's a non-profit, so they don't need to be profitable, just cover the costs.
Is there a public record of who donates? Seems weird to get 19 million dollars in donations. Would be very interesting to know who donates.
It's an absolutely surprising amount, because Matrix spends less than that if you just count the people working on the open source offerings.
And that project has significantly more features, is federated, and has a much larger scope.