Signal’s president reveals the cost of running the privacy-preserving platform—not just to drum up donations, but to call out the for-profit surveillance business models it competes against.
Signal’s operating costs: around $40 million this year
$14 million a year in infrastructure costs
$6 million annually, goes to telecom firms to pay for the SMS text messages Signal uses to send registration codes to verify new Signal accounts’ phone numbers
$19 million a year or so out of Signal’s budget pays for its staff. Signal now employs about 50 people
Staff budget seem crazy high with about 50 people. That’s an average of $31.666 per month per employee.
Adding up the 7 listed employees there is about $3.5 million, leaving $15.5 million for the remaining 47 employees, giving an average of $360,000 a year per employee. Damn good wage.
I had a staff of 16 mid-level technicians and payroll was about 4 million. Benefits and other crap that didn’t end up on the paycheck are included in payroll.
Staff budget seem crazy high with about 50 people. That’s an average of $31.666 per month per employee.
In all likelihood a lot of that goes to the top 5 of those 50. If I’m wrong… good.
You can see compensation here https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840
Hmm, COO/CTO making $450k-650k a year is high for a non profit but, not obnoxiously high
Their president makes less than $200k
Adding up the 7 listed employees there is about $3.5 million, leaving $15.5 million for the remaining 47 employees, giving an average of $360,000 a year per employee. Damn good wage.
These guys are way smarter than me and have clearly thought about this, but 15% of your operating costs seems wildly high for verifying phone numbers.
I had a staff of 16 mid-level technicians and payroll was about 4 million. Benefits and other crap that didn’t end up on the paycheck are included in payroll.
Still might be high, but if that’s budget #s, the employee pay is much lower after taking into about related overhead.
Like HanDman said, hopefully it’s not all going to the top handful.
6 million annually? could they not find some other means to verify or remove the requirement altogether - insanity