Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#781

Post by justapassenger »

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

I think being employee is putting you in a different perspective.

It's hard to escape news cycle, and when you apply what you see inside vs how it's presented publicly, you get angry. Understandably, as you twisted facts and cherry-picked details, just to support the narrative.

This is true about employees at many big companies. For - ask why people work at Google/Facebook, given all the horrible stuff you read about them? Reasons will be often similar - news cycle vs reality is very distorted and careful balances of tricky topics don't make catchy headlines.

Are those companies flawless? Hell no. Are they evil empires spending all their time figuring out how to steal candy from a baby? Also no.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#782

Post by qu4z-2 »

michaelt wrote: post #158
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

> Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. Perhaps what they mean is "nobody is paying for the browser (except Google, our arch-nemesis) we need to build things people will pay for"

The obvious route here seems to be to let us pay for the browser...

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#783

Post by DonHopkins »

prepend wrote: post #771
bitwize wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function. So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional. As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot.…

You too: Eich was not fired. Get your facts straight, and stop spreading misinformation.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?

A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:

“I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”

Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.

Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?

A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#784

Post by quickthrower2 »

vages wrote: post #627
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't think the corporate doublespeak is reason to switch to Chrome, but I do think the corporate doublespeak in this announcement is just awful. When you're doing a layoff, just announce the layoff, show compassion to the affected employees, and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement. Putting stuff about the fight against systemic racism in the opening paragraph of a layo…

I have to respectfully disagree. It is common for leaders to re-state their entity's reason for being as they bring bad news. See Churchill's speeches during the battle of France, for instance. I think this opening was well-written and clearly communicated Mozilla's purpose. You can blame it for being populist, but don't hate the player, hate the game.

I think they could have learned something from wartime speeches here in terms of reading their audience. People who care about Mozilla as an entity are sophisticated readers.

They could have said pretty much the same thing, but with a nod to the fact that it is hard to believe the corporate version. E.g. "Mozilla has laid off 250 employees today. Why? Well here are our reasons, let's start at the beginning...".

And then I'd be more interested to read.

I would love to know why - short on cash? Google's teet running dry? Or do they believe fewer people = more agility? or maybe the roles really were redundant.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#785

Post by TwoNineFive »

yarrel wrote: post #587
dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

> Did we apologize? Did we learn anything? Did we work to prevent it happening again? No.

For multiple issues, including the certificate expiration fiasco from last year, the butchering of bookmarks and history in Firefox, to Firefox on Android, and more and more mistakes that I think about.

They didn't apologize. They didn't learn anything. And yea, they sometimes even did it again.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#786

Post by JohnBooty »

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

I don't mind any of Mozilla's mistakes. Like you say: Mozilla is exemplary when it comes to getting things right when they screw up.

What I mind is that I can't take Mozilla seriously at all.

They keep trying new projects. I laugh every time because I know it will be gone in six to twelve months.

Right now Mozilla is offering VPN service. Theoretically, I am the ideal customer. I care about privacy and security and make good money and have been a devoted Firefox user for nearly 20 years -- ever since Phoenix 0.2! And I trust Mozilla 100x more than the competition.

But I've never even glanced at that service. Why? So I can have the rug pulled out from me in six months? lol.

For me to take any non-Firefox project from Mozilla seriously, I'd need to hear some kind of commitment from Mozilla to supporting it for the long haul.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#787

Post by DonHopkins »

will4274 wrote: post #332
dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

I don't hold Mozilla to higher standards. I regard Mozilla as being deeply sick, even by the standards of a non-profit. The Mozilla Corporation has three plagues. First, the plague of Debian and the logjam breakers. Mozilla, like Debian, has many technical users with loud opinions and struggles to reach consensus. Debian suffers from this problem because it comes to consensus oh so very slowly - multiple competing pa…

>Google also doesn't fire executives because of their political views or previous donations, when held privately, particularly when those political views are relatively common.

Obviously you're referring to Brendan Eich. But you're wrong: Eich was not fired, and he was not forced to resign. In fact just the opposite: the board tried to get him to stay. This should not be news to you: it was in the FAQ on CEO resignation, from April 2014 when it happened:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?

A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:

“I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”

Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.

Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?

A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#788

Post by 80386 »

prepend wrote: post #771
bitwize wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

I think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function. So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional. As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot.…

Brave was a good browser. Now it's... what, a Chromium extension? I liked pre-rewrite Brave much more than post-rewrite. The tab contexts (or whatever they were called, it's been so long that I've forgotten) were great - pre-rewrite Brave had ten separate containers for cookies and so on, so if you kept Facebook in context 8, you'd only be logged into Facebook in context 8, and you could do all your other browsing in the nine other contexts.

This was also good for multiple accounts; most social media doesn't support clients anymore, or doesn't have good clients, and in order to keep separate topics separate, you need multiple accounts. So now I keep three different browsers open, because there's just no good way to do this otherwise.

I still mostly use Brave, but IMO it's much less differentiated from other browsers than pre-rewrite.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#789

Post by chillfox »

ploxiln wrote: post #640
renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

I use Firefox. I have used it since it was called Phoenix, and I still use it today, extensively, on macOS, Linux, and Windows. I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. It wasn't supposed to be an "agile" tech company, with slick marketing and UI/UX, making deals to try to get market share. It was supposed to be a non-profit foundation, making an open-source cross-platform browser engine, p…

Yep, if they had stuck the Google money in an index fund and only operated off a small drawdown then they wouldn't need to rely on commercial interests or donations today.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#790

Post by wslh »

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

> One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are a always held to impossibly high standards.

Yes, that is the name of the game. Isn't it? You are not a obscure project in GitHub. If you don't think so please move on. When you are a top Hollywood star you play the game of the stars. The same applies for sports or other high competitive activities. Chrome is here, show you deserve the place you are.

Post reply on HN