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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#621

Post by senderista »

phonon wrote: post #282
shawndrost wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I have definitely gotten the impression (as a very peripheral observer of the Rust community) that ideological diversity is not at all the sort of diversity Mozilla is interested in.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#622

Post by BrendanEich »

kick wrote: post #617
BrendanEich wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never a millionaire from real estate before I'd been working ten years. Are you perhaps misinformed by someone who was at SGI and exaggerated rumors they heard? I made more off of SGI options than I did by ten years in from real estate, and I never flipped. I've owned the same properties for over 30 years. I agree with you that many fine people do life-saving or otherwise important work for far less. But facts…

This says you were a millionaire before you'd been working ten years, and as far as I'm aware it's fairly accurate? It's a profile of you that happened long before you were controversial. I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate, just that you also had invested in real estate (I assumed that it was obvious that the former was probably a precursor to the latter, but I guess no…

It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully? I had more upside from SGI's IPO than from valley real estate (which was good too, but I never flipped). Yeesh!

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#623

Post by BrendanEich »

paul7986 wrote: post #598
BrendanEich wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never a millionaire from real estate before I'd been working ten years. Are you perhaps misinformed by someone who was at SGI and exaggerated rumors they heard? I made more off of SGI options than I did by ten years in from real estate, and I never flipped. I've owned the same properties for over 30 years. I agree with you that many fine people do life-saving or otherwise important work for far less. But facts…

Cool, where in MD? I grew up in Towson and Bel Air.

Gaithersburg.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#625

Post by asveikau »

phonon wrote: post #282
shawndrost wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

As I read that I figure she had to address the guy's controversial opinions such as to not offend people who were offended by them.

As someone who doesn't know anyone involved the suggestion I would make would be to acknowledge controversy upfront, directly and exactly once and then state that you will not address the most controversial points from there on out, in acknowledgement of the deceased and their loved ones. The fact that she waffles back and forth between praise and condemnation in such tight space makes it seem like she simultaneously doesn't stand for much and doesn't forgive even after a person's death.

Even when we find someone's behavior or opinions abhorrent, there isn't a lot of point in holding grudges against dead people. Maybe she could have said that.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#626

Post by SamReidHughes »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #591
pdog wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eich (inventor of JavaScript, for the record) was ousted over a private political contribution to a cause that a near-majority of Californians supported just a few years earlier. Minor correction: Prop 8 was supported by the majority (52%) in California. In fact, Prop 8 (which Brendan Eich donated in support of) passed by 600,000 votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8

If you'd like to be properly pedantic. 52% of the folks surveyed in one poll were against Prop 8, 52% of the voters voted for Prop 8. Other polls ranged from 35 to 55% against. Prop 8 was designed to prevent a minority group from attaining equivalent rights of the majority so it's not really surprising that Eich got skewered for that. For fucks sake Prop 8 wasn't "quote-unquote bigotry" it was absolutely bigoted — bi…

Keep in mind that marriage law is still bigoted against pedophiles.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#627

Post by cookiecaper »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #550
wbl wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nihil nisi bonum. Imagine how his widow would feel reading it.

It's entirely impossible to say. One possibility would be "proud that the man she married stood up for what he believed in"

Baker's post is utterly dehumanizing. She could've talked about his resilience in fighting cancer for 18 years or his fervor for free software. She could've talked about the actual work product he produced over 20-ish years at Mozilla and how it helped move the platform forward.

Instead, more than just condemning his religious beliefs, she said that he didn't understand ambiguity and that she spent his entire career trying to nurse him toward wrapping his head around the general concept of abstraction and nuance.

So even if the explicit condemnation of his private beliefs had been omitted, the post is still self-righteous infantilization. Baker did a terrible job hiding her contempt. Tacking on "something-something-whole-person" is transparent self-justification and it doesn't do anything to change the fact that she just spent the whole post talking about what she perceived to be his inadequacies.

Baker could've talked about basically anything -- the ability to identify the humanity in your ideological opponents is crucial to civilized discourse -- but instead, she boiled it down to "Gerv couldn't understand middle ground, except for the tiny bit I was able to finally pound through his head, and his refusal to shut up on his personal blog caused a lot of damage here."

I don't know, but somehow I doubt that the widow of this principled husband and father, who battled cancer for 18 years and worked hard to keep food on the table until the very end, feels anything good about Baker's post.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#628

Post by conductr »

manfredo wrote: post #566
overcast wrote: post #540

Only in fairy tale land does CEO/Executive compensation reflect performance.

Many CEOs derive a significant portion - often even the majority - of their compensation from performance-based bonuses. Compensation not only reflects performance, it is directly tied to it.

Not always attributable to executives. The company may just have some inertia and the guy who negotiates the best employment contract wins.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#629

Post by ksec »

malachismith wrote: post #511
BrendanEich wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its defenders constantly say "Mozilla is a non-profit" and when pressed, note that Mozilla Foundation is the sole owner of Mozilla Corporation. You can't have it both ways: either it is subject to Foundation=good presumptions as defenders invoke, or it is not. If not, then its comp may not be excessive at the top, but it sure jumped in 2017 while market share dropped -- and anyway, if it is a for-profit, it needs…

It's clearly wrong to market yourself as a non-profit when you are a for-profit company.

Then you should have posted this in every single reply where you stated Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit. Or else you look ( and I presume you are before this reply ) that you are defending their status.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#630

Post by kick »

BrendanEich wrote: post #622
kick wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This says you were a millionaire before you'd been working ten years, and as far as I'm aware it's fairly accurate? It's a profile of you that happened long before you were controversial. I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate, just that you also had invested in real estate (I assumed that it was obvious that the former was probably a precursor to the latter, but I guess no…

It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully? I had more upside from SGI's IPO than from valley real estate (which was good too, but I never flipped). Yeesh!

It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully?

Sir, the last comment was stating that I was trying to avoid implying that it was due to real estate.

> I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate

> just that you also had invested in real estate

I'm not accusing you of getting rich off of real estate.

I'm just saying that "investing in real estate" is something that requires a substantial volume of money (as you said, a nest egg): it was a way to show that you were well off, not a way to imply you were a slumlord or something.

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