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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#131

Post by marcinzm »

aaomidi wrote: post #84
EduardoBautista wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that is an unreasonable salary for the CEO of a highly influential tech company. CEO pay for other large tech companies is much higher.

There's hundreds of other engineers that can probably do as good of a job or better than him. Just because someone has a CEO label doesn't mean they have to be paid extreme amounts of money.

>There's hundreds of other engineers that can probably do as good of a job or better than him.

Says only someone who hasn't seen what happens when the average IC is forced into management.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#132

Post by plufz »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #54
petagonoral wrote: post #35

in 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…

> is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company. Probably not but that is what the market cost is. I have no doubt the executive chair of Mozilla has other offers.

There are surely other studies but according to an MSCI-study the correlation between ceo salary and company performance is negative. Guessing there is some lower limit though. https://www.msci.com/www/research-paper/are-ceos-paid-for-pe...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#133

Post by _-david-_ »

Sammi wrote: post #64
tracker1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The world today is different. Can't skimp on marketing any more, as the competition is extremely heavy on marketing.

I don't think I have seen any marketing material from Mozilla. I have seen some Chrome marketing though.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#134

Post by coldtea »

demygale wrote: post #78
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company. Probably not but that is what the market cost is. I have no doubt the executive chair of Mozilla has other offers.

I’ll do it for 1.5.

That would be a bargain if you had other offers for more.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#135

Post by doctorpangloss »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #39

I'm looking forward to some paid products from Mozilla (including the vpn). Privacy focused personal zeroknowledge cloud things are needed. I'd love to have a more elaborate version of Firefox Sync that worked across chromium (and I'd pay for it). The obvious calendar, mail, etc. I'd pay for a zeroknowledge hosted Berners Lee Solid service. Do this stuff and I'll pay well for it.

Maybe just keychain integration on macOS. It's too bad that's not a priority. [1]

Keychain support is the only reason I recommend Safari, because password sharing with iOS is so important.

On Windows it's a big mindshare problem. So I'm supportive of their marketing efforts.

Their best bet is to do affiliate selling. E.g. discount Dropbox subs originating from Firefox.

Don't focus on stuff that Google does well, like e-mail. Focus on stuff Windows does poorly, like OneDrive.

So you're right on the money with password sync. Basically nonexistent in Windows. 1password affiliate selling = A+.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#136

Post by kevingadd »

dullroar wrote: post #57
kevingadd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would be interested in hearing more about your views on this. I use Firefox and Thunderbird almost exclusively, and every time I think about donating money I then remember all the wasted time and effort they've poured into what seem to be pipe dreams over the years. I WANT them to succeed. I WANT there to be an alternative on the desktop to Chrome (now that Edge is basically rebranded Chromium), and on iOS to both Ch…

Not really able to make a good argument against it, the poor leadership I had to deal with is one of the reasons I left.

I'm still happy to use Firefox and want them to not have to rely on Google Search placement for funding but the company has a shaky track record and it's reasonable to view them critically.

FWIW while Firefox OS was a failure I don't actually view that project as a mistake - trying to give mobile phone users more freedom was a good idea, and we've seen how things have worked out. But they didn't do a very good job of it and that largely is the fault of upper leadership.

On the bright side the worst person I worked with there is no longer making decisions for the company, so that's great.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#138

Post by jahlove »

bzbarsky wrote: post #112
jahlove wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made $450m in revenue in 2018. What fraction of that is actually needed to keep a productive browser team afloat?

How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be? How big do you think the Chromium team is?

> How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be?

Wait, that was my question...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#139

Post by tapoxi »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #108
tapoxi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand that argument, IE was a closed source browser, Chromium is BSD-licensed. If anything the closest comparison is probably the widespread use of Linux.

BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive. Imagine this: Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos), and cites this as an excuse to close sources. Then, it starts updating it's own websites with specific code that can run properly only in new (proprietary) versions of Chrome. Of course, outcry in tech p…

> BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive.

So can a Mozilla licensed browser, the licenses are very similar.

> Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos)

This already exists, it's called Widevine and browsers download it as a binary blob.

This is also a different argument, Chrome vs Chromium. If there was a healthy ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers then one vendor not playing by the rules would have limited impact.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#140

Post by nabla9 »

aaomidi wrote: post #84
EduardoBautista wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that is an unreasonable salary for the CEO of a highly influential tech company. CEO pay for other large tech companies is much higher.

There's hundreds of other engineers that can probably do as good of a job or better than him. Just because someone has a CEO label doesn't mean they have to be paid extreme amounts of money.

There probably are, but that's not the issue when recruiting CEO.

You have to find a person with a relevant experience. That's the real bottleneck. Number of people available who have enough track record to be considered to become CEO in a tech company with half a billion in revenue and over thousand employees is small, those who are willing to work for less pay is really small.

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