it sounds like desire for prudence at a quasi-public foundation.

it might be completely misplaced though.

but more transparency might help in this case too. make the job have some standard salary, make the contract public, and allow people to submit their resumes and let the board pick the best candidate. again, this might be super naive (it is!), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work.

of course if it's a requirement to have the CEO live in the Bay Area, continue growing the WMF (and in general do a lot more than keeping Wikipedia working well), then it's not surprising that the candidate pool is drastically smaller, and the money involved is a lot more.

(of course, again, maybe it's worth talking about what the public wants Wikipedia and the WMF to be, but ... maybe it's up to those who donate?)

No. I'm disputing the idea that this qualifies as merely being "treated well." Treated extravagantly would be more accurate, and from the budget of a non-profit no less.