Wikimedia Foundation Employee Reviews about "wikipedia"

Pros

The Wikimedia Foundation provides some of the most stable, well paying jobs in the non-profit industry, including an excellent benefits package (from a US perspective, for US employees). Everyone is smart and mission motivated. The work is global in scope, and Wikipedia is a household name. While there are gaps, HR genuinely tries to care for employee wellbeing.

Cons

Some people struggle to adjust to a work culture that is heavily consensus driven and involves working for/alongside large volunteer communities. This heightens the role of individual leaders and personalities, causes more internal change, and can make decision making opaque. If you can learn to roll with this - and most people do - it's a wonderful place to work.

Pros

Mission Mostly cool, dedicated people Decent benefits The Wikipedia Community Brand awareness (to say you work here draws some attention)

Cons

Office politics Leadership hinders productivity Unfair practices They talk about equity, but don't actually practice it accross the board Company culture has declined in the last few years

Pros

Most people love Wikipedia, and the movement is amazing. Being part of that is special. Pay is pretty good for a non-profit. Since it was largely remote already and hasn't yet lost revenue, its been a safe haven during COVID, and handled the current crisis relatively effectively. Many talented, interesting and inspiring people.

Cons

As expressed in many reviews here, the leadership culture and specifically the c-team, their incentives and thinking, are really prime examples of American corporate leadership culture gone wrong. Little to no accountability, deep distrust, inability to hear "no", self-serving and personally ambitious, disrespectful of the values of staff and movement, focused on corporatizing and growing their control over participating as respectful partners to staff and volunteers. Years of negative staff surveys, particularly around leadership vision and accountability are basically shrugged off. The situation is particularly bad for middle and upper managers or people with significant experience. It can be a good place to work, but do not expect effective, thoughtful, values driven leadership. And do not trust the responses from HR or whoever that it is being "fixed". Thats been the song and dance for 5+ years of ups and downs. The incentives are not there for the leadership to change their behavior or way of thinking. HR can only do so much, and they too report to 2 c-levels who are part of the problem. So it is likely to remain this way, though more ups and downs, leaders coming and going, until economic circumstances or governance reforms force a change.

Pros

There are no pros, only cons; not a single pro~

Cons

They dont care about privacy of an individual. Especially when they kick you out they spill the beans on you and publish lies all over internet. You are dead to them. You are not human. There is a book: how bunch of nobodies built wikipedia and that is very true, super nobodies forever!!! One should never deal with wikimedia in any shape or form, wikimedia/wikipedia aka wikipedoia should never be sponsored, they are too liberal and not neutral to say the least!~~~!!!

Pros

I love working at the Foundation because I find the content of my job endlessly interesting -- it is amazing how the global movement puts Wikipedia and its sister projects together piece by piece. I love to learn more about it every day. Though earlier reviews discuss difficult internal politics of the organization, I find that people are not here to climb the ladder -- I really get the sense that the team is there to move the mission forward. That ethos infuses the work every day. I also appreciate that our product operation is well-resourced, and product teams are given the independence to creatively pursue our goals without being micro-managed or distracted. Finally, the Foundation puts a premium on work-life balance. I do not find myself working late or on weekends. Vacation is encouraged and respected.

Cons

Interestingly, even though the Wikimedia Foundation has been around for over 15 years, the product operation still sometimes feels like a startup. There are still a lot of processes and communication channels that need to be put in place.

Pros

Bright and conscientious colleagues. Family friendly. Some of the perks of a tech company with the mission and values of a non-profit. The ability to work for a worldwide recognized brand with a core of social good.

Cons

Bureaucracy rears its head. Some staff are entrenched and it can be difficult to collaborate among teams. Wikipedia is a vast, complicated, distributed project with some of the typical nonprofit malaise - inefficiencies, attempts at consensus that can't be reached, and tension between staff and community.

Pros

Great mission, Great job satisfaction, everyone I know is excited to hear I work at 'Wikipedia'. Good benefits. OK office. Some cool tech. Good engineering tools. 9-5 hours.

Cons

PHP. Low pay. Fear of changes. Top management has almost completely flipped since Lila took over in 2015. (including bosses who have come and gone since then) It's really tough to get work done when your boss keeps changing.

Pros

Meaty challenges and a chance to work with a relatively small team on one of the broadest reaching, most impactful endeavors on the planet. Great mission, great people and a great blend of non-profit/tech company. A lot of individual freedom to make decisions, relative to other places.

Cons

Given the importance of and passion behind Wikipedia, moving things forward can mean dealing with more friction than other places.

Pros

You will be exposed to the one of the most successful collaborative knowledge projects of all time -- Wikipedia --which is a huge draw for most people. And most of your colleagues are passionate people that care about the mission. If you want to work at a slow and safe bureaucratic institution that's well-funded, then this is the place for you. If you're coming from the non-profit world, it's a nice cushy gig. The pay and benefits are above average, and the politics and promotions more closely resemble this sector.

Cons

If you are NOT on a non-profit career path and want to grow and improve your skills and career, then this is NOT the place for you. It is difficult to find a career path at Wikimedia. Although there are still a few star employees scattered throughout the organization, most of the talent has left over the last couple years. If you compare the majority of senior level staff (C-Level, Directors, etc.) with their counterparts from other organizations, they are typically a notch or two below in experience, skill-set, and talent. It's almost ridiculous, how bad the leadership has been over the years. If Wikimedia did not have an amazing project like Wikipedia to lean on, it would receive a ONE star rating. Although you'll be working on an amazing project -- Wikipedia -- the phenomenal growth period is over and your contribution/impact will be marginal at best. Wikimedia also claims to champion several organizational values such as transparency, openness, and fairness, but it can't live up to any of them. If you want to work with the brightest and most innovative diligent minds in product/technology, you should go to another company (and there are lots of options out there). You'll also get compensated much better elsewhere.

Pros

Good location in downtown San Francisco, great benefits package, international travel opportunities, idyllic mission. Good pay for non-profit, bad pay for tech firm. Many passionate people, too.

Cons

First career for many of the employees - HR tends to hire people they know or people who are volunteers in the Wikipedia community leading to an unstable, unprofessional, often weird environment. Staff have to answer to community members who contribute to websites and it's often confrontational and bossy. Community will override changes made to websites if they want and complain very publicly if they dislike actions taken by Foundation. Leadership often lacks professionalism when handling harassment, hiring, privacy, and community interactions. Nothing like you'll ever experience at any other company or organization. Turnover rate is fairly frequent, staff averages less than two years. Many good people leave this place broken, and have a hard time getting jobs due to the Foundation being a non-profit not a tech firm. Double standards about firings - one person does one thing that is terrible and they get a slap on the wrist, others do things that could have been helped and get fired. Recent firing of one employee was posted on a mailing list and was published in online news outlets, no other organization or company would do that to a low level employee. Lots of partying at conferences and sometimes in house - can be OK but sometimes excessive and can distract you from your job. Start up mentality leads to people sleeping at the office, expecting video games and special treatment.