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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#911

Post by BrendanEich »

spenrose wrote: post #909
BrendanEich wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a for-real founder of Mozilla so spare me. I poured 16 years into it, including a bunch of coding as well as recruiting key talent, managing, and strategic decision making. We restarted the browser market when conventional wisdom said it could not be done. This enabled us to restart web standards (WHATWG => HTML5, ECMA-262 new editions). We did that (not you, unless I know you from old days). But Google is a mon…

I left Mozilla (brief undistinguished tenure; briefer overlap with you) in part because I felt it simply refused to acknowledge that the Internet of 2005 (dominated by 500M people using web browsers in democracies) was not the Internet of 2015 (3B people, mostly apps on smartphones, tracked by their SIM cards and social networks). I was thrilled to start working on FirefoxOS, then soon experienced it as a kind of dou…

On FirefoxOS, of course gal cjones shaver & I launched it (not quite with all the other execs on board) to address the next billion internet users. I’m glad it worked out but sorry the place and name are KaiOSTech — it was Mozilla’s to see through but they faded.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#912

Post by gvjddbnvdrbv »

roca wrote: post #905
gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely it would or wouldn't be underfunded?

I assume he meant "absolutely it really would be that underfunded", because that is true. Elsewhere in these comments people have estimated that Google pays at least 1000 people to work on Chrome. That's about the size of all of Mozilla, and a lot of those Mozilla staff are necessarily not working directly on Firefox --- you need HR, accountants, marketing, etc. Also, Google pays its developers significantly more tha…

I've not seen any estimates that Google employs 1000 devs to work on Chrome. Only that in the more than decade long history of Chromium 1000 Google devs have worked on it in total.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#913

Post by SamReidHughes »

BrendanEich wrote: post #737
SamReidHughes wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a good idea to limit the comparison to Bay Area companies of that size.

Top few execs made above 800k but not 7 figures when I was there.

I guess I'm being a pedant about the way one might pursue the line of reasoning of comparing to other companies' pay, not its validity and overall applicability.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#914

Post by golergka »

overcast wrote: post #884
golergka wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't that bailout earn American taxpayers money in the end?

Sure, the ones that actually paid back with interest. But that doesn't help the 'performance bonus' discussion. These people destroyed the housing market, then got bailed out by the people they destroyed, THEN got paid millions/billions in bonuses for doing it.

Housing market got destroyed by people not paying back their loans. Assigning this to be a moral responsibility of banks and regulators is simplistic and naive.

I had to search for this excellent clip from Margin Call, which explains this better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2kGHcdJYU

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#915

Post by buboard »

BrendanEich wrote: post #448
geoelectric wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MoCo doesn't get the goodies. It's a cash generator (in theory, probably not so much at the moment) for MoFo, and money has to flow only in that direction as I understand it. It's not treated as a non-profit in any way, which is why it could do multi-million dollar partnerships and pay competitive tech salaries without the kind of scrutiny or restrictions a 501(c)-anything would have.

No, sorry -- it is encumbered as a for-profit to pay taxes, but it cannot operate as a for-profit wholly owned by private investors or public shareholders would (I'm not saying that is good or bad). It is different. It's like many sports stadia/teams, universities, hospitals: for-profit wholly owned sub of a non-profit. As I just noted in my last reply, this is abused via double-think to defend Mozilla as a "non-prof…

They also dropped Persona, giving facebook and others primacy on SSO identities, at a time where they could still change the landscape.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#916

Post by tripzilch »

feminintendo wrote: post #867
MzHN wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I dont know if this will change HN's perspective on Firefox and Mozilla. Even if it did, what can we do? Giving Chrome more market share gives Google more power to shape the future of web technologies, controversial stuff like Manifest v3 and AMP that HN loves to hate. Personally I'm rooting for Firefox and Mozilla, not out of being a fan of them, but because I'm afraid of the alternative.

Completely agree, but do we have to root for Mozilla if we want to root for Firefox?

I'm not sure what your question is, there's all sorts of uninteresting complications to the trademarks on the name "Firefox" and how Mozilla deals with it.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#917

Post by tripzilch »

qbaqbaqba wrote: post #696
pergadad wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? Google? Not really better even if this disappoints about Mozilla.

Edge or Brave. Different business models than Google's and to some extent Mozilla's.

Both run the Chrome engine! That's not an alternative. You really want all available browsers run the same engine, and one that is developed by Google?? You realize they are at step two of "embrace extend extinguish", right? And you realize that by showing their cards with AMP, they totally aren't above actually doing it too?

What do you suppose will happen when the entire web runs on the Chrome engine? No good things.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#918

Post by tripzilch »

BrendanEich wrote: post #733
m3adow wrote: 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.

Privacy is not using Google's engine.

I would have given Brave a more serious try if it weren't for that.

(although I very much dislike the payment system, presented as an alternative to the tracking privacy nightmare the web has become. I'm not paying for the difference, that's ridiculous. I saw what they did to the web, I'm not paying to keep them away)

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#919

Post by overcast »

dang wrote: post #890
overcast wrote: post #540

Only in fairy tale land does CEO/Executive compensation reflect performance.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22060372 and marked it off-topic.

My comment was neither, and I provided three sources below.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#920

Post by overcast »

golergka wrote: post #914
overcast wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the ones that actually paid back with interest. But that doesn't help the 'performance bonus' discussion. These people destroyed the housing market, then got bailed out by the people they destroyed, THEN got paid millions/billions in bonuses for doing it.

Housing market got destroyed by people not paying back their loans. Assigning this to be a moral responsibility of banks and regulators is simplistic and naive. I had to search for this excellent clip from Margin Call, which explains this better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2kGHcdJYU

It was much deeper than that. While you're partially correct, that people not paying back their loans is what ultimate set off the collapse, the reason for it was the straight greed, and manipulation of the repackaged junk sub-prime mortgages by the banks. Collateralized Debt Obligations, and even worse CDO-Squared, bundled up complete crap, and sold them off with triple-A ratings. When the mortgagor failed to pay, those CDOs were finally downgraded and became worthless, losing banks hundreds of billions. Predatory practices on homeowners, and bank greed.
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