View source for Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Foundation Details/en

=== Compensation Principles ===
Over the past two years, the Wikimedia Foundation has standardized its compensation principles for all employees. The table below illustrates how the Foundation's compensation approach has evolved over the past decade, including the most recent steps we have taken this year. 

The Wikimedia Foundation's approach to compensation is designed to enable a diverse hiring and staffing strategy that mirrors the global Movement of free knowledge that we support; create equivalent pay conditions internationally so that talent is attracted to and remains with Wikimedia across countries with different wage ranges and varying economic landscapes; and provide staff with a salary that reflects our non-profit status while keeping them meaningfully engaged with the work. The Foundation's compensation principles take into account several factors in order to determine appropriate compensation for each role:

# '''External salary benchmarks.''' The Foundation uses an established third party compensation survey to benchmark salaries with the median base salary of similar roles across different industries in the location we are hiring. The survey includes data aggregated from international companies that operate within that specific location/country. 
# '''Cost of living data.''' Cost of living calculations, which can include comparisons for housing, food, transportation, and other necessities are also factored into compensation ranges for roles at the Foundation, pulling from multiple established data sources.
# '''Job families.''' The Foundation hires across a wide range of roles and skill sets (more on this below) which are grouped into job families. Compensation principles also take into account job families and levels within each job family.
# '''Available budget.''' Finally, compensation is also based on the Foundation's available budget at the time.

'''Job Families and Progressions.''' One of the complexities that distinguishes the Foundation from other similarly-sized nonprofit organizations is the wide range of roles we hire for – spanning from highly technical to non-technical roles, across so many different geographies. This extends from software developers, engineers, designers, product managers, data scientists to people who specialize in communications, grantmaking, information technology, human resources, financial management, legal affairs, and fundraising. The Foundation currently has 17 job families across all of its teams. These job families include categories such as "Talent and Culture (HR)," "Product Management," "Quality," and "Administrative Services and Facilities." Within each job family are nine job levels - five individual contributor levels ranging from "Associate" to "Principal," and four manager levels ranging from "Manager" to "Vice President." The nine job levels within the 17 job families provide progression for staff at each level. These details will periodically be reviewed and updated as needed.

'''Staff overview.''' Staff at the Foundation are a group of over 700 people who collectively speak over 75 languages (and counting!) and span almost every timezone, across [[Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia regions#2022 Wikimedia Foundation regions|all eight Wikimedia regions]]. The Foundation will share this snapshot of total headcount, geographic distribution, and growth analytics on a yearly basis in the Annual Plan. 

{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="3" |At a Glance on 31 December 2022
|-
!Our total headcount
!<big>711</big>
|We had 711 total Foundation staff on 31 December 2022.
|-
!Countries
!<big>57</big>
|Our people are located across 57 countries and all continents except Antarctica.
|-
!Growth in headcount
!<big>10%</big>
|The headcount has grown by 10% in the past 12 months (Dec 2021 – Dec 2022). This is down from 15% in the last quarter, and is down from 30% in the prior fiscal year.
|-
!Non-US Workers
!<big>49%</big>
|49% of our workers are located outside of the USA.
|-
!Tenure in years
!<big>3.8</big>
|Staff members are staying on the average for about 3.8 years.
|}

'''Increased visibility of pay and executive compensation.''' In response to changing regulations in the US, as well as our increased commitment to pay visibility, the Foundation [[wmfblog:2023/02/17/wikimedia-foundation-remote-first-and-global-community-of-staff/|recently announced]] a practice of including salary ranges for US salaries in job postings. This is in addition to the compensation details published for top executives in our Form 990 financial disclosures annually. 

Over the last year, two new executives joined the Wikimedia Foundation. Their executive compensation will not be reported in this year's Form 990 (which will be published next month) because these salaries will technically require disclosure in a future reporting cycle. To provide more visibility into the Foundation's executive pay levels, their base salary is being provided proactively below. As mentioned above, these salaries were set using an established third party compensation survey that benchmarks to median base salaries (e.g. 50th percentile) of similar roles across different industries in a specific geography, in this case the United States. This means that these salaries are in the middle of the range for executive salaries for similar positions.

* Maryana Iskander, Chief Executive Officer base compensation (joined January 2022): USD $453,000

* Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer base compensation (joined August 2022): USD $420,000

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