Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #178

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.

It's not just the leadership at Firefox. FF has been hijacked by a bunch of people who have no interest in the browser and sucked it dry while it went down. Sad for the people at Mozilla who cared about the browser and wrote the code. As an FF user I hope Mozilla does a turn around, gets back its engineering culture and focuses on delivering the best - and most secure and private - browser in the market.

[deleted]

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

#712

Post by grumple » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #629

grumple wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t pay competitively, you won’t get someone who can do the job well. You might get lucky with someone cheaper, but it will require that luck. The fact is that 2.5 million probably isn’t enough to get the kind of turnaround leader Mozilla needs. They have no revenue model. You’re basically handing a CEO a bunch of talented devs and free products and saying “make a revenue stream” for products where their com…

A good CEO of a charity would be pumping their excess income back into the charity, so there's either no need to worry about pay or clearly the CEO is wrong.

Who does this? Maybe Bill Gates or others who have their own foundations. If this were true no charity would be able to find ceos.

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

#713

Post by driverdan » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #641

ahelwer wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Are you seriously comparing civil rights to a tax increase? Spend 10 minutes today learning about marriage and the rights it includes. I used to think it wasn't a big deal until I actually learned about it. Marriage includes hundreds of legal rights that have a huge impact on a couple's life (and death).

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

#714

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #641

ahelwer wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

This is Cali. You can be castigated for saying 那个 too much.

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

#715

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

mobilefriendly wrote: post #613

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand dictates pay. People who rise to become CEOs are not going to take bad contracts.

I don't think this is true at the CEO level. A big reason why CEO's get big pay packages is to incentivize all the aspiring middle managers to work hard.

That sounds like an urban legend. Most middle managers know they will never be CEO, there are orders of magnitude in difference in available jobs.

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

#716

Post by culturestate » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

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.

Yes, having one or more executive directors is standard operating procedure for public companies in the US. Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, et al sit on their respective boards.

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

#717

Post by calpaterson » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #698

This article has many problems. One of the main problems is that the immediate reason for Firefox losing market share is totally outside the control of the CEO or anyone else at Mozilla: Google pouring billions into Chrome, both actual billions of dollars and similar resources "in kind", like free advertising on the world's most popular Web properties (i.e. Google's). The best CEO in the world can't magically come up…

I don't agree that the reason that Firefox is losing market share is outside of the control of Mozilla. Most people seem who stop using Firefox seem to do so for concrete reasons within the control of Mozilla: speed (now perhaps a historical issue), compatibility with sites and user experience (the various controversial changes to the url bar over the years for example). These are all within the control of Mozilla.

I'm sure that marketing is an important point and it's true that Google can promote Chrome in many places. However Firefox gained considerable market share against internet explorer under (IMO) more difficult circumstances: it was pre-installed, Microsoft were considered as or more trustworthy by the public than Google now is and of course some sites could never work well with Firefox as they used proprietary features like ActiveX. Word of mouth is one of the primary reasons that browsers (other those that are pre-installed) are adopted and the word-of-mouth on Firefox has been poor relative to Chrome for some time.

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

#718

Post by driverdan » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

eeh wrote: post #475

austincheney wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously they had appointed an excellent CEO from within that is universally well respected for his technology contributions and then they fired him after 11 days without cause. Now that guy is a CEO at a different company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich says he left, rather than was fired. It looks like Brendan held popular political views, but not popular in relevant places.

> It looks like Brendan held popular political views

That's a generous way to say he opposed equal rights for a minority group, some of whom he employed.

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

#719

Post by dWc5hbxO74 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #698

This article has many problems. One of the main problems is that the immediate reason for Firefox losing market share is totally outside the control of the CEO or anyone else at Mozilla: Google pouring billions into Chrome, both actual billions of dollars and similar resources "in kind", like free advertising on the world's most popular Web properties (i.e. Google's). The best CEO in the world can't magically come up…

I am trying to think what other role can use this excuse of factors out of my control and failure to move the top line metric (in fact moving the other direction) but yet rewarded with a 400% increase in pay

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

#720

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #253

> Mobile browsing numbers are bleak: Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads. This is true, and indeed very strange. I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. So Mozilla's problems aren't only technical, there's also a question of market aw…

I don't know if the usage is high enough to make a dent, but Brave seems like a better alternative on mobile: all the quality of Chrome without the downsides.

To expand on the quality point: I used Firefox a long time past most of my laymen friends had switched to Chrome, despite it being painfully slower, and I spent years giving it trial periods on a regular basis. But the quality gap was just too reliable and persistent, with it always being slower, jankier, and less featureful (from a product perspective, I still can't believe how many years it took for them to get per-tab processes). When I've tried it recently on mobile, it's seemed quite a bit slower, and

Combined with a decline in confidence in their ability to be an effective organization that started with Eich's ouster and has only gotten worse over time, it's difficult for me to see why most users would choose mobile FF over Brave. The only advantage i can see is extensions, but it's my impression that most users don't much care to use them.