Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...
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.
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.
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:
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.