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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#771

Post by thu2111 »

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…

I think you're assuming Chrome's very existence was inevitable, but it wasn't.

Chrome was created partly because Page just wanted to do a browser, but that wasn't enough by itself. Schmidt blocked a browser project for years on the grounds that it was a low priority and there wasn't much reason because Firefox was doing fine.

What changed things was Google trying to work with Mozilla to contribute resources, push the web forward faster and running into huge problems again and again. Political, corporate, technical. The Firefox architecture was over-engineered but also the Firefox guys thought they were top dog and kept dropping or ignoring Google's contributions for what looked like spurious reasons. Frustration grew amongst engineers who cared about improving HTML and with Page having always wanted to do a browser, now there was pressure from the top and the grassroots. When they got a few key hires who showed they could do a new browser with a much better architecture, and move way faster than cooperating with Mozilla, events were set in motion.

But there's a parallel universe in which Mozilla welcomed the Google contributions with open arms, in which Gecko had been written in normal C++, was easier to work on/better documented, where the app architecture was more conventional and thus more amenable to sandboxing etc. And in that world maybe Firefox would be even more dominant than Chrome. I don't think Mozilla realised back then they either could learn how to work with the Google engineering teams, even to the extent of giving up some architectural control, or Google would wipe them out.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#772

Post by timwaagh »

ksec wrote: post #618
_kp6z wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a pretty clueless layoff, I guess I expected better from Mozilla than usual corporate derp. If there was truly no dead weight, surely the management could have scaled back their own comp for misdirecting the company? Very few people understand what it means to be a leader in corporate world.

> for misdirecting the company? As someone who has been using Netscape before even Internet Explorer exists, and followed all of its development through to Firefox till recent few years. I am not surprised. At first you give them benefits of doubt, because their ideal were good. Then it happened again, again, and again. >Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 e…

i don't know what they do for money, but i suppose it's not giving away free internet browsers. so it might have something to do with that.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#773

Post by badpun »

hutzlibu wrote: post #456
dom96 wrote: 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…

> If a person brings so much value, than why not compensate that person adequately?

The question isn't only if the person brings that much value, but also - is there any other person who would bring as much value, but would work for less salary?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#774

Post by thu2111 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #647
manfredo wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The price of oil goes up, and all the oil company executives get bonuses (it sounds silly, but this genuinely does happen). A lot of these compensation packages are well intended, but they aren't without problems. People who make bad decisions often get performance bonuses regardless.

Those are the ones you hear about in the press, but the press looks for outrage.

"CEO earns 10x less than previous year due to declining stock price linked to market share loss" is not a headline to set pulses racing. Performance linked comp works OK most of the time. Sometimes CEOs negotiate deals that are terrible for the company, where they get paid lots even if the firm tanks. My experience has been that this usually happens when the firm is in deep trouble anyway, the CEO knows they probably can't turn it around, but will have a tarnished reputation regardless. Getting experienced people to try and turn the Titanic is expensive and many will want a big reward for even trying.

Also, badly run companies do things like sign bad deals. But it's a circular problem. If they were well run they wouldn't be signing bad CEO deals to begin with.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#775

Post by jug »

If Google moved to more in-house development of Chromium, there wouldn't be many scraps soon left for proponents of the open web to browse with... It's sad to see Microsoft as well as Opera and Brave picking Chromium for their engine when at least I think Gecko is still very much on par with web standards support. It feels like a more sensible choice, including for their own business safety in case Google does some sneaky move to "streamline their development" and "focus on the next generation of smartphones and Fuchsia OS" or something like that. That would be a power move we used to attribute to Microsoft in the past.

I wish Mozilla good luck although I'm shaken by these news and how far reaching the restructuring seems to be. I hope it's not the beginning of a negative spiral where they end up lacking manpower in development and QA to deliver a stable browser supporting the latest web standards and lagging behind, because then they're truly out. We should see already in a couple of years.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#776

Post by jdance »

ex_mozillian wrote: post #643

Look at the changes to the executive team at Mozilla in 2017 and 2018 if you want to see the root of the problem. Look at the changes Chief People Office Michael D'Angelo introduced (after leaving Pinterest), especially the multi-tier bonus system that crystallized the executive hierarchy and made ironclad the gap between Mozilla leaders and the Mozilla proletariat. How much does he make? Ask yourself- what value or…

As an outsider there are constantly small details that are off in product and marketing that hint to this. Its really sad to see, I keep using firefox and get a little sad every time I see these signs that this company does not know what it wants to do. In many ways it behaves like a public company without long term direction

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#777

Post by mjw1007 »

BrendanEich wrote: post #458
Blake_Emigro wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't take into consideration revenue growth, which according to the corporation's Wiki page grew much faster and higher in multiples than her salary. As well, according to the same Wiki, "There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid." It would be a bummer to run a company of that size, be dedicated to it for so long, and not have any stake in it. Imagine her…

Wikipedia is unreliable. Perhaps you missed it, but Verizon bought Yahoo!, realized how Marissa's five year default search deal with Firefox was bleeding money as most users reset their default to Google, and Mozilla and Verizon declared the other party in breach in rapid succession. This will go to court, and my money is on Verizon. There will be no balloon payment of the last two years. The jump in comp in 2017, as…

According to this article, the lawsuit was settled in September 2019, though it doesn't give a reference and I haven't seen it reported elsewhere.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3487825/mozilla-in-tro...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#778

Post by gsvelto »

_kp6z wrote: post #436
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…

Sounds like a pretty clueless layoff, I guess I expected better from Mozilla than usual corporate derp. If there was truly no dead weight, surely the management could have scaled back their own comp for misdirecting the company? Very few people understand what it means to be a leader in corporate world.

A fairly large number of managers have been laid off too.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#779

Post by pbhjpbhj »

burnte wrote: post #545
phonon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 knew Gerv, he was a convert to Christianity and as usual for converts to any religion, he was intense and fervent in his belief that he had discovered the ultimate truth. Unfortunately that can lead people to embracing the old testament bigotry more than the new testament forgiveness. Gerv wasn't a bad person, but Mitchell wasn't inaccurate in her post. Yes, Gerv was a great thing for Mozilla, but his legacy is not…

A CEO in an employee obituary though, isn't their job at that time to laud the good rather than make it sound like "good riddance"?

>Eventually Gerv felt called to live his faith by publicly judging others in politely stated but damning terms. //

So Mitchell's response is to publicly judge him in politely stated but damning terms, whilst simultaneously making an employee's obituary about how they - the obituary writer - were the only thing that moderated the person's overly judgemental nature.

Wowser.

It's like Mitchell realised people would be applauding his work at Mozilla and decided that couldn't be allowed.

It sounds like you're saying his actions at work were abhorrent; or was it that his beliefs were incompatible with yours?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#780

Post by rantanplan »

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.

Yes, Marissa Mayer being an excellent example!
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