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Mozilla lays off 70

techcrunch.com

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#791

Post by Vinnl »

tracker1 wrote: post #29
ameshkov wrote: post #2

Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456 This is about 7% of all their employees. People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked. A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-... > In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Ba…

I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place. I'm also surprised they haven't tried to create commercial mail and communications products. Thunderbird used to be one of the best options out there, and they could easily spin this off into a SaaS and self-host product on the server component.…

> I'm not sure why they don't (...) concentrate on community outreach from the developer side.

Unless e.g. Lin Clark was among those who were laid off, they've been doing some excellent developer-side community outreach through the Mozilla Hacks blog in the past couple of years.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#792

Post by kamaal »

anon463637 wrote: post #741
kamaal wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-fi…

I used to work at Stanford, once upon a time. Our boss got us training for a week around Hollywood with a Jag as a rental. Our boss'es boss seriously put in to have helicopter rides to work, and they definitely had $100+ per diem and expense accounts. What's interesting is when your boss has self-approval over their own budget and expenses. They're not really big on accountability so much as expanding prestige and py…

>>What's interesting is when your boss has self-approval over their own budget and expenses.

As you go up, its hard to say no to your friends. Because you might need a bailout from them someday, so you don't go cheap on them. Some one asks for money they don't say no.

>>They're not really big on accountability so much as expanding prestige and pyramids on their sides of the org charts.

There is also this thing that if you look rich and affluent you tend to command respect. That is from where the "Dress for the job" kind of saying comes from.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#793

Post by kraken-eng »

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…

Kraken is hiring Senior SW Engineers with extensive Rust experience for our backend services team. The team is remote. Check out the link below to apply or get in touch at leon at kraken dot com

https://jobs.lever.co/kraken/4c864c8f-bde6-443d-b521-dd90df0...

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#794

Post by thu2111 »

ralfinat wrote: post #784
thu2111 wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. They also bought up a significant fraction of the Firefox core devs -- there's a lot of "crushing the competition" you can do when your money pit is basically bottomless.

Mozilla was a firehose of money back then. Financially they were and still are Google: literally they get a fraction of Google's own revenue stream. That was more than sufficient to reward their developers in whatever way they liked.

Those devs weren't leaving Mozilla because of money. They left because they were being given a nearly blank slate on which to create a browser they felt would be much better.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#795

Post by [deleted] »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #620
catalogia wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been better to fire him when he was alive than to criticize him after he was dead. The former would have been productive, while the later is just distasteful.

Just speaking for myself here, but if someone would like to take adverse action against me, if they're willing to postpone it until after I'm dead, I'd vastly prefer that. Please and thank you. It makes no difference to me if you piss on my grave. That being said, I sure as hell wouldn't write that obit, even for someone I hated. If I didn't have anything positive to say about the person, I wouldn't write anything. T…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#796

Post by flurdy »

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…

I disagree. Though I am not in a position to evaluate her performance as interim CEO, I feel Mozilla and Firefox have moved on a lot in the last few years.

When I returned to Firefox a few years ago initially it felt quite behind Chrome, and few odd things like Pocket etc, but these days I can't see any reason to use Chrome. Love the container add-ons, thew new picture-in-picture works great. The leaner Quantum works better. I appreciate the work they do with Rust and webassembly. etc.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#797

Post by arendtio »

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…

So what would be your strategy to increase the Mozilla revenue?

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#799

Post by neuronic »

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…

Interestingly this appears like the same misconception and misdirection that lets people be deluded by their idea of "science".

A field that should be an ideal, inherently good space for knowledge and humanity to expand is in fact a cesspool of greedy assholes chasing grants and prestige, reflected in the circumstances around journal publishing.

Egos first, then comes science. If your priorities are the other way around, then sincerely good luck to you.

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