Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

calpaterson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#401

Post by ummonk »

jacquesm wrote: post #309
sangnoir wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster cryst…

I'm still a FF evangelist though it is getting harder by the day. Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupi…

How could have have made the donation anonymously? Were FEC laws different at the time?

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

#402

Post by tomp »

rv-de wrote: post #376
jansan wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why should anyone contribute to an open source project of a for-profit company without being compensated?

what idiots downvoted this very reasonable statement?

It's not reasonable. The whole thread is stupid.

Non-profit just means that the company cannot make / pay out profit. It can still pay its employees a lot of money. It can still own for-profit corporate entities, take their profit, and spend it on other (non-money-making) causes.

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

#404

Post by dotancohen »

panpanna wrote: post #296
mvdwoord wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I have been a long time FF on Android user, mostly due to the ability to run add-ons (ublock etc). Latest update complete botched it. Couple of hnags/restarts every day, jittery UI, unintuitive button placement (e.g. new tab)... I want to use Firefox (or any decent browser not based on chrome), for several reasons, but this way it gets harder and harder to justify to myself. What alternatives do we have for non…

New FF also feels significantly slower. Can't really put my finger on anything specific but it is no longer fluid. Even Edge is now chromium based, I think it's a lost battle.

I've noticed the opposite. New FF flies for me on the websites I use, such as HN and Stack Overflow. What sites is it slow for you?

Note also that many of the redesigned plugins will be slower than their older, mature counterparts. Give the plugin authors some time to optimize their plugins, and try to cull the amount of plugins you currently use. I've using only Adblock Plus, Tree Style Tab, and Tridactyl.

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

#406

Post by toyg »

IlIlI wrote: post #250
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 basic idea of Firefox OS was actually great, they just didn't quite get the market right. Kai OS is a very successful fork which runs on feature phones.

Kai OS is fundamentally irrelevant though, in the great scheme of things. Mozilla can do billions of irrelevant but self-sustainable projects; that’s not the point. The point of Mozilla is to move the needle in the web ecosystem at large.

It was clear from the start that Mozilla did not have enough to move the needle in the mobile market all by itself. FFOS was a massive waste of time, effort, and money, that even resulted in a loss of prestige for the brand. It sucked the air out of more relevant priorities, diverted (and eventually often lost) their best talent, and wasted time and focus at a critical juncture.

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

#407

Post by fetbaffe »

ppf wrote: post #279
jacquesm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> t wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. But he resigned (he wasn't forced out, though…

>should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity And there was me thinking he was just leading browser development.

Ought to be a flagship of technology.

Not only has Mozilla an overpaid management that doesn't do what it is supposed to do but the it seems that the staff fits into that same category.

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

#408

Post by sambe »

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 claim was not that they can't reduce but that an 80% discount was too much to ask of people (and thus also their families). I don't think anyone at any pay level would be happy being paid 20% of similar roles. Perhaps the problem was putting people in these roles in the first place that would accept 20% of market rate. Raising their pay subsequently doesn't make them better at their job!

The quote is not really crazy:

"Executive compensation is a general topic -- are execs, esp CEOs paid too much? I'm of the camp that thinks the different between exec comp and other comp is high. So then i think, OK what should mozilla do about it? My answer is that we try to mitigate this, but we won't solve this general social problem on our own. Here's what I mean by mitigate: we ask our executives to accept a discount from the market-based pay they could get elsewhere. But we don't ask for an 75-80% discount. I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z?comme...

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

#409

Post by dragonwriter »

sangnoir wrote: post #286
jacquesm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> t wasn't long ago that comments were shouting that this was the absolute most qualified person to lead Mozilla when others were questioning having a lawyer lead a tech company. I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. But he resigned (he wasn't forced out, though…

> I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster cryst…

> I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group

Bigotry is not how, and never has been, a fringe position in the US. If you have a problem acknowledging that...well, it doesn't make it any less true.

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

#410

Post by newyorker2 »

dotancohen wrote: post #343
threatofrain wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see Eich with his own browser vision and executive style over at Brave, where he is unencumbered by legacy bureaucracy or codebases. He wouldn’t have been as free if he were at Mozilla.

The problem is that we have the person who arguably most understands the domain of web browsers, online privacy, and all the legal and ethical aspect thereof, working on another Chromium-based browser. I do not need to elaborate on why a diverse browser ecosystem is important, there are enough threads on that already. Mozilla had this jewel, exactly what it needed to succeed and make the web a better place. He was at…

Some comments are worth glancing over from time to time. This is one of them. Thanks for the reality check.
Post reply on HN