Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by prepend » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #695

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.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function.

So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional.

As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot.

I think it’s great for companies to choose their own values and make their own way. And I can prefer companies that focus on other things.

I don’t necessarily think firing Eich causes Mozilla to suck, but I think Brave is a much better browser and they have far fewer employees with less funding.

I don’t donate to Mozilla and one of the reasons is because their mission is so vague.

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

#772

Post by ivalm » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #176

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

A common refrain, but is anything but obvious. Focusing on the browser could be a losing strategy. I'd argue it probably is. The trajectory is terrible: the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) and the market share picture is bleak. The opportunity cost is huge: maintaining a web engine, one which basically just tries to keep up with the others put out by Google et al, takes armies of people that could perha…

Mozilla is a non-profit which, in my view, is valuable only as a chromium alternative. Why must it be big/etc? Being a megacorp shouldn’t be Mozilla’s goal.

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

#773

Post by esperent » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

staycoolboy wrote: post #595

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't think the corporate doublespeak is reason to switch to Chrome, but I do think the corporate doublespeak in this announcement is just awful. When you're doing a layoff, just announce the layoff, show compassion to the affected employees, and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement. Putting stuff about the fight against systemic racism in the opening paragraph of a layo…

> inviting a tidal wave of eye rolls. That depends entirely on how the reader feels about diversity. EDIT: I made a claim that the reader's reaction depends on what the reader is thinking, and six people claimed I was wrong, which means they can read minds. Nice. Critical thinking means removing your emotional bias from analysis.

> six people claimed I was wrong, which means they can read minds

No, it means you communicated badly, and your edit and replies are doubling down on that.

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

#774

Post by variable11 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #695

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.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

You don't get to redefine words to paint everyone who disagrees with you as a bigot, that's Orwellian and tyrannical, but typical of your fanaticism.

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

#775

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:55 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #726

gurumeditations wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was going to say "virtue signalling to West coast liberals", but I decided to shorten things up a bit. Mozilla doesn't have any more business interest devoting resources to LGBT causes than Chick-Fil-A has a business interest in funding anti-LGBT causes. The difference is Chick-Fil-A makes money hand over fist and can afford to take its eye off the prize a little. Mozilla doesn't have that same luxury.

One can argue that Chick-Fil-A has made homophobia part of their business interests. Unlike Mr. Eich, who donated to homophobic political causes with his own money, the outrage at Chick-Fil-A stems from them using their corporate foundation to make such donations.

So Eich's case is, despite superficial resemblance, markedly different. Mozilla built a brand around openness and the idea of "putting people first" and making them feel "empowered, safe and independent." (Those quotes are from at least one version of their mission statement.) Eich's backing of the anti-gay-marriage initiative was a PR problem for them in a way that it might not have been for many other companies. Also, he violated the first rule of holes (i.e., when you're in one, stop digging); it's possible they might have been able to do effective damage control without booting him if his initial response hadn't been, in so many words, "it's my money and I can do what I want with it."

And, sure: it is, and he can. The CEO of a nonprofit Catholic hospital chain could also use their money to donate to Planned Parenthood. But, if they did, we can be reasonably sure the hospital's boards of directors would have words with them about it.

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

#776

Post by esperent » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #771

bitwize wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function. So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional. As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot.…

Brave is just (yet another) wrapper for Chromium. The scope of the project is nothing like the scope of Firefox, let alone Mozilla.

As for being a better browser, built in adblocking is great (especially on mobile). But the whole Brave rewards thing is kind of weird and never made sense to me.

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

#777

Post by marcinzm » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #378

TylerE wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome didn’t destroy Firefox. Firefox destroyed Firefox. Chrome was SO MUCH better it could't help but win. Turns out people do actually care about performance and responsiveness.

Chrome isn't better than Firefox, and both browsers have varied in terms of their performance. Google had the advantage of plastering Chrome all over google.com when people performed searches. That's how it got installed everywhere.

Firefox was a mess for a long time. It's not the speed that mattered but the stability. Chrome isolated everything into separated threads and processes. One tab couldn't kill the whole browser. Firefox didn't and initially even the UI was in the same thread as the webpage javascript. Doing the switch required having all extensions rewritten so they lost market share in the process (but had no choice by then).

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

#778

Post by croutonwagon » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

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 is probably one of the most customizable, with defaults that are relatively pro-privacy and therefore privacy focused player in the browser market.

Fly by nights like brave have come in and then realized its hard to do in a sustainable way.

Chrome is certainly not privacy focused. Ie and edge arent either.

There is a reason tor browser is basically firefox code under the hood.

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

#779

Post by blihp » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #438

blihp wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get flogged for things for-profit companies don't because Mozilla claims the moral high ground and then leaves something to be desired in its actions and results. The rather dodgy non-profit/for-profit hybrid while effective from a business standpoint, doesn't help your cause: while originally presented as the for-profit serving the non-profit, the reality appears to be the other way around.

> while originally presented as the for-profit serving the non-profit, the reality appears to be the other way around. Would you care to elaborate?

IIRC, the stated purpose of the formation of the foundation and corporation was to primarily fund the development of the/a browser product. Over the last 10 years, the corporation has taken in several billion dollars which should have been enough to fund a sizeable fraction of annual cash needs in perpetuity (i.e. don't spend it as you get it, invest it as various endowments/trusts do so that you have an annual revenue stream to fund the project on an ongoing basis) anticipating that the large cash payments from search engines weren't going to last forever.

Unfortunately, rather than doing that, it appears most of the money has been spent on various misadventures and expanding staff to consume the funds taken in which now apparently has to be scaled back. So now we get to read this blog post which reads like any number of VC-backed startups needing to pivot to find a business model. Mozilla has one, if it would just stop spending money going off on all these tangents and focus on what I suspect the vast majority of us want from it: the best possible browser. If we get to a point where browsers are no longer relevant, then frankly neither is Mozilla. It's shown minimal aptitude for things other than browsers, and supporting tech, which it unfortunately doesn't seem terribly interested in focusing on.

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

#780

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

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.

Eich was not forced out or fired. In fact, just the opposite: the board actually tried to get Eich to stay, but he decided to leave all on his own. Don't try to rewrite history to make an ideological point. It's all very well and unambiguously documented what really happened, and there's no excuse for you spreading that misinformation.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?

A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:

“I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”

Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.

Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?

A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.