I thought Mozilla was a foundation not a company.
Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corp.
Mozilla lays off 70
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Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#2270 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA). It feels like a better compromise could have been made.
The person who thought about this for 30 seconds and did some back of the envelope multiplication definitely knows how to allocate resources better than the people who do this every day.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#2370 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA). It feels like a better compromise could have been made.
This might be a sign for other employees that they need to focus on the things that can help Mozilla actually earn more and not just be a good guy. It may sound horrible, but considering their market share dynamics it makes sense.
Remember the PR disaster they had when they bundled Pocket?
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#24I thought Mozilla was a foundation not a company.
It's both. When I worked there, the Foundation (non-profit) owned the Corporation (for-profit). If you donate to Mozilla it's going to the non-profit org.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised they're laying off security and QA, considering how focused on privacy and security their marketing campaign seems to be. In the last 6 months, I think 90% of cases where I saw Mozilla mentioned were about how it's the 'hot new browser' for the privacy-concerned. Although, perhaps, that's more to do with a good marketing team and less with a sprawling security department? Would love to see some expert o…
Perhaps Rust is delivering better than expected results.
Only a tiny part of Firefox is in Rust now.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#26I don't understand Mozilla. How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends $450m annually and dedicates $43m just for future endeavors? Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team?
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#27Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456 This is about 7% of all their employees. People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked. A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-... > In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Ba…
It was Microsoft (or other company I don't recall) that every 5 years would lay off 5% of its work force (the least capable or productive people) - this would cause those that remain to work harder next year. Then, they would open positions. Rinse and repeat.
General Electric was famous for doing this is the problem is you cant keep doing it every year.
Also people just game the system and only do what will get them a good review.
I know some on at a big UK company who was bucking for a promotion and they blew through 1 Mill and 15 Man years for no good reason.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#2870 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA). It feels like a better compromise could have been made.
This might be a sign for other employees that they need to focus on the things that can help Mozilla actually earn more and not just be a good guy. It may sound horrible, but considering their market share dynamics it makes sense.
Employees don't drive a large company's focus. Driving the focus and direction of the company is the job of Mozilla's leadership. It's the directors' job to transform that direction and focus into actionable plans, the managers' job to drive those plans, and the employee's job to implement the plans.
The employees, in all reality, don't have the power to drive the direction and focus of a large company; that's a benefit limited to startups and small businesses.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#29Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456 This is about 7% of all their employees. People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked. A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-... > In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Ba…
I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place.
I'm also surprised they haven't tried to create commercial mail and communications products. Thunderbird used to be one of the best options out there, and they could easily spin this off into a SaaS and self-host product on the server component. As much as I hated Lotus Notes, something between Lotus Notes, Outlook and MS Teams could be something great and that the Mozilla org would be in a good position to create.
I know they may have good reach with the VPN service as well... I'm unsure how they can reduce security, qa and release management people when orchestration, automation and verification are such huge needs.
They get enough income from search (for now) that they could concentrate on best of breed tech, build mindshare from that, then re-introduce marketing for critical mass.