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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#721

Post by Yoric »

the_duke wrote: post #695
iamleppert wrote: post #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 c…

Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product. (they finally caught up again now, I switched back to Firefox about 2 years ago) But: Google pushed Chrome on desktop very aggressively via Google Search and bundling Chrome with every software download imagi…

> Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product.

This happened in 2011-2015 when Google was investing looooooooots of money in Chrome and Mozilla was betting the farm on FirefoxOS. Since then, Mozilla has improved Firefox a lot, but it's hard to compete with a company that has a way larger budget on essentially the same product.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#722

Post by jjoonathan »

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.

Yeah, they get a metric shitton of money if the company performs poorly and two metric shittons if the company performs well.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#723

Post by BrendanEich »

kick wrote: post #630
BrendanEich wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "in…

I misread your comment, sorry. But I must say real estate was cheap in the ‘80s, especially after downturns. Remember the crash of ‘87 aka Black Monday? Yikes, I’m old.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#724

Post by BrendanEich »

awill wrote: post #718
sstangl wrote: post #376

I'm one of the 70. There were no signs that this was imminent, although Mozilla has been struggling financially for many years. I expected that it would happen eventually; I'm relatively well-prepared for it; and it's not too shocking. I did however expect that there would be some warning signs in the lead-up, but that was not the case. I was working on Cranelift, the WebAssembly compiler that is also a plausible fut…

Stupid question, but doesn't Mozilla make around $500MM revenue a year, and have a little over 1000 employees. That seems like it should be profitable.

Your number is high, estimating from user population and search revenue share market rates.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#725

Post by whatthefoxer »

9152ba83773b wrote: post #488
scarface74 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much could they have scaled backed their comp to save 70 jobs?

Mozilla has way too many VP and above employees that are useless (check what the once VP engineering, then interim CTO, then fellow is actually doing for instance). They should let go a few, but as far as I know, none has been fired. Gotta keep getting twice the bonus percentage as regular ICs...

You mean ekr yea? I don't know what he's doing either or why he's been promoted along the way. Nobody really knows.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#726

Post by whatthefoxer »

Aeolun wrote: post #484
scarface74 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much could they have scaled backed their comp to save 70 jobs?

Is 70x a strange multiple for an executive to make? I’m sure I’ve heard stories of more. That said, I doubt the executives at Mozilla make north of 7M

Mozilla has no equity so they make up for it in cash.. well for executives mainly. This makes for lofty salaries

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#728

Post by [deleted] »

iamleppert wrote: post #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 c…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#729

Post by klagermkii »

BrendanEich wrote: post #705
klagermkii wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think the Peter Principle would be better represented if there was someone who was a star on the technical side, but messed up as the CEO in a role they couldn't handle. i.e. if Brendan Eich was CEO and this happened it would be a Peter Principle moment. All these senior leadership people seem to be straight from the management track. Doesn't seem like they showed their excellence in another discipline and we…

Read the link above. The Peter Principle does not require change from tech to mgmt — it simply describes promotion above one’s level of competence.

Yes, I'm just using tech as an example. It still requires them to be excellent in any one field and then move into another field on the basis of that excellence, but then fail to have the excellence carry over to the new and different discipline.

None of these people show some kind of original standout excellence in a different field that was lost in their transition to Mozilla leadership roles.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#730

Post by manfredo »

bduerst wrote: post #619
manfredo wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they fired an employee specifically for their political donations. Your claim that firing employees for their political activity is ok as long as it's not a company policy and only one-off instances is not what law groups are saying. Here's one that addresses Eich's case specifically: https://shawlawgroup.com/2014/05/california-law-protects-emp... > Mr. Eich’s situation is somewhat analogous to the one addres…

I'm not claiming anything, just explaining the law you cited. Being fired for your political actions is entirely legal in at-will employment states like California. The law you cited does not apply, except to companies that use company policy to _ coerce _ political action from employees. Firing someone for their actions does not make it company policy. Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by a…

I understand what you're saying, but the point is you're wrong. A company cannot go around firing any employees that donates or otherwise supports a candidate from a particular party, for example. The protections read:

> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity. [1]

This not only prohibits employers from coercing employers to adopt a particular stance, it also prohibits employers from influencing employees to refrain from adoption or following any lines of politician action or activity.

How could firing an employee for political donations not be considered influencing an employee to refrain from a particular line of political action. Specifically, in Mozilla was influencing employees to refrain from the political action of donating in favor of Proposition 8.

> Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by adding politics into their company policy. Mozilla was saying that for that particular position at their company, the employee's political actions were grounds to be terminated.

Again, this is not just about specifically telling employees to support a particular cause in its company policy. Employers coercing employees to refrain from adopting or following political action is prohibited too. And in this case, it is pretty explicit what political action Mozilla was trying to make employees refrain from: donating to Proposition 8.

And again, people that study law say that firing Eich for his donations would have been illegal as I provided above.

1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

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