"Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla • Hacker News Board

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#191

Post by cordite » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #61

Mozilla's decision makes a lot of economic sense. They got rid of projects requiring lots of engineering effort with negligible benefits for the company or for the internet or for our privacy. I'm not sure at this point if it makes sense for them to keep the Firefox code base or give up, switch to Chromium and focus on what they do best - spy less on us than Google. When Microsoft gave up anyone paying attention knew…

It’s still WebKit under the hood isn’t it?

The JS engines are different though

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#192

Post by mkozlows » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #54

lucasmullens wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure management understands those teams are important. Who should they have cut instead? These are hard decisions. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla. What in these decisions should make that obvious? Just because its Mozilla doesn't mean its management staff understand tech. Cut the CEO salary and remove some management first.

They cut 25% of their workforce. That's 250 people. Figure all-in loaded cost of $200K per person let go, and that's $50 million in budget they cut. Mitchell Baker had made $2.5 million. You don't get $50 million out of non-technical cuts.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#193

Post by Rochus » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

sg47 wrote: post #97

Given Microsoft's recent forays into Rust, they should acquire these engineers and put their muscle behind Rust.

They also have people in the C++ committee (even making proposals to add features made popular with Rust also to C++) and they have their own C++ toolchain.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#194

Post by feanaro » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #115

lol768 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I agree with the lay-offs here, but it's incredibly rare I find myself wishing I was using Chrome's developer tools whilst doing web development. I have missed functionality when I've had to use Chrome though - like Edit & Re-send for network requests, copy as cURL (which arrived a few years later to Chrome), the accessibility inspector (which is not Lighthouse), services like https://profiler.firefox.com/…

I’ve always believed that Firefox dev tools probably had most of the things I need but the interface is always...uglier and less familiar, so I don’t bother. It’s a low threshold to just use Chrome for development and FF for everything else. Also I believe the OP was talking about more development tooling than just the front-end browser dev tools. Chromium always seems to have the most advanced debugging tools for br…

> I’ve always believed that Firefox dev tools probably had most of the things I need but the interface is always...uglier and less familiar, so I don’t bother.

Is it just familiarity? Because I feel the same way about Chrome.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#195

Post by cryptoz » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

amenod wrote: post #173

dclusin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has development tools? Is there certain features that are missing? Because you can bring up a dev console and inspect elements and such. Genuine question from a not full-time frontend developer, not being snarky.

Firefox has had development tools from way before Chrome even existed. They started as an (awesome!) Firebug extension, which they later included in the browser itself (not that it matters, but it was Chrome that basically copied them at the time).

Was looking for this comment! This is key here, because the story is extra sad given Mozilla/FF's initial strong surge in leader front-end developer tools. Before the Firebug extension I think I just did like View Source still from the menu? Yikes!

Chrome copied it and at first IMO it wasn't nearly as good inside Chrome as in FF. But that did eventually change and for some years now I (sadly) agree I also prefer Chrome's.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#196

Post by mcqueenjordan » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #111

Hi everyone, the Rust core team has been talking about making a statement on this, but I left this comment in a personal capacity yesterday: ------------------------ Mozilla employs a small number of people to work on Rust fulltime, and many of the Servo people contributed to Rust too, even if it wasn't their job. They also pay for the hosting bill for crates.io. They also own a trademark on Rust, Cargo, and the logo…

Totally agree, Rust will survive.

AWS is investing heavily in Rust. If anyone who is reading this was affected by these layoffs and you want to continue to work in Rust, get in touch with me. We have many Rust opportunities open across the company on a variety of different teams.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#197

Post by dependenttypes » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #146

iaml wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they don't just create a patreon/github sponsors/bitcoin donations for core ff/rust/mdn teams salaries and call it a day. I'm sure they'll get more than enough contributions to make it viable.

Doubtful at standard software engineer rates living in SV[0]. I remember being kinda surprised my first visit to SF, that Mozilla had an office right on the waterfront. Seemed kind of wasteful. They've also continuously lost lots of good will they had in the mid to late 2000s, both from end users and developers. I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to declare good riddance if chromium ever got a decent extensions…

Maybe it is time for Mozilla to move away from SV then. It is not as if there are no competent developers who would be willing to work on Firefox for $50k/year in other states or even countries.

Heck, the money that they get from google per year is enough to pay for 1000 developers paid at $100k/year each for 5 years.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#198

Post by Rochus » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #18

I wonder if Rust has enough momentum to sustain itself now.

It's core benefit proposition - improved memory safety - is or has been adopted in other languages like C++ or Ada (or even D for those who care). The legitimate question therefore arises as to whether the other features available in Rust justify an additional programming language. I'm rather conservative and think it's better to improve the existing sites than to open a new one. Time will tell.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#199

Post by gruez » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #61

Mozilla's decision makes a lot of economic sense. They got rid of projects requiring lots of engineering effort with negligible benefits for the company or for the internet or for our privacy. I'm not sure at this point if it makes sense for them to keep the Firefox code base or give up, switch to Chromium and focus on what they do best - spy less on us than Google. When Microsoft gave up anyone paying attention knew…

>They got rid of projects requiring lots of engineering effort with negligible benefits for [...] the internet or for our privacy.

what? https://twitter.com/MichalPurzynski/status/12932205708850626...

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#200

Post by esperent » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

liujy wrote: post #179

Recursing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google: * Forbid alternative browser engines on their platform. * Bundle their browser in a leading operating system. * Use their massive Web properties to drive downloads of their own browser.

> Bundle their browser in a leading operating system. What’s the alternative here? I can’t imagine opening up a new computer and not having some kind of web browser pre-installed.

It takes about 2 minutes to download and install a browser. Most operating systems already expect an internet connection when you're installing them, it would be easy to add a screen saying "select which browser you want" as part of the process.