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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#631
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks no single person should be earning more than $1 million per year? especially if they are working for a non-profit?

Not the only one, but you are part of a very small group. Anyway, I also disagree in general. If a person brings so much value, than why not compensate that person adequately? The "only" thing that is bothering me with the insanely high salary of CEO's etc. is that they quite often seem disconnected from actual success. Like in this case: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 The market share of…

I don't follow those numbers, but I presume they expected to it to fall even harder? So a soft fall is kinda an up-trending! XD

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22060643 .

Saw another comment that was deleted that you grew up in Pittsburgh and MD. Where in MD? I grew up in Towson, Bel Air and now on the MD/PA line.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Is that to say you are equating homosexuality with pedophilia?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#634
Mitchell Baker should be ashamed of her performance at Mozilla. Serious missteps in the development of Firefox led to the rise of Google Chrome, and only recently (and arguably too little, too late) have they seen the light and prioritized the re-development of Firefox.

Nearly all of the other projects at Mozilla that aren't related to the browser itself have been abject failures. They have not only failed in their core product against Google, but have shown that they are completely incapable of innovation in other areas of tech.

Her letter reads like someone who is completely clueless. Getting rid of people while earmarking $40 million for a so-called "innovation fund" with no real strategy?

They are hoping some half-baked VPN product generates enough revenue to make them independent of Google's search deal? Please remember this post when that product fails to deliver. It's not a matter of time, it just makes no sense in any kind of timeline and at this point Mitchell Baker is grasping at straws.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#635
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.

But this is a game they could never win, if they try to compete against google on marketing. Where Mozilla could have the upper hand, is the idealistic community. They would do the marketing, if FF would align with their goals ... which seems to be more and more a problem. I was really alienated when FF tried to sell me advertisement as a feature some time ago. Those moves destroy trust. "Ah, so just another bullshit…

If you believe that Mozilla has no chance in the marketing game against Google, then maybe this is proof of Google's monopoly position and maybe this will convince you it is time for antitrust action against Google.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#636

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…

For comparison, Linus total compensation at the Linux Foundation is around 1.6m; Greg KH around 400k.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company Change the number and this will apply to most CEOs. https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/ According to these numbers, CEOs work 204 times as hard as regular employees.

> CEOs work 204 times as hard as regular employees That's an interesting (and ridiculous) way to spin the numbers. One doesn't have to work x times harder to bring x times more value to a company.

They said that on purpose. They are (implied) criticizing, on their own terms, something they said themselves. Strawnman parrying.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's appalling. How did that make people still working at Mozilla feel? I can't imagine working under somebody like that.

This will sound outrageous to US technology workers in 2020, but some people are able to separate their professional lives from the religious and political beliefs of their co-workers. About 15 years ago it was perfectly normal for this exchange to take place: Your view of marriage is a faith-based promise to your deity based on millennia of tradition and completely different from my view of it as a legalistic civil…

There are still tech companies like this. I have no detailed idea about my boss and coworkers' political beliefs, but I suspect they're different from mine. No problem, we keep things professional and respectful.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that there was some subsection of Mozilla employees who were offended by Gerv's views and thus publicly ambivalent, though undoubtedly privately relieved, to hear of his passing. [0] While that doesn't excuse the "obit" Baker posted, I'm sure it had some effect on her thought process. Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. [0] http://archive.today/2020.01.16…

Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. Common decency? You mean like not going out of your way to deny rights to others or do you mean tolerance of bigotry? Hmm.

Well, to be specific: by "common decency", I mean that the CEO should refrain from a publishing an infantilizing and derogatory post about a deceased employee. They should especially refrain from doing so days after the employee's death.

Employees dedicate roughly half of their waking hours to the employer, entailing much sacrifice from not only the employee themselves, but also their family. Regardless of the employee's competence, it insults that sacrifice when the employer comes out and denigrates the employment record of the deceased.

Bottom line: making an unprovoked publication indicating that the deceased's efforts caused damage to the organization as a whole is not a decent thing to do.

Just as a rule of thumb, if you can't memorialize a person without talking about how much damage was caused or how you just couldn't get him to understand "nuance", it's probably best to leave the memorializing to others.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#640

I was at Mozilla for a while and it was a two-class system. The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures. This is not even included in comp. One time, the CFO sent out a missive urging everyone to stay in AirBnB to save money and the execs (literally the following week) booked $500/night rooms at a hotel in NYC. I think the moment…

Two days back I wrote this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034293

I doubt if this is just with Mozilla. Things like these are come as job perks when you enter management. And this one of the reasons why you must aspire to be a manager and not a programmer on the longer run.

>>The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures.

They will always come up with reasons why they need to do this. The most common one is they need to be fresh with brains in clouds so that they can to talk to clients etc well. And they are doing this for the employees good.

“Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.”

- George Orwell.

>>This is not even included in comp.

Things like this generally go in some top level budget and the are approvals are not even audited at item level spending. Like no asks if you had a $100 dinner. It just goes into a group by statement in some dashboard. This is also why so many managers spend lavishly. It's almost anonymous spending. And money once given is never asked back.

If you think this is saying something. Wait till you discover how comp works in those roles. Pretty much anything given is never audited and its given fairly unchecked. Big bonuses and stock grants are just every day activities.

As in Indian who worked in the US for a while, I've even seen Green cards handed to manager's pets like candies. Again no asks questions, no audits done. Its just how awesome managerial jobs are.

>>The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last.

I doubt if military or any people structure works this way.

Don't fall for these pep talk like speeches.

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