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Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

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Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#121

Post by twblalock »

kwanbix wrote: post #48
Jonnax wrote: post #13

There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid. And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. Their executives are clearly failures. But with such high pay, they're cashing out. Buying themsel…

The problem is not that they get most of their revenue from Google. The problem is that they have 5% share of the web now.

The Google money is what enabled them to let their core product wither and nearly die without any short-term consequences. They spent a pretty long time with it in that state while pursuing things like a phone OS. Without the Google money they would have had more incentive to keep Firefox competitive.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#122

Post by lumberjack »

shp0ngle wrote: post #18

I'm two fences on Firefox doing "too many unrelated things" as the article suggests. Firefox OS has been pretty much unsuccessful, but it sort of made sense? It started to be made when Firefox was still on top on desktop, but mobile started eating its lunch; and it was clear that Firefox need to do something about it, or the future will be all Chrome and Safari, on the two locked-down platforms. Which eventually happ…

The problem seems to me, that Mozilla does not have a platform of users to market to, whereas all their competitors do. It's really the marketing part where Firefox is falling short and I am not sure they can ever do much better on that front.

Regarding Send/Teleconferencing, I think that made sense to. In theory you don't need anything as complicated as Skype or Teams or Zoom and lots of people, me including, use VOIP a lot. It would have been nice to have a simple click to call on the browser itself. Same goes for sending files with a click. Utilities that lots of people use and would give the browser a boost. Unfortunately I think these products failed because the sort of person who needs them is the sort of person who does not like learning new things so even if their current method is 8 steps and takes addition software and is not free, they will keep with what is currently working for them. Again this might also be Mozilla's marketing falling short.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#123

Post by AmericanChopper »

jacquesm wrote: post #100

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. That must be a real comfort to all the people they laid off. This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

They had one of those. He was chased out for making $3,100 in donations the wrong political causes.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#124

Post by lightgreen »

jameskraus wrote: post #113
lightgreen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exec pay is usually tied to some metrics. Like market share or the revenue in case of Mozilla. (In the corporations it is usually done by offering CEO options with nonzero price.) If the company is not performing well, CEO only gets the basic salary (which is higher than engineer salary, but not too large.) When Mitchell was given a raise for no reason, it is a sign of corruption in Mozilla board.

This really isn't crazy compensation given the role and the industry. There are many execs making orders of magnitude more [0]. I know there is a bit of sticker-shock for people who haven't heard about top-level compensation, but it's not unheard of, just usually unspoken. https://usanewssite.com/news/the-unconventional-ceo-of-33-3-...

It is crazy that the compensation is not tied to metrics. If Firefox at least kept the market share, that would be OK.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#125

Post by ekianjo »

jacquesm wrote: post #100

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. That must be a real comfort to all the people they laid off. This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

Does Mozilla have a board? Who gets to fire the CEO in this organization?

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#126

Post by twelvechairs »

twblalock wrote: post #94
Jonnax wrote: post #13

There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid. And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. Their executives are clearly failures. But with such high pay, they're cashing out. Buying themsel…

The Mozilla execs could all make more money at FAANG companies just down the road from Mozilla HQ. If they left, it would probably be pretty hard to replace them with anyone capable of saving Firefox who would settle for less. The same is true for most of the engineers at Mozilla. They could go to FAANGs and increase their compensation quite a bit. So while I agree that the leadership has been bad, executive pay was…

> If they left, it would probably be pretty hard to replace them with anyone capable of saving Firefox who would settle for less.

Its an open source project people believe in. Reduce the pay and you are probably actually more likely to cut out the worst execs and focus only on smart people who want to contribute.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#127

Post by laumars »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #8

I really want Mozilla to succeed. But I just can't bring myself to use Firefox as a daily driver. Just open a few tabs on a top of the line macbook, and a twitch stream and things get very laggy. I've seen numerous people craving for better container support, which is definitely a killer feature for people going forward towards a more private web. Why isn't Mozilla more actively developing this? Developers were the p…

Better container support would be ace but dismissing FF because of that complaint when no other browser even has that feature is a little like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Regarding performance on macOS, Firefox runs fine for me and I very very rarely have below 50 tabs open. Have you tried it recently? I had read there were some bugs with macOS but most of those were resolved a couple of years ago.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#128

Post by ekianjo »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #123
jacquesm wrote: post #100

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. That must be a real comfort to all the people they laid off. This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

They had one of those. He was chased out for making $3,100 in donations the wrong political causes.

This cant be true because cancel culture does not exist, I am being told.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#129

Post by Certhas »

RobertoG wrote: post #65
londons_explore wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox OS never made sense unless Mozilla was prepared to pay the backroom bribes and incentives to get it preinstalled on hundreds of millions of phones. And they weren't.

They had Telefónica on board. I think with better planning and execution it could be made to work.

Maybe maybe not. But it's also good to keep in mind who else failed in that space from many different angles. MS, Nokia, Blackberry, etc... If MS with infinite cash on hand could not get into that market then it is likely that chances of success were always very low. And it still might have been the right thing to try despite the chance being low.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#130

Post by vmception »

> Surely such impressive pay is justified by the equally impressive results Mozilla has achieved?

No, it is completely discretionary. I don't consider this controversial because I know it is completely discretionary. Why would it be tied to anything aside from the ability to continue paying that compensation or desire to be compensated that way?

The only consideration of a foundation is the nearly tax-free capital growth rate, 5% net assets grant rate, and whether the TAXED salaries are tolerable. And for them, yes, paying super high income taxes and giving the government over a million on a $2.4m salary per year is tolerable.

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