The actual number of employees included in the $68 million salary bill is far lower, because many of the over 550 WMF staff are contractors:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

According to the Form 990, there were 320 US employees and a small number of non-US employees in 2020:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikim...

Note the explanation of what's included in the salary costs here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRS_tax_related_information/...

So I reckoned the average salary cost is more like $200k per person:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

Top earners are here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikim...

> They have over 500 employees[2]. Not sure why they need so many

I would be totally fine with them hiring hundreds of translators to expand Wikipedia in other languages. English Wikipedia has 4x as many entries as most other languages. They clearly have the cash that they're spending on weird grants and projects that seem more tangential to their original purpose.

A link elsewhere mentioned that a lot of them are hired to handle the flows and distribution of money to e.g. charities / NGOs. I'm sure there's a lot of backhanded deals going on there.

Actually, 500 seems low. If this was a PA at [FAAMG] it would have 1000+ full-time employees (to say nothing about the salary).

Yeah, I'm sure they're just hiring people for the shits and gigs.

Actually I am sure that they are doing it for those reason. Like eh, we have money and it keeps coming as we beg for it. Why not hire a few more...