Re: [SAGE] SAGE Memo to Members, 9/6/2005

[Trey Harris <trey@eecs.harvard.edu>]

In a message dated Tue, 13 Sep 2005, {Darkavich} writes:
> So as a member, I ask the question:
>   Did we really pay someone a quarter of a million dollars a year?

No, assuming "we" means SAGE.  SAGE never paid anyone a quarter of a 
million dollars a year.  As an STG, the SAGE Exec never had direct control 
over compensation, so as a former Exec member, I can't comment as to 
anyone's compensation levels.

> If true, something seems very wrong about that. I am all for paying people 
> for their time, but for a not-for-profit, that seems a waste of money.

Many doctors work for non-profits, and many make considerably more than 
that.  I'm not comparing the work of doctors to the work USENIX or SAGE 
do, I'm just pointing out that it's not intrinsically true that 
non-profits would be wasting money paying such a salary.

As in any field, you have to look at the going salary range and offer what 
the market demands for good people, or else settle for not-so-good people. 
Some capable professionals will take a pay-cut for the good of the 
cause--in fact all who work for non-profits do, as non-profit salaries are 
across the board lower than the equivalent positions in for-profits 
(considerably lower, if you consider that profit-sharing is by definition 
disallowed in a non-profit).

But taking a pay-cut for the cause does not mean that highly-skilled chief 
executives like Ellie Young are not, in fact, highly-skilled chief 
executives, and in a large organization should be paid accordingly. 
(Some nonprofit chief executives, the ACLU's springs to mind, are 
self-made individuals who take no salary.  But this is not a reasonable 
requirement to hold non-profit CEOs to.)

The new SAGE is a rather smaller organization in terms of revenues (a good 
correlative factor for corporate CEO salaries), and so I personally doubt 
we would be in a position to pay anyone the kind of numbers you're talking 
about for a good long while.  But if we were a much larger, multi-million 
dollar a year organization, would it make any sense to settle on a less 
capable executive staff, or to demand staff take a salary less than their 
worth, just out of a sense of "nonprofits shouldn't do that"?

(Some may find it irritating that *anyone* at an organization of X's, be 
they sysadmins, welders or widget-inspectors, would make more than X's 
themselves do.  But the CEO of a widget-inspector's association is not a 
kind of widget-inspector; he or she is, in fact, a CEO.)

Trey
(speaking for myself)