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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#701

Post by afiori »

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #621
aisofteng wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce by approximately 250 people. These are individuals of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today. To each of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks and deepest regrets that we have come to this point. From TFA.

> and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement From TFC.

it is still a weird suggestion. given two truths "we are currently failing" and "we decided to change course" it makes sense to bundle them into "we tried something, we must face it didn't work, there are negative consequences now, we are hopeful a new direction will save us".

sometime corporate doublespeak is just trying to communicate a narrative or a vision for the future, which in terms of long term survival are often more important than clearly stated facts.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#702

Post by joshuaellinger »

Hackbraten wrote: post #616
mrweasel wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd grant you that Mozilla is being held to a higher standard, to high perhaps. That's not really my complaint about Mozilla. The thing is, I freaking love Firefox. Developer can't speak highly enough about MDN, and with good reason. Yet, the thing we see as users and donors to Mozilla is Pocket, FirefoxOS, an idiotic VPN and other pointless project. Thunderbird can apparently just roll over and die for all the Mozil…

> Firefox is the leading browser right now. Chrome isn't even close In what sense? Feature set, user experience, security, stability, performance, developer experience? Genuinely curious. I switched from Chrome last year and have yet to find a single aspect in which I’d say Firefox would lead, with the exception of privacy.

Render consistency.

I was doing automated image capture of some data sites and diffing them to see if they changed. Chrome would jitter. Firefox drew the same bits every time.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#703

Post by ummonk »

renewiltord wrote: post #339
dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

Actually, much of the security/privacy crowd is all-in on Apple products; not exactly a company catering to people who have no money.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#705

Post by jm4 »

segphault wrote: post #432

Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't h…

Mozilla certainly has its faults, but how is generating revenue an indication of how far they have fallen? Why don't you contribute to the project for free? Most of us aren't going to do that so it's a little unreasonable to fault them for having to generate revenue to keep the lights on.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#706

Post by oedmarap »

It's definitely not a requirement for companies to go into minute detail when making these sorts of announcements, but Mozilla is a non-profit and I think it would be good IMHO if they were to shed some light at least on the skillet of those being let go relative to the new direction being taken.

If Mozilla is charting a path forward as a "technical powerhouse" and focusing on Pocket, Hubs, VPN, etc. (as per the linked memo), I would hate to imagine even a single SWE being laid off for reasons not performance-related.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#707

Post by liability »

renewiltord wrote: post #339
dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

> They don't actually use your product.

> [Privacy/Security focused people] don't actually use [Firefox].

Is this what you mean? If so, I strongly disagree. I'd wager such 'power users' are the majority of Firefox users at this point. Casual users have all gone to Chrome, as well as many [but certainly not all] power users. I am still using Firefox and plan to continue doing so for as long as I can.

I'm concerned that Mozilla's mismanagement will make "for as long as I can" rather short. The only reason for this to concern me is because I use it. Writing off concerned commenters as non-users is a huge mistake.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#708

Post by graham_paul »

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

> Mozilla is such an important voice in shaping the future of the internet

This is the primary reason why I choose Firefox over Chrome. Because Mozilla is the the world's Jon Snow against the world's white walkers (Google and co).

Mozilla needs to do whatever it needs to stay alive. We need more non-profit voices in the table not less

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#710

Post by gurumeditations »

war1025 wrote: post #683

> I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. I think that train started rolling when they forced Eich out as CEO. Ever since then, Mozilla seems to be less about best-in-class technology, and more about virtue signalling.

“Virtue signaling” meaning standing against homophobia. Just say what you mean.
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