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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#761
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems odd in his tweet he noted he was unable to get funding in the valley for Brave. The guy created JavaScript and was a creator of Firefox. Don't get it ..as JS alone has contributed like how much to world economies, as well to almost every HN reader's wallet/bank.

Creating a language 20 years ago doesn't mean you're responsible for everything the language produced. If javascript didn't exist something different would have taken it's place and produced just as much value.

Microsoft tried with VBScript, but JS was fit enough to survive, and no one wanted a second language after it. No point in speculating, we know JS matters. Asserting it could have been Blub means nothing. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1905155.

Also, I kept working on JS, while doing other things. I worked on JS in both Netscape and Ecma TC39 through late 1997, then co-founded mozilla.org with jwz and others. For mozilla.org I was chief architect, but I still kept working on the Mozilla JS engine, SpiderMonkey, adding features such as getters and setters that became important in 2005 due to use by Microsoft's Live Maps.

Live Maps emulated the IE DOM in Firefox via those same getter and setter extensions that I'd added over the years since 1997. In IE, Live Maps of course used the native DOM. This left Safari and Opera failing unless they reverse engineered the getter and setter extensions from SpiderMonkey in Firefox quickly. It took them about a week, and then Live Maps worked in Safari and Opera too.

This shows how quickly browsers can evolve, based on innovation in just one browser's engine, even in the wake of a monopoly period of stagnation.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari runs on 1.5 operating systems and a limited set of hardware.

Apple is known for how small their teams are. WebKit runs on macOS, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS across Intel and ARM architectures. WebKit provides the web views for countless 3rd party apps, including Mail, Calendar, iTunes, etc. Apple certainly has fewer people who get paid to write code for Safari/WebKit than Google has on Chrome/Blink. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mozilla has more people too, especially since they’re r…

A number of other companies also contribute support for a variety of other platforms too. Scrolling through a platform header gives a good idea of who's adapted WebKit for their needs: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/WTF/wtf/...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is also not censorship nor is it illegal to terminate employment with someone based on their political actions. It is in California: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

Only in enacting company-wide policies to coerce political participation. Terminating employment for political actions in an at-will employment state like California is still legal. From your article: >On the contrary, political beliefs or views are not a specifically protected category under California's discrimination laws. Nothing in either of the two labor code provisions above directly addresses discrimination o…

Lawyers in California disagree: https://www.worklawyers.com/illegal-firings-california/

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#764

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

FF was never really fast. Early versions worked OK but that was because websites were way simpler and user expectations lower.

Chrome was a big step in performance and all that time until FF 57 Quantum was Firefox simply catching up ...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#765
post #8

70 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA). It feels like a better compromise could have been made.

> QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that

While I agree with the sentiment here, there is no need to diminish the work of QA people. They are a very important of the development process. A good QA is hard to come by and I often see them single-single handedly carry a project to completion despite working with a team highly incompetent "developers"(see what I did there).

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#766
post #282

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 didn't see this before, interesting. I remember Gerv from his blog, he indeed had strong opinions regarding religion, but this obituary is completely out of place, it seems as if she had some personal issues with him.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google pushed Chrome on desktop very aggressively via Google Search and bundling Chrome with every software download imaginable. That makes me wonder, why did something like BrowserChoice.eu not happen for google?

It did in Google Play for Europe. You got a screen showing a list of alternative search engines (eg. DDG, Qwant) and browsers (eg. Firefox, Opera). Though, that didn't change Google and Chrome being the default.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#768

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…

Through the bank my experience is that a technical background with someone growing into a leadership role ultimately creates better results. People whose only skill is "leadership" tend to perform pretty badly. But the Peter principle, doubtful if it even can be taken seriously, doesn't say anything about this specifically. I don't know anything about Eich, but I don't really see how he would have been bad for Mozill…

Surely the Mozilla execs don't take millions? And beg for charity??

I know Mozilla Corp/Org are technically split, but if one head of Cerberus ate all the food surely it doesn't still need feeding.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#769
post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still 100% depending on Google, still supporting a near monopolistic position for the browser. Every Chromium fork is part of the problem, not the solution.

Engine consolidation happened, the fight now is over privacy. When and if Brave is big enough we will chart our own engine course.

You know better than anybody the size of the task of rolling a homemade engine. Is this some vaporware promise or does Brave already started something around this idea?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#770

Well, it's been a truly amazing place to work, and I've enjoyed it so much, right up until being laid off today. Really the smartest and coolest engineers I've ever known and the best community! I have had my hand in shipping every version of Firefox since around version 30 and it's been great. Especially working in such an open environment. Onward to the next adventure.

As someone who jumped from chrome since quantum came out, I can't appreciate Mozilla enough, sadly things are not made to last... I'm guilty too having used such great tool but haven't directly contributed anything. But from what I hear, it seem the layoffs are directed not by technical reasons, and amazing people were let go. In this case, I fear for the future of firefox, which are not well protected or funded like…

Mozilla gets $$$$ from Google, they seem pretty well funded?
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