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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

#641

Post by roenxi »

ahelwer wrote: post #480
mywacaday wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of the details. While I 100% disagree with him on marriage equality I don't understand why he was driven from his role that has nothing to do with Proposition 8. Why did his freedom to support a cause with his own money result in him having to resign, seems anti-democratic to me.

I don't know, man. It's easy to get all abstract with phrases like "support a cause" but we live in a concrete world. Mozilla employs a lot of gay people. Prop 8 was viciously homophobic, both in concept and especially in execution of its campaign. How would you feel going to work knowing your boss's boss thinks you don't deserve rights?

If I earn $100,000 am I allowed to ask for people advocating for tax increases to be ejected from the company for being wealthophobes?

That isn't as idle a question as you might think on first glance. Denying someone marriage rights is waaay down the list of ways voters can screw each other over through government policy. Most high income earners are in companies with co-workers who literally argue that they should be less well off.

Being anti-gay-marriage is more stupid because the upside is unclear, but we expect people in the same company to put up with bigger differences of opinion on a routine basis. Different religions have gone to war in the past. I don't think many battles have been fought over official marriage rights.

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

#642

Post by bogwog »

ionforce wrote: post #107
drenvuk wrote: post #15

Shit like this pisses me off. I care for Firefox and the team behind it but how do you get rid of these vampires sucking the company dry? You've got executive pay going up, usage going down. Pivotal leaders being ousted, good workers being released, good features being removed and shit features being added. It's like managers and executives somehow dig their bureaucratic teeth into a successful company/project and th…

No incentive, I guess, is the explanation for any stagnant system.

Why bother trying to build a successful business if Google is just going to keep bailing you out with their charity?

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

#643

Post by ascagnel_ »

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…

> Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked.

It's not just that they get most of their revenue from Google -- it's that they're getting most of their revenue from a company that also runs their biggest competitor and has every incentive to push their own product over someone else's.

Apple and Mozilla both have uncomfortable dependencies on Google nowadays, so I wonder if one of them (if not both) are looking to buy DuckDuckGo.

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

#644

Post by srtjstjsj »

vowelless wrote: post #576

On one hand: > Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, a sum I personally think of as instant inter-generational wealth It’s certainly not if you are in SV. And that number doesn’t even seem high to me, given her impressive background and the opportunity cost. That’s Facebook E7 money. Or Google L8 money. She would easily be hired above those levels at those companies. On the other hand: > Bu…

So let her go to Google and hire Eich back for $400K, problem solved.

Her experience was in legal and operations, not product vision and development. She's a Tim Cook or a Sundar Pichai when what's needed is a Steve Jobs or Sergey Brin.

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

#645

Post by rectang »

jeltz wrote: post #513
culturestate wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a problem that she is both on the board and CEO, which effectively makes her impossible to hold to account Is this really a problem? The CEO is often a director, and even as chairwoman I doubt anything in the bylaws prevents the board at large from removing her if they wanted to. Instead, it seems like the board itself is the issue, since they allowed Mozilla to stray so far from its core mission.

Is that common in the US? Because here in Sweden it is regarded as bad practice for medium sized companies and up. The CEO is almost never part of the board here except for in tiny companies.

I served on the board of the Apache Software Foundation for a year and everything about the experience convinced me that it is desirable for the board to be completely separate from the corporate officers.

In fact, I have seen this very debate play out in real life. We appointed a new President of the ASF during my term. That person had been a Director, but when they became President they stepped down from the Board.

For a non-profit charity that relies on volunteers, perfect separation is not always feasible, and especially in the early years when the ASF was smaller the President was often a Board member. But although I can't speak for anybody but myself, I believe that the ASF is likely to continue with an informal tradition of separating Board from Officers for the indefinite future.

A similar cultural change ought to be possible at Mozilla — and perhaps elsewhere.

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

#646

Post by behnamoh »

ksec wrote: post #577
patrec wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I definitely agree with changing leadership. I dont think she can be described as parasitic leadership. She is incompetent, but I dont think she has the intention to drive Mozilla to the ground. After all she co-founded the Mozilla Project, and was the Chairwoman for a long time, long before she was named the CEO. Why did they not find someone else to be CEO is beyond me though.

Remember Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia? He did an awesome job in reducing Nokia's marketshare (and hence, its market capital) to make the company ready to be acquired by his mother company, Microsoft, at a very low price (cheaper than just one app—WhatsApp which was sold to Facebook).

Or remember Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer? She also did a great job at making the company ready to be sold out to Verizon at low price.

These CEOs know what they're doing. They take care of their personal interests and steal companies for the tech giants.

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

#647

Post by stingraycharles »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #643
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…

> Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. It's not just that they get most of their revenue from Google -- it's that they're getting most of their revenue from a company that also runs their biggest competitor and has every incentive to push their own product over someone else's. Apple and Mozilla both have uncomfortable depe…

Google may want to do with Mozilla the same thing Microsoft did with Apple during their antitrust case: keep it alive to keep the regulators off their back.

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

#648

Post by devwastaken »

I was really hoping that servo would be much better and safer, but I don't believe there was enough development time invested by mozilla. So currently firefox has no advantages to chrome, not even on mobile anymore since add-ons just went poof for no reason.

Firefox inevitably will have to go the way of a chromium reskin if they can't compete. There's no reason to be doubling your development load when you cant even impliment the features users want.

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

#649

Post by jcranmer »

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…

> 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.

You do realize that the donation occurred years before he was appointed CEO, right?

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

#650

Post by bronson »

bogwog wrote: post #606
enriquto wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. This kind of bullshit infuriates me to no end.

Don't get infuriated at someone for something they were mis-quoted at saying. See the original statement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24565071

“That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.“

Doesn’t seem to be much of a misquote. Poor Mitchell Baker. She’ll just have to suffer with her non-discounted salary.

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