How does this compare to salaries for comparable positions at comparable for-profit companies?

It's kinda the point of donations that they can afford to hire people whose labor costs that much.

Ah another hitpiece on Signal huh? They must be doing a lot right.

“President of Signal getting paid less than a principal engineer” must be the take here.

The same argument applies to Wikipedia: it’s a blessing these people accept working for <1M. They could easily get a job for triple the salary elsewhere but choose to forfeit it for principles.

And now let's focus on the only player who is a bit transparent instead of asking how are the others...

I'm really trying hard to see the point that's being made. Is it just the "high" salaries, or is there some other implication? The OP seems to be insinuating that Signal is a honeypot or something. I am going to need a lot more proof than, "hey, these guys work at a non-profit and they aren't underpaid!" Given that most tech jobs offer stock options in addition to normal salary, it would make sense that base salary should be higher at a non-profit (where stock options don't exist). Their salary structure also seems much flatter than other non-profits that I saw within the propublica link.

What am I missing here?

I don’t know the intricacies of signal as a company or if they support any bad actors or whatnot, but I do hate to see flack for non-profit leaders and employees getting paid competitive salaries. Like if people are actually worth that much in the economy, why not try to stack the team so they’re incentivized to do well? Especially in the shit pot that is America.

I would be curious to see the spread of overhead between salaries and fundraising, outreach, etc to actually get their product out there. Because if those are balanced in favor toward actually running the business, marketing it well, and fundraising, I’d say these people more than deserve these salaries.

Isn't 1M per year upper middle class in america now?

addendum (to ensure someone gets hopping mad):

is the argument they shouldn't be paid money for their work? or maybe signal shouldn't be hiring at competitive salaries for highly skilled labor?

We need to find a way to fund critical FLOSS. No, not like that!

If we're going to continue doing capitalism, we need to celebrate when people who are responsible for quality products are paid comfortably but not so much that their pay disrupts other peoples' status.

700k very much qualifies in today's world.

Stop being crabs in a bucket.

I love signal and use I daily but I will admit the lack of self hosting is the biggest red flag for me. And that the servers are all in USA.

Unfortunately, I don't have any alternatives that are as readily accessible and easy to set up to others. XMPP I guess is really the best bet for true privacy but a lot of people I talk to would be unable to grasp how to set it up and use it correctly.

not my circus, not my monkeys

but them positions... as mr. cici famously quipped, that's alot of buffers

you really need a VP of eng and then a director of eng and further liaisons until you reach an actual engineer for a shop that has one product?

again, what do I care, spend it in good health

This is normal for "nonprofit" companies. The former head of Mozilla was paid 6.1 million in 2024. 

Just hire from the EU. It's cheaper and they are as competent. A lot more money will be left to hire more staff. I've already moved my signal donation to matrix.

The US is a money sink.

Unbearable: This was the last time i donated to signal. Next time i'll donate to some small foss-projects.

Sallaries should act as a motivator for better leadership, so these wages, at least in norwegian context, seems to be too high, too corrupting.

Tbf they are probably renting in california lol, their 'pwese donate we need it' always felt about as legitimate as 'hello from jimmy at wikipedia, we're about to shut down the website, everyone please send $1 to the wikipedia guy, 432 evergreen tereace'

What is going on with all of these people saying CEOs or other employees deserve to live comfortably? The average salary in the US is like $64,000 the median is more like $38,000. What kind of person could possibly do the work of 10 or almost 20 (depending on weather you prefer median or average) regular people? If people should be payed based off how much work they do this is not a reasonable amount.

US and the West are 'managed' by elite psychopaths that don't give a shit about ordinary peoples 'privacy' or similar fancy tools for the wage-slaves. They have used these tools to try and break through specific nations/groups information defenses. ANYTHING sponsored by the US Oligarchy is either a part of local US control, or an attempt at reaching more people with rich-man propaganda in nations that defend themselves against US lies and color-revolutions..