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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#281
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's hundreds of other engineers that can probably do as good of a job or better than him. There are 2 parts to the job of CEO: 1. Sales 2. Incentive engineering (overcoming Goodhart's law) There is very little about software development expertise that will help with either of those endeavors.

> There is very little about software development expertise that will help with either of those endeavors Good point, we can pay them much less than developers. Having a warm smile and making informed decisions about ~things is something my mom can do and I assure you her hourly wage is less than a developer's.

And the first industrial grade confidence trickster (and when you're managing $500 million you tend to get the cream of the crop going after you) will take her (and her company) for all she's worth. Having seen people who are great at people skills and those who are not there is a world of difference.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#282

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…

The person we're talking about is Mitchell Baker, who has spent over 20 years contributing to Mozilla, including years as a volunteer. She has been on Time's 100 most influential people list. She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. She is the founding CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, which pays her paycheck from its ~$500M in revenue. Mozilla Corp is the highly-profit…

She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did.

https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#283
post #56

Brendan Eich has a helpful chart of Compensation of Highest paid executive at Mozilla vs Firefox market share over time. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/p...

This chart feels a bit disingenuous given that Mozilla's form990s show Eich's salary tracking along basically the same line until his departure in 2014.

Yep.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#284
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great it's simply not as polished as the competition. The polish of developer tools has exactly zero to do with a browser's popular marketshare.

I do believe there's a comma missing there. engine and dev tools are great (full stop) But! it's simply not as polished.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#285
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen firefox ads in the subway in Paris. Mozilla is absolutely paying big bucks for marketing.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#286
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

I think that alert's design is actually a _feature_. Safari made a similar change a while back not make the alerts look like system UI, to prevent phishing and similar attacks.

My point is not that it doesn't look native... It's a neglected part of the UI.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#287
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great it's simply not as polished as the competition. The polish of developer tools has exactly zero to do with a browser's popular marketshare.

My bad, I missed a coma...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He got cancelled for not supporting gay marriage. Nothing he has actually personally done or will do matters in this new moral calculus.

If I remember correctly he didn't get fired for just not supporting gay marriage, he got fired for donating to some bill that was trying to prohibit gay marriage. That's quite the difference.

Understandable he had to go. Not many people would feel comfortable supporting a product where the profits go in to restricting their human rights.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#289
post #56

Brendan Eich has a helpful chart of Compensation of Highest paid executive at Mozilla vs Firefox market share over time. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/p...

Most stats I see put Firefox market share at around 5%. Am I reading the chart wrong?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#290

Earlier 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…

> Employees don't drive a large company's focus.

Well today's announcement helps remove the 'large company' attribute.

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