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...
  • wintermuteEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    It’s not only salaries:

    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.

    • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      72·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • wintermuteEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • crispy_kilt@feddit.deEnglish
        1211·
        1 year ago

        Believe me, one seriously awesome software developer for 400k achieves more than 10 shitty ones at 100k each.

        • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • crispy_kilt@feddit.deEnglish
            66·
            1 year ago

            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:

            The same dynamic played out again when Signal introduced support for animated GIF searches on Android and iOS. Instead of quickly and easily integrating the standard GIF search SDK that most other apps were using, engineers spent considerable time and creativity developing another unique privacy-preserving technique that hides GIF search terms from Signal’s servers, while also hiding who is searching for those terms from the GIF search engine itself. We later expanded those techniques to further obfuscate GIF search information by obscuring the amount of traffic that passes through the proxied connection.

            When Meta acquired GIPHY, and many other apps were scrambling to contend with the privacy implications of the deal, Signal employees slept soundly knowing that we had already built this feature correctly several years earlier.

      • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Tyfud@lemmy.oneEnglish
        712·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Ok so how do they get these 19 million dollars? The app is free right?

      They don’t sell user data right? So… How will this app ever be profitable? Charging for it may convince some small number of users but not enough to cover 19 million costs.

      • wintermuteEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Donations and grants from particulars and organizations or funds. You can do a one-time or recurring donation directly from the app.

        It’s a non-profit, so they don’t need to be profitable, just cover the costs.

        • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Is there a public record of who donates? Seems weird to get 19 million dollars in donations. Would be very interesting to know who donates.