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

calpaterson.com

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

#551

Post by rattray »

tasogare wrote: post #532
rattray wrote: post #527

This is a pretty unfair article. The author presents firefox market share (a relative term) on one axis and CEO pay (an absolute term) on the other. The sad reality is that the CEO pay should be a relative metric to tech companies of similar size in the bay area, where Mozilla is based. Or at least US tech companies of similar scale. As the internet has enveloped the globe in the last 10 years, a huge amount of money…

Still it makes no sense to pay people millions of dollars when a company is not doing well financially. In this regards what Iwata did while being CEO of Nintendo during hardship (cutting his salary in half and getting no bonus) is the way to go.

Yeah, it really stings when CEO's get paid a lot while their company struggles (especially layoffs, etc).

In the case of for-profit companies like Nintendo, the CEO typically owns a ton of stock. If they turn things around, the financial returns to them will be huge – especially compared to letting the company crater.

Steve Jobs took no salary for years while Apple struggled (great!), and still ended up with several billion dollars, mostly from Apple.

That can't happen with Mozilla. If they cut the CEO pay in half, they'll probably quit and go work somewhere else. Then what?

Do you try to hire some other CEO for a tiny fraction of what they'd earn at an equivalent role at a for-profit company? At a time when Mozilla already looks like a sinking ship? Sorry, most folks who are talented enough to have multiple options would choose something else, even if there are "warm fuzzy feelings" for working at a non-profit.

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

#552

Post by seqizz »

patrec wrote: post #158
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.

Do you see any realistic chance of this happening? Generally if a company is captured by a parasitic leadership sucking it dry, that's it, right? Is there anyone on the board whose interests are more aligned with keeping Mozilla alive (probably hard to do at this point) than feasting on it whilst there is still something left to feast on? Presumably you'd need a few such people.

There is a possibility, doesn't matter how low, I like to think about: Group of people leaving Mozilla, forking the Firefox and creating another non-profit.

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

#554

Post by mrintegrity »

I would love to see a fork of Mozilla Firefox that gets wide acceptance and adheres to some basic principles (privacy, following standards, etc). But right now, firefox the product is actually still very good, I much prefer it to the alternatives (although the recent android update has included some questionable UI changes)

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

#555

Post by bwat49 »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #549
jacquesm wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you pay for this? Without critical mass you are not going anywhere. FireFox had critical mass, and lost. You won't be able to recover that position without some extremely deep pockets even if you start off from what is there today. I am not convinced that even if Mozilla/FF got a competent CEO tomorrow and started executing 'just so' that they would be able to recover from their slide, a newcomer would have…

This is basically how Mozilla began, as Netscape died, right?

The browser market is so much different now though.

Firefox was originally competing against the pile of steaming garbage that was IE6.

Now they are competing against Chrome which is actually a good browser, and Chrome also has the advantage of having google behind it which can leverage their search/ad monopoly to push Chrome.

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

#556

Post by kuon »

I'd really like Firefox to stay a viable browser. It is now for me, but I fear it might decline to the point it won't be.

As an open source contributor I have to say that Firefox is very hard to contribute to, compared to something hosted on github or similar.

I looked once on the effort required to fork Firefox and run it. It's a big project, but it's not impossible. It would still requires about 10 engineers full time to keep it alive.

I don't have the resources to make it happens, but if a serious fork is ever created, I'll do my best to contribute.

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

#557

Post by wffurr »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #529
RobertoG wrote: post #69

This: "Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, [..]. Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years." and this at the same time: "Mozilla recently announced that they would be dismissing 250 people." It's shameful. Specially for a "non profit".

That’s how you know it’s performative wokeness. There should be more uproar about an indefensible salary like that but the CEO is a woman with asymmetric hair and conformist opinions.

The rest of this thread that is not rehashing the Eich thing is exactly an uproar about an indefensible salary.

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

#558

Post by stefan_ »

pjmlp wrote: post #318
bawolff wrote: post #163

Another way to look at it: mozilla is a sinking ship. Being a CEO of a shinking ship looks bad on the resume and is high risk for the ceo (reputation wise). High risk jobs should get higher compensation than low risk jobs. I'd certainly argue that for a normal company. For mozilla though, there is a question of why do you even need a CEO? Does Linux have a CEO? I suspect at least some of mozilla's problems is trying…

> Does Linux have a CEO? https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership/

Keep in mind the Linux foundation is mostly a vehicle for a bunch of empty suits to cash in on "all things Linux". The influence on kernel development is negligible except for the occasional cringe moment.

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

#559

Post by golergka »

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…

Isn't the CEO pay here a classic example of principal-agent problem?

In a commercial company, there would be activist investors pushing to cut manager's pay and change management. But I'm not familiar with this type of NGOs so well; who is supposed play the role of principal here? And are they not playing it properly?

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

#560

Post by jacquesm »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #549
jacquesm wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you pay for this? Without critical mass you are not going anywhere. FireFox had critical mass, and lost. You won't be able to recover that position without some extremely deep pockets even if you start off from what is there today. I am not convinced that even if Mozilla/FF got a competent CEO tomorrow and started executing 'just so' that they would be able to recover from their slide, a newcomer would have…

This is basically how Mozilla began, as Netscape died, right?

Pretty much. But they had not ridden Netscape that far down to the bottom just yet. Don't forget that the roots of Mozilla were seeded in 1998, the Mozilla foundation came 6 years later. Netscape was still hugely popular and FireFox took that popularity and ran with it.

To do this today, with a much more complex product would be no mean feat, back then a browser was a much simpler piece of software than it is today.

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