Technology

37666 readers

196 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

Los@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

246

Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive (signal.org)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by fer0n@lemm.ee to c/technology@beehaw.org

95 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 15 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Is it just me or is $19 million per year for 50 full-time employees insane?

Even for US salary standards.

[–] KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml 30 points 10 months ago

Not necessarily.

Signal has people who are experts in their field. They engineer solutions that don't exist anywhere else in the market to ensure they have as little information on you as possible while keeping you secure [0]. This in turn means high compensation + benefits. You don't want to be paying your key developers peanuts as that makes them liable to taking bribes from adversaries to "oops" a security vulnerability in the service. In addition, the higher compensation is a great way to mitigate losing talent to private organizations who can afford it.

[0] Signal has engineered the following technologies that all work to ensure your privacy and security:

[–] phoenixes@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago

My guess: People who can be as competent with security as they need are very expensive.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Not at all. That's $380K per person if everyone is making the same. Engineers with a few years of experience at Meta make $400K+.

[–] EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget the employer taxes, insurance, recruitment costs and so on. It wouldn't surprise me if the employees are earning on average half that.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

Exactly.

[–] Jellewho@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

For the current distribution I quote from the linked source :

Current Infrastructure Costs (as of November 2023): Approximately $14 million dollars per year.

Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year.
Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year.
Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year.
Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year.
Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year.

[–] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but I was talking about the salary part, which is separate from the costs you mentioned.

It's 19 million just for people.

[–] Jellewho@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

Yhea no worries, I was just trying to get all the budgets together. I agree it seems quite an high budget

[–] li10@feddit.uk 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Also from the source:

To sustain our ongoing development efforts, about half of Signal’s overall operating budget goes towards recruiting, compensating, and retaining the people who build and care for Signal. When benefits, HR services, taxes, recruiting, and salaries are included, this translates to around $19 million dollars per year.