Eugen Rochko, CEO and founder of decentralized social network Mastodon, is stepping down after nearly a decade at the helm and walking away with a sizable exit payment.
“Mastodon grew beyond any of my expectations,” he said. “The past two years especially have been overwhelming, and my mental and physical health have taken a dip.”
Rochko’s move has, by his own admission, been a while coming. In April 2024, the establishment of a US nonprofit was announced with a governing board of directors that included Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Rochko also announced that his ownership of the trademark and other assets were headed to the nonprofit.
While a blow to the Fediverse community, Rochko’s decision is understandable.
This looks more like healthy sustainable growth than “a blow” . Reducing the risk of burnout of the project lead, and transferring ownership of trademarks from an individual to a non-profit are good things for the long term
I know nothing about the European software market, but translating this in American, $100,000/year for a principal developer and lead of a project of this scale is like paying him 33%-50% of a US salary for those 10 years.
I’m a firm believer that people - including open source contributors - should be compensated for their time when an avenue exists that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the project. Mastodon an amazing platform and I wish him, and the project, nothing but the best.
us software salaries are insanely high compared to the rest of the world, because the cost of living in SV is insanely high.
with a €60k a year salary i’m in the 90th percentile of earners in my country and it took me about two years to have enough to finance my own three-bedroom apartment on one income.
Is the housing market in Sweden less crazy than other places?
It took me almost 10 years to save for my home and I had to move out of my city (Barcelona) to a small town since there was no way I could afford anything decent, even with a good Senior Software Engineer salary.
sweden is so sparsely populated that some places have more empty houses than people. population density is about a quarter that of spain. the big cities are closer to the rest of europe, with homes going for three to four times the price of something an hour away and the rent queue being dominated by people who have been there since the 90s.
i bought a 70ish sqm apartment for about €100k two-ish hours from stockholm. in the city that would probably go for 5-20x the cost (depending on area) and have at least double the monthly cost.
us software salaries are insanely high compared to the rest of the world, because the cost of living in SV is insanely high.
I moved from Australia to the San Francisco Bay Area. My starting income was maybe 3x what I was getting paid in Australia, but the cost of living definitely wasn’t 3x higher. Major Australian cities are considered HCOL (high cost of living) areas too. Some things like electronics and food were cheaper in the USA too, at least until inflation and tariffs made everything go up.
what about insurance and healthcare?
The healthcare system in the US isn’t great, but you do get a decent experience if you have an employer that offers good insurance. My employer pays most of the cost of my health insurance. I pay around $200/month for my wife and I, but that’s pre-tax money, and the plan is great for US standards. $15 for doctor visits and $100 maximum for ER visits.
In Australia we pay a 1.5% tax to fund the public health care system, so for a $60k salary that’s $900/year.
those costs are insane, the us one because it’s so high and the oz one for being so low. i think about 20% of our total tax revenue goes to care (health and elderly). for me that’s something like €3500.
That’s great, good for you!
Can I ask what country?as evidenced by the instance i’m on, sweden.
which of course also means that i did the normal stupid we do here and gave the amount before taxes. the take-home from that is more like €40k.
That Matthew Hodgson quote is good.
“Unhappy users tend to be disproportionately loud given the issues at stake, and there’s a huge risk of optimizing to appease those who shout loudest in the short-term rather than find medium-term solutions which solve for everyone.”
I wish we applied the amount of scrutiny seen here to actual billionaires.
An important note missing from this article (but included in others) is that Jeff Atwood, the founder of Stack Overflow, donated 2.2 million Euros to Mastodon. That’s likely partially where the 1 million Euro payout for the CEO came from.
I thought it was a German non-profit before? Why would anyone move it to the US? Is this some kind of hostile takeover?
It was, and still is. It hasn’t moved to the US, it just also opened a nonprofit there, so the US donations they receive from US people are tax deductible in the US. If I remember correctly they have also opened a non-profit in Belgium which is I think where they are intending to actually move their assets and do most of their work going forward as I think they’ve had various issues with the German organization also.
According to https://joinmastodon.org/about :
Mastodon gGmbH is a non-profit from Germany that develops the Mastodon software.
[…]
Mastodon, Inc. is a non-profit entity in the United States that supports the growth and operational capabilities of Mastodon, including being able to receive tax-deductible U.S. donations and in-kind support.
Doesn’t seem like it was a move, just a different entity. Seems like there’s a bit more history to this if you want to look it up, for example the German GmbH lost its nonprofit status in 2024, strangely.
German GmbH lost its nonprofit status in 2024, strangely.
Maybe because þey were doing þings like hiving þe executive officers million-dollar payouts?
? what the fuck what kind of scam is this. so you donate them money for this guy to be rich
For this guy to be paid for all his previous work for which he was supposedly very much underpaid just like almost every open source dev out there. For relinquishing control of the project to a new non-profit he can have 10 million for all i care. From the original announcement:
For our team, a vital aspect of getting this restructuring right was making sure that Eugen was compensated fairly for Mastodon’s brand trademark, assets, and the 10 years he spent building Mastodon into what it is today (while taking less than a fair market salary). Based on replacement costs, Eugen’s time and effort, and the fair market value of the Mastodon brand, its associated properties, and the social network, we settled on a one-time compensation of EUR 1M. We are deeply grateful for his past contributions, and look forward to his contributions still to come.
what was his salary in the 10 years each?
Idk man and i dont care. He probably couldve chosen to be a greedy asshole and sell to some big tech company for 100M but instead he took enough to buy a house and live in peace.
Good on you for replying like that. Behavior like this drives people out of open source, people are too easily outraged whenever money is mentioned.
The graceful Tom from MySpace exit.
In 2023, it was €5.000/month (source).
That‘s about as much as a full stack software developer makes in Germany working a 40h week (source).
Seeing that he was a CEO, definitely worked more than 40 hours per week and was the driving force behind Mastodon, I, as someone who supports them financially, am totally okay with him getting a big payout now.
The articles I’ve seen say that it was for the past 10 years of work, some amount of which was unpaid
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/mastodon-ceo-steps-down-as-the-social-network-restructures/
With the revamp, Mastodon has the potential to expand its business, product, and mission, without being dependent on a single person’s leadership. It will also give Rochko a break, as he’s been singularly focused on Mastodon for the past 10 years.
Going forward, Rochko will continue contributing to Mastodon as an adviser. He has also been compensated with a one-time payment of €1 million, given that he took less than a fair market salary over the years while building Mastodon.
I don’t have insight into the decision making process that went into deciding on that amount, maybe it’s less than what he should have been compensated for, maybe it’s more. But it sounds like they reached that decision amicably
Why don’t you like people being paid for their work?
Y’all know damn well Corridor8031 didn’t donate a dime.
