I find it interesting they are laying off 7% of their staff while hiring new developers. I say this as they had a job post in DC recently saying we could join their growing company. Are they growing or retracting?
People are not fungible.
Mozilla lays off 70
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Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#4270 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.
Would love to see the compensation their board members and execs are claiming.
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For VPs and above, we benchmark compensation against a blended peer group comprised of 70% similarly-sized public and private tech companies and 30% non-profit organizations. This approach serves to reinforce our mission-first orientation. Consistent with market best practice, at least 70% of compensation for senior leadership is “at risk” and tied to individual and company performance.
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The CEO (Mitchell Baker) made around $2.3M in 2017.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#43Not sure of Mozilla’s financial or organizational structure but it seems to be part of a larger trend of de-emphasizing QA departments at software shops large and small over the past 10 or so years.
In many ways test automation tooling has become much easier to use, develop, and manage.
But I suspect the larger driving force is that it’s (arguably) a cost center for an org. The burden of ensuring software quality can be shifted to devs and PMs, though usually with mixed results.
For Mozilla, axing quality and security first is a bad look when those are crucial aspects of a privacy-first company value.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#44Mozilla should just ship Chromium with privacy oriented features. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel and keep iterating on Gecko when its obvious there's less and less demand for it, especially when it costs them so much money.
If Firefox was actually gaining share I'd feel differently, but I'd rather see Mozilla switch tech stacks than fizzle out and die.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#45I 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?
Nowadays, a small team is simply not enough to develop a browser and keep up with the competition. Unless you fork Chrome, of course.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#46in 2018, mozilla had 368 million USD in assets: 2018 financials: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201... wow, 2.5 million for the executive chair of Mozilla in 2018. is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company. this is in addition to the 2.x million from the year before. 10s of million exfiltrated out of a non-profit by one person over the last few years. n…
They probably need to feed their children.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#4770 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.
Would love to see the compensation their board members and execs are claiming.
Because the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, this information is public, at least partially! The latest numbers are from 2018.
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...
Check out page 7.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I baked the employer tax and non-monetary compensation into the $200,000 estimation.
If most of their employees live in high COL areas like Mountain View, CA, then the 200K figure seems very fair. Maybe even low.
They don't appear to, however. For another response, I was looking at their 2019 financials, and for the Mozilla Foundation unit, 60 employees cost about $11M. I stand by my guesstimate of $200,000 as a high estimate.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bene…
Bower's 1970 book "Managing the Resource Allocation Process" discusses how in reality it's the other way around. Leadership often struggles to manage the company strategically. Often how employees are measured (in this case looking at who was let go) drives strategy. For example, if a company states privacy is it's #1 goal but bonuses on revenue generation, privacy efforts may go nowhere.
With that in mind I think the parent comment is right. Leadership can say what they will but it's ultimately up to the people doing the work that drives the actual strategy.
Re: Mozilla lays off 70
#50Statement from Mozilla: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-fu...