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[-] SnotFlickerman 132 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not trying to be a dick but the Executive Director can take a fucking pay cut.

I found a reddit thread from 4 months ago where he said his salary was $170k/year. I'm not saying he is making obscene money, but if that's nearly 15% of all operating costs he can shave that down to $80k-$100k and still live comfortably if he's willing to accept a more austere standard of living.

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be paid well, but he's getting a damn sight better pay than moderators and community managers who seem to make up 50% of the budget for multiple people: the trust and safety team as well as the other employees at the foundation.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 123 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Depends on what that title actually means. Viewing it as a pie chart skews it so you don't realize that $170k in USD is pretty mediocre for a Director of Engineering role. If the project dies without this person, and that's what they need in salary to make it worth it to keep them there, then that's what they get paid.

It's not like they're even making an obscene amount of money ffs. That's a middling engineering salary, and this person is running the whole show. You should see what other "director" jobs at much shittier companies get paid. I think twice this amount would be a weak guess. If this person was a prick, they'd be milking that goat and taking all the free money.

This is an open source project backed by a non-profit foundation, granted, but this person is taking a massive pay cut just by working this job. Think about how that might impact their life to make that choice while trying to have a family.

$170k salary still won't you a fucking house in this country unless you live in the middle of nowhere, and this person is almost certainly in a major tech hub city, so that money means diddly when trying to pay the bills. It's barely above the poverty line in Silicon Valley after taxes for reference.

Everyone in here complaining because they make half this and think it's a lot of money because they live in Bumfuck, Idaho has no idea what it costs to live in the larger tech hubs around the world.

[-] SnotFlickerman 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If they have to pay their Executive Director that much as a non-profit and are failing to meet their funding goals as a non-profit the amount he gets paid has fuck-all to do with where he lives, and has everything to do with him failing at his job to secure funding.

So we're supposed to fund this guys lifestyle as people who donate to the project while the project itself twists in the wind? Give me a fucking break, dude. This is how you set your organization up for failure.

It's not like a bunch of his work couldn't be done remotely. Maybe he should move to bumfuck Idaho so he can afford to run this god damned foundation. But nooooo, he needs to live in some obscenely expensive area, right? Bull. Shit.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago

Please don't be that person that runs in here, didn't read the thing, and writes multiple paragraphs of stupidity. Just don't do it.

You're not "funding this guy's lifestyle" (love how you assume it's a guy). You're paying a person a less than fair wage when they can be getting twice the money elsewhere for the same role.

This person is taking a drastic pay cut to run things AS THEIR JOB. It's how they pay for things, and have kids, and a life. You're making the assumption they are somehow bilking money out of this, and that's not the case from that dollar amount.

You also didn't seem to understand that because it's a non-profit custodial arm of the project, that they are the ones keeping it alive for people like to bitch about this person making a salary ffs. Jeebus, some people, how dare they.

[-] fushuan 13 points 1 week ago

That dollar amount is higher than what several presidents of European countries earn. I'm sorry but if a project is based on donations from around the globe, you can't then think of a salary that's one of the highest in the world.

I read all of the comment chain and I perfectly understand that in San Francisco or LA the rent is huge and that people earn those numbers. If I'll ever consider donating part of my Spanish salary, looking at that stupidly high number heavily disincentives me because what the fuck, living in one of the world's most expensive places and expecting for people that live with a third of that money (with a salary that's considered high!!) to donate is super entitled.

[-] SnotFlickerman 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

To be fair, Joshua R. Simmons has since changed their name to Robin Riley and now goes by they/them pronouns which I did not notice noted anywhere on the matrix.org website. They're still the same person who has been running the foundation for a long time, so I hope I can be forgiven for not realizing their updated pronoun status. So, you're correct that they are no longer going by he/him pronouns, but I really don't know much past that.

I mentioned in the original post that I found a reddit thread where they talked about their pay and the breakdown of finances. They pull in roughly a million a year for the whole foundation, and 50% roughly goes to staffing, which means with 8 other people in the organization, everyone else is making about $60k a year if we're going to talk about underpaying people for their jobs. That's all the other executives and the entire trust and safety team.

Once again, if they're failing at their job to keep the project funded, that's when you make sacrifices to make it work.

[-] rothaine@lemm.ee 13 points 1 week ago

him failing at his job to secure funding

Is this thread not about a new attempt to secure funding?

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

unconfortable but true

[-] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago

Exactly. I’m nowhere close to the top of the tech ladder, but I make more than that and still have to rent and will be renting for several more years. To buy an average house in this city, it would be like 7k/month without a 20% down payment. And household debt needs to be 30% of your total income so I would need to make $250k to even get approved for a loan for an average house in the city.

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[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 57 points 1 week ago

170k for running a company? Shit. I wouldn't do that. You can make just as much being a halfway competent developer, and it's way less stress.

[-] FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 7 points 1 week ago

I guess you live in the USA? No one makes this amount of money

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago
[-] FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Funnily enough, it shows the localised amount.

For me in France it shows 50k€ to 69k€, so $58k to $80k at current exchange rates

It just confirms that this is USA only haha

Btw glassdoor sucks. Forces you to have an account and register work shit

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[-] Patch@feddit.uk 5 points 1 week ago

Just looked on that link for the UK. The average is listed as £63k, which is $85k.

So you're not exactly disproving the point that that type of high salary is a US thing.

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[-] kayky@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 week ago

It must not be that stressful if you have $170k leftover to pay yourself.

Most people work more stressful jobs for considerably less. We should stop giving CEOs a pass.

This shouldn't need to be said, but most people are useful idiots so here we are.

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

You're missing the point. There are easier jobs in the same industry for the same pay.

We're not comparing tech CEO to roofers. We're comparing them to other people in tech.

[-] kayky@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 week ago

Uhh, no.

This is directly the point: Most people work more stressful jobs for considerably less. We should stop giving CEOs a pass.

Oh, and don't forget about this one!

but most people are useful idiots so here we are.

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[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 week ago

Maybe. But $170K isn’t what it used to be, even 5 years ago. Especially if you have kids.

[-] SnotFlickerman 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Does that matter if he is failing to secure enough funding to run the non-profit? If they're risking shutting down major portions of what they do as the guiding foundation for the Matrix protocol, isn't that literally his fault since he's in charge? If the non-profit fails are all the people who donated their fucking money in hopes of it succeeding going to be happy that instead of being willing to take a haircut on pay to save the damn organization he was instead using their donated funds to fund his fucking lifestyle instead of, I don't know, living in a more modest area and doing more of the foundation business remotely?

Maybe someone shouldn't be taking on this kind of major risk and asking people for donations for the project if his kids are so fucking expensive. Nobody forced them to have those kids or live in a high cost of living area. Christ.

Not trying to be rude but they are not meeting their funding goals, which is his job. That's the entire point of the foundation existing, is to meet funding goals so they can continue to develop the protocol. If they aren't making enough money, should he take a paycut, or should they shut the whole thing down? It seems to me like they want to save the project he could take a modest pay cut, but that's just me.

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[-] Myro@lemm.ee 17 points 1 week ago

To be fair, that's the lowest executive salary I've seen in a looong time.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What's with the "Trust and Safety" bit? And are the events really necessary?

Edit: okay, it and "Trust and Safety" has something to do with moderation. They could probably get volunteers to do a lot of that though.

[-] Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago

Your solution to someone complaining that the boss is earning too much is to suggest they pay the other workers less (or not at all)?

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[-] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

Ah yes, exploit free labor. Capitalism's favorite way to make money.

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[-] Exec@pawb.social 4 points 1 week ago

Now 9 wonder if there's a similar report for Mozilla

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[-] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Matrix org isn't obligated to run a public instance at all - they could stick to developing the spec, and let other people run instances.

And honestly maybe they should, because then we wouldn't have this huge consolidation problem on matrix.org in the first place.

[-] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 33 points 1 week ago

so ... Matrix Nitro?

[-] IsaamoonKHGDT_6143@lemmy.zip 29 points 1 week ago

Matrix became the new Discord

[-] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit and only relies on donations to operate. Its core mission is to maintain the Matrix Specification, but it does much more than that.

Non-profit… only relies on donations…

This was taken quite literally at the bottom of that article.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 32 points 1 week ago

At some point donations become unsustainable. Like literally their options are to start charging or close up shop.

The smarter thing to do would be to rotate instances on sign-up to decentralize the Matrix-verse but it's probably too late now.

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[-] nroth@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago

The context in the article is important. Similar to what FUTO preaches-- people don't donate. That's why corporate solutions usually win. Better to charge a bit of money so we can have nice things.

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[-] flux@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago

Wish the homeserver portability would be worked on more. The ability to change homeserver would really allow people to more easily move on from matrix.org.

Myself included ;).

Optimally it would even allow the switch "after the fact", so after your original homeserver is down, assuming your client has a local copy of the server-side secret storage. It would need to be based on some cryptographic identity then, I suppose.

[-] derin@lemmy.beru.co 6 points 1 week ago

Yes, this would be a great feature - but it's a big issue to implement. It's talked about in this video, worth watching if you're curious about it.

As far as status go, this issue on the matrix spec is what you want to follow.

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[-] lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

We have been communicating on the lack of funds in the Foundation for a while now, the latest being here. And whilst we’ve been working hard to gather new members and are happy to see the number of logos increasing (thank you all for seeing the need for Matrix to stay independent and safe, and the value in supporting it!), none of the big players in the ecosystem have actually committed to one of the higher membership tiers, so we need to find other ways towards sustainability.

🤔

Sounds like that business plan isn't working out like you hoped...

And/Or not enough users care to use your product.

🤷‍♂️

[-] nroth@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

The plan was to rely on donations, which doesn't usually work for hosted products.

[-] shrugal@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

That's not how non-profit foundations work.

[-] lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

😂

Still need users. And folks who like/want/use the product enough to care to donate.

If neither is happening, you're business model is failing. Profit or nonprofit.

🤷‍♂️

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[-] zenpunk1337@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

I hope Matrix is not on its way to becoming Discord

[-] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago

i think the main problem was that when matrix was blowing up, matrix.org was the promoted server to sign up on.

i don't have a problem with this as it's just one server and you can always hop on another server if you like, though.

which reminds me, i do need to find another matrix (preferably queer focused) instance since i was on matrix.org

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[-] LWD@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[-] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

and the entire protcol with it, they just have better marketing than xmpp, and from what i read are even worse protocol.

[-] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 5 points 1 week ago

xmpp is still the best, nobody's ever going to change my mind. jabber 4 lyfe!

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 week ago

Spoken like someone who didn't work with the xmpp protocol

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[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 1 week ago

Hehe. Then all those busy rooms will be ded. This would be a huge problem for matrix. Not really technically (since you could add additional rooms from other servers), but more like brand damage.

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[-] kayky@thelemmy.club 8 points 1 week ago

Premium, dude!

Jokes aside, fuck this shit.

[-] Count042@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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