Signal CEO paid $735K/year while Signal Foundation 'begged' for donations

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https://xcancel.com/kaepora/status/1856001345125261783#m

In July, I posted based on insider knowledge that Signal Foundation president @mer__edith had asked for 1M USD compensation while Signal Foundation begged for donations. Many were skeptical of my claim; fortunately, 2023’s Form 990 is now available: https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2023/824/506/2023-824506840-202412689349301826-9.pdf

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Where is this thread supposed to be going? Shaming the CEO for earning money?
Paying the director/president of a company like Signal $735k/a seems pretty modest actually.

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Not really, just letting people know as this is public data and the Signal Foundation got $50m loan, not a grant from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.

$735k/a seems pretty modest actually.

Based on what calculations?

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Where was there any shame directed at Meredith or Signal?

I find this information helpful when considering who I donate to. For example, the impact of my hard earned $100 to a project like maybe Picocrypt is significant.

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One thing of note here is that this person had a public beef with meredith not to long ago.

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Okay?

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Based on what other directors of large international companies earn.

e.g.

The typical worker at Meta last year made $379,000.

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You probably mean Nadim Kobeissi (@kaepora) author of the tweet, so readers are not confused on who is that person.

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Meta is 1.4 trillion giant for-profit corporation. Signal Foundation relies on donations and loans.

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Oh its alright, I am not trying to make his point or this thread worth less. But in a case of negative press, I always try to keep personal bonds between people in mind, as a bit of extra context, thats all.

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Correct and that’s why $735k is rather modest/low even.

The director has lots of responsibilities and Meredith represented Signal quite well to the public most of the time IMHO.

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Who said she asked for it? Signal determined it was a food foundation.

And 754K is not 1M.

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Obviously, people are free to disagree with this level of compensation, but it feels to me like that issue eclipses the Signal Foundation and extends to the industry as a whole.

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A common heard reason for highly compensated CEO’s, like what happens with charities, is that the for profit pays them that much more money, and else they would not find a person with the needed skills and expertise/experience for the roll. I do not have problem with high compensations, as long as the person provides enough value to their project or company.

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So they’re getting Meredith for a steal tbh

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They got a 50 million dollar loan and with their costs increasing every year, the CEO shouldn’t be getting that much. I’m not saying she shouldn’t get paid, they should at least cut her salary and focus on overprofiting (at least to cover that loan).

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I would note that—even ignoring all revenue and expenses—the amount of cash and stocks they have on hand is already greater than the outstanding loan amount.

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They are working on that.

It’s a Signal thing. We’re focusing on the EU, and growing our market, and figuring out who potential partners could be.

Meredith in response to a question about her spending the summer in Paris. In this interview earlier this year.

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A note, the title says $750,000 a year, but all mentioned sources show $735,000.

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Technically a loan, realistically and practically it’s not really a typical loan or a grant.

Brian Acton’s “loan” is:

  1. zero interest
  2. unsecured [1]
  3. Not due to be repayed for 50 years (at which point Acton will most likely be dead, he would be ~96 if still living)

On a separate note, I’ve always considered users getting upset about (comparatively low but big sounding) salaries to be a distraction, and more of an emotional than a rational or constructive criticism. Because:

  1. the numbers that seem to upset people are typically essentially just rounding errors compared to the overall budget of the organization (if Signal’s CEO worked for free, Signal would be in exactly the same financial position (seeking sustainability), if Mozilla’s CEO worked for free they’d be in the same financial position (sustainable). Salary brings out the pitchforks, but it is neither the cause nor the solution to Signal’s sustainability problem.
  2. Non-profits are already at a large disadvantage compared to tech-giants and for profit startups, and further requiring that anyone who wants to devote themselves to non-profit work must take an even larger paycut than they already do just exacerbates the disadvantage. Mozilla’s target compensation is roughly 2/3 of the compensation of comparably sized for-profits, and the CEO makes considerably less than that, and that still invites criticism. How to attract talented competent committed people who won’t burn out fast if you expect them to work an extremely unforgiving and stressful job for a fraction of what their peers in the private sector earn.

edit: just want to be clear, i’m not intending to be completely dismissive of salary as a valid concern. Just that it is often misunderstood, and receives disproportionately more attention than it deserves when it is stripped of context and proportionality, in situations where it couldn’t mathematically or practically make a substantial difference.

  1. An unsecured loan is a type of loan that does not require any collateral, meaning the lender does not have a claim to the borrower’s assets if they fail to repay the loan ↩︎

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