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

#751

Post by nec4b » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #243

fiblye wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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. Someone with at least a little hands-on experience in building a product really should be something companies look for in leadership. I mean, sure, Baker's done plenty for Mozilla, but Mozilla has been absolutely lost as to what they're tryin…

> 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…

If you don't think the state should allow incestual, polygamic or polyamorous marriages you are as bigoted as Eich for being against gay marriage.

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

#752

Post by djsumdog » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #740

sam_goody wrote: post #564

They had a GREAT CEO. Brendan Eich. He not only was heavily involved with destroying IE's monopoly, he was able to start Brave in a punishing market (competing against Google, Apple, and his own FF) and made it a contender. But, he wasn't woke enough. And for that, everyone will now pay dearly. I daresay, learning that someone else is entitled to a competing view is difficult. Allowing others to have a view other tha…

I think arguing that Brendan Eich was a great CEO is massively overstating things. A great CEO would have been able to handle the issues he was confronted with. Just because somebody was ousted in a way you feel was unfair, doesn't make them a great leader.

Well what about the decade of work prior to being CEO? I mean, the guy did create Javascript. For better or worse, it is one of the most popular programming languages in use today.

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

#753

Post by burtonator » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

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 is already dead... which I'm happy about because they're doing a horrible job.

BUT... key point here, I totally agree with them regarding their compensation.

Even non-profits have to be competitive.

Imagine it's YOU... everyone you know is making 350-400k at Google and you're stuck making 180 or whatever at FF. Would you stay?

And sure, say YOU would, what % of your colleagues do you think would stay?

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

#754

Post by djsumdog » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

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…

I wonder why Eich went with Chromium/Blink and didn't decide to continue to use Firefox/Gecko as the basis for Brave?

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

#755

Post by alcover » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

For perspective, if the CEO gave up her pay, those 250 Mozilla employees could all stay with the company, earning $800 a month.

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

#756

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #671

behnamoh wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Oh no. While I am absolutely pissed ( to say the least ) that Nokia was sold to Microsoft and Yahoo couldn't turn its ship around. I dont think both CEO were doing in their own interest or another companies interest. Nokia refused to use Android. ( Which was what really killed Nokia ) That was only two possible outcome, either go full force with Symbian or partner with Microsoft. I mean there are so many wrong with N…

As someone who was at Nokia when Elop became CEO and had some (very limited) view into the goings on, as the kids say: "yes, this, +1".

Circa 2010, Symbian was clearly uncompetitive and MeeGo was far behind schedule. There was a fairly ambitious plan to build a new UI framework in Qt that ran on both Symbian and MeeGo -- the Nokia N9 used this with Harmattan, which internally I don't think we ever referred to as MeeGo, IIRC! -- but I'm pretty sure when Elop arrived he took stock of things and thought, "My God, this MeeGo thing is Nokia's version of Apple's Copland project," and it's really hard to say he was wrong.

Looking back, it's really easy to say that he was wrong not to choose Android, but it was seriously considered. The problem was that Nokia insisted on two mutually exclusive conditions: they wanted to use a lot of Nokia-based services so the new devices still "felt Nokia," and they wanted to fully partner with Google and market the devices as Android. And Google wouldn't do it. If you want to call your device "Android (R)" then you use Google services; if you want to use your own, you have to do what Amazon did with the Fire devices. Google wouldn't make an exception for Nokia, but Microsoft -- who by that point had, at least internally, realized Windows Phone was seriously floundering -- would. And so they went with Microsoft.

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

#757

Post by TheRealPomax » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #623

Judging by the numerous projects Mozilla has launched and then abandoned in recent years, it seems the people running it are searching for new hit products, instead of investing for the long term on development of services and infrastructure that will benefit humankind for years and decades to come. Quoting from the OP: "In recent years Mozilla has created: * a mobile app for making websites * a federated identity sy…

On the internet, "recent" is not an very useful word. Even 5 years ago is literally a different era of the web already, so holding someone to account for shuttering things that for all the world seemed a great idea 5 years ago after only a few years because the web itself stopped being interested in those things is kind of missing the point. All those things are attempts at doing exactly what you're accusing them of not doing - all of these started in the expectation that they'd finally be something that could be sustained long term to either generate income or drive up user numbers (which indirectly generates income). What you're actually looking at is how fucking hard it is for a company that's already established on some corner of the web to come up with even a single way to sustain itself by moving into a different corner.

There's no money in making a browser, and even the things that look promising enough for a company that can't just throw 100 million at it because that's not even a dent in their budget almost always turn out to not be promising after even a year or two. When keeping those things running costs you more than you'll ever make back on them, you shut them down. That's what a company has to do.

That list is not "What did Mozilla kill", it's "What did Mozilla unsuccessfully try in order to not go under". It reads as a testament to the reality of how hard it is to make a buck on the web: everyone wants everything for free, and if it's not available for free, hundreds of bunches of folks will make a competing thing that is, and of those hundreds, usually at least one succeeds (and you never hear about the hundreds of failures).

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

#758

Post by kbrosnan » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

jerome-jh wrote: post #518

atomlib wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The top bar moved to the bottom. There's an option to restore its rightful position at the top.

Thanks for the info. Since the capability is still there, maybe they could ask after the update: "would you like to give a try to our new UI?". A reminder a few days later would give the opportunity to commit to the new UI or revert to the old one. That would be IMO classier.

There was an onboarding screen when you first launched Firefox that offered several choices. One of them was address bar at top. Others include dark mode and strict tracking protection.

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

#759

Post by josalhor » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

findthewords wrote: post #280

fierarul wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla Inc is not a non-profit. The parent organization is.

How is it possible that non-profitness does not inherit to a child company? Seems like a conflict of interest.

I'm from Spain, so my knowledge may not be translatable, but I will give it a crack.

A business that is set up as a "non-profit" means that it can't pay dividends. If the business earns one million dollars, I can't profit from it. This does not mean there aren't people in the organization with salaries. Sometimes big salaries.

You can have a "for-profit" company owned by a "non-profit" one. The dividends paid by the "for-profit" go to the "non-profit" but those can only be reinvested. In a way, yes, "non-profitness" is inherited.

I guess that the "for-profit" organization provides legal benefits. If one of your child companies goes bankrupt, it shouldn't affect the other ones nor the parent company. I have a few more guesses but I am not confident enough to write about them, especially when I am not from the US.

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

#760

Post by NoOneNew » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

fcantournet wrote: post #692

dcchambers wrote: post #598

Isn't the obvious answer that CEO/executive pay should be tied more closely to performance? I don't root for anyone to lose their job, but in this case, it seems like the leadership of Mozilla is failing to lead them in the right direction. I don't see how that gets rewarded. If my performance metrics at work go down 85% - I'm probably getting fired. In this case, executive performance metrics should be closely tied…

No it's not obvious. It's actually the #1 problem in Big corporations' governance. If you are a For Profit company with share-holders, you can define performance as money gain by shareholders, i.e financial performance. This is always short term and it's the #1 cited reason why private long term investment has basically disappeared in the last 40 years. BigCo are managed with a 6m horizon and both eyes lock on the st…

>why do you think higher comp will lead to better work ?

While I do partially agree, I don't fully. Those who are good at what they do get paid more. Now, that means they generally start competent and well intentioned. No amount of money fixes an idiot with ill will. I think a lot of firms are ignoring that concept in the past 10-20 years.

The short term outlook is also a huge problem. You see it often in action on Bloomberg with the markets. It's Christmas or Crisis every other day, absolutely ignoring long term positions. To me, that's the difference between capitalism and profiteering. Capitalism is a long term infrastructure play to make money (like Disney buying Marvel and setting up the MCU in a way that can create many, many products that build off each other) while profiteering is just turn and burn, short-term plays ignoring more than 12 calendar months.

Perhaps your non-profit question is the real kicker. How does Mozilla measure success? Market penetration? The end of IE? But then by taking in Google money, does that make Chrome a competitor or ally? From a user standpoint, Chrome isn't exactly the "good guys" either due to epic tracking. So that in turn makes a bit of a conflict of interest when you toot your "privacy and user first" horn while you're paid by one of, if not the biggest privacy invader... ever. Financial independence would be a good current metric... but with the ceo pay hike... I doubt that'll happen.