By abandoning rust they made their billion dollar mistake.
They could have formed whole operating systems and userlands around it, Mozilla will look like Xerox.
They had a golden goose but choose to pursue a dying market and product out of sheer incompetence and stagnation.
Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
941–950 of 1001 posts
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#942> 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.
> This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.
i wonder how things would have turned out if mozilla was some kind of cooperative instead of top-down traditional structure
ceo chosen from someone who actually worked there, or brought in from outside, would they have chosen someone different... in this case, would they have already voted them out?
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#943This 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…
Regarding speed: it's not that Firefox got slower, it's that Chrome set a new performance bar that Firefox had to meet --- and largely has met! Though a cost of meeting that performance bar was dropping XUL extensions, which is one of those changes that people still complain about.
Contribution to Mozilla's defeat of IE is one of the great accomplishments of my life, but having been there for both fights, the fight against Chrome definitely was much tougher. Microsoft took their eye off the ball and basically stopped working on IE for a few years, which gave Mozilla a huge opportunity; no such luck with Chrome. The complexity of Web sites has increased a lot which makes it much harder to keep up and surpass a more well-resourced browser.
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#944There'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 c…
When I make this argument to tech companies in Vancouver (where typically compensation is an 80% discount from right across the border in Seattle), the response is usually that I can move if I want to.
Couldn't she just have gone and become CEO at a different company if she wanted to make more, like the rest of us do?
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Finding an alternative source for revenue like that is just really incredibly hard. Mozilla's been trying for a long time. What alternate revenue sources have they tried? Outside of their recent VPN offering, I haven't seen anything that they've tried to monetize. They didn't even try and monetize Firefox Send, even though the developers had a monetization strategy from the start.
Pocket. Sponsored tiles. The Mr. Robot debacle.
Yes.
FirefoxOS had some obvious revenue potential.
The pattern here of course is that every attempt to raise extra revenue caused storms of protest amongst Mozilla supporters.
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#946This 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
I'm not here to justify Mitchell's pay.
But you can't write an article about the decline of Firefox market share during the rise of Chrome and blame it all on the CEO.
(Mitchell's only been CEO for a year or so, but it is true that she (and Brendan, before he left) were largely the powers behind the throne since the beginning of Mozilla.)
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#947Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 c…
Perhaps they should find someone skilled who is willing to take that 80% discount from market. Baker has clearly not been worth her increased salary; I don't even think she's worth the original 20%-of-market salary, given how Firefox's market share has dropped precipitously, and Mozilla has been forced to lay off staff. Sure, you're probably not going to get a 100%-of-market-rate CEO for a 20%-of-market-rate salary,…
Has firefox's marketshare dropped precipitously since Baker became CEO, or has it just continued a steady decline?
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#948Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I understand the frustration, it's unclear to me what the expected solution is for Mozilla. Pay the CEO less until the company does better? Ok but the CEO will presumably just find a higher paying job elsewhere. Then what? Find a cheaper CEO? How does that help fix the slipping market share for Firefox?
Modern CEO pay is a cargo-cult. Companies pay CEO insane amounts because "everybody else does it" and "it helps hire the best". These theories are untested, except that we now know for certain that paying $2.5M doesn't guarantee that the CEO is any good. I would bet you can hire an excellent, technically competent CEO for Mozilla for $250k a year.
> I would bet you can hire an excellent, technically competent CEO for Mozilla for $250k a year.
But how long would they stay after other companies learn this new person is actually competent and start throwing money at them.
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#949Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then try it on a tablet, and go "What is this BS?" and start using Chrome, despite the fact that there is no NoScript, about:config, etc. Oh wait, no, just NoScript, because about:config doesn't work in Firefox for Android anymore.
About:config works just fine on my Android phone with Firefox 81.1.1-beta5. What seems to be the problem?
about:config was not working on my Android phone, 80.1.3. Ran the latest update to 81.1.1, still not working. Guess it might be in the next release?
Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
#950Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pocket. Sponsored tiles. The Mr. Robot debacle.
Yes. FirefoxOS had some obvious revenue potential. The pattern here of course is that every attempt to raise extra revenue caused storms of protest amongst Mozilla supporters.
Mozilla rolled them out really badly.
Pocket was quickly rammed through. Mozilla denied getting paid for the integration. That baffled people who would've understood if it was about money. Mozilla eventually admitted getting paid for referrals. That upset people who felt Mozilla had lied to them.
Sponsored tiles kicked off with marketing drivel about transforming the user's content experience.[1] Addressing users first and being more honest might have worked better.
The Mr. Robot promotion silently installed an add-on with a cryptic name. People thought they'd been hacked. Mozilla denied getting money for it too.
Mozilla treated users like resources instead of stakeholders and lost their trust.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...