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

calpaterson.com

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

#961

Post by jdashg »

disown wrote: post #820
twblalock wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mozilla execs could all make more money at FAANG companies just down the road from Mozilla HQ. If they left, it would probably be pretty hard to replace them with anyone capable of saving Firefox who would settle for less. The same is true for most of the engineers at Mozilla. They could go to FAANGs and increase their compensation quite a bit. So while I agree that the leadership has been bad, executive pay was…

> The Mozilla execs could all make more money at FAANG companies just down the road from Mozilla HQ. So let them. > The same is true for most of the engineers at Mozilla. They could go to FAANGs and increase their compensation quite a bit. So let them. To both your assertions, I highly doubt it. Maybe 1 or 2, but for the vast majority, no.

Firefox engineers do literally the same jobs as their counterparts at Google. Indeed, most of my ex-colleagues and ex-execs have gone to Google, Facebook, and Apple. (in roughly that order) It's no secret that they appreciate the increased compensation, too!

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

#962

Post by jbay808 »

dblohm7 wrote: post #956
jbay808 wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How hard will it be to find a replacement who will be willing to make 80% less?

If nobody else will, I'll humbly accept the role.

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

#963

Post by sadfev »

kzrdude wrote: post #767
sadfev wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooo boo hoo, oh poor multimillionaire execs how can they live on 500k per year!! Oh heaves their family! Exec Compensation should be linked to performance not to garbage like market value. Fuck Mozilla and its execs

Should be tied to the other salaries in the company. For example capped at 10x the lowest paid employee.

Meh. Have a floor of 3x average employee and let the pay be proportional to performance. There are natural limits to growth anyway.

HN crowd is a sucker when it comes to Mozilla. These bleeding hearts don’t bleed for furloughed and fired Mozilla drones. They only care about their political agenda not business or technological value.

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

#964

Post by saos »

> The Guardian started asking their readers for money a few years ago and seems to be on firmer financial footing since.

huh. The Guardian did a massive cut out of the bunch recently [1]. They'll soon start pay walling articles

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/15/guardian-annou...

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

#965

Post by Dkuku »

JangoSteve wrote: post #931
mvdwoord wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I have been a long time FF on Android user, mostly due to the ability to run add-ons (ublock etc). Latest update complete botched it. Couple of hnags/restarts every day, jittery UI, unintuitive button placement (e.g. new tab)... I want to use Firefox (or any decent browser not based on chrome), for several reasons, but this way it gets harder and harder to justify to myself. What alternatives do we have for non…

The latest Android Firefox update also disabled several of the addons I was using, as apparently they are now incompatible until the addon developers do some extra work to fix whatever backward incompatibility Mozilla introduced with the latest version.

I had the same issue - I think it was dark reader that stopped working.

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

#966

Post by xster »

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…

Wait that's not true is it? On iOS, Safari supports content blocker since like iOS 9, and on Android, not only you can get browser ad blocks, you can get OS-wide ad blocks through local VPN blockers.

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

#967

Post by ainiriand »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #854
ainiriand wrote: post #533

What amazes me most is that tech-savvy people still use Google Chrome, which is basically spyware. That pay is abhorrent for a company that failed to communicate the mission, even though the browser is better than ever.

>What amazes me most is that tech-savvy people still use Google Chrome, which is basically spyware. Same with Windows. : D

It is a very similar problem, indeed. But switching OS requires a lot of energy, that is not required to change your browser.

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

#968

Post by kybernetikos »

anigbrowl wrote: post #861
sambe wrote: post #408

Earlier 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…

I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. Well...bye.

Exactly. The right thing to do here if that bothers you, isn't to hollow out Mozilla, it's to go and take one of those other jobs that you believe you can get.

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

#969

Post by rapnie »

panpanna wrote: post #266
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 use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. Not anymore! To be consistent with their business screw ups, they addressed this with the latest updates. Now the mobile app a mess like the rest of Mozilla.

I have to agree with you, and it makes me sad every day. The entire UX is down the drain for me. Even something that always worked like a charm - URL address bar completion - is now broken. I used to type a 'g' and boom it would suggest Github Participating Notifications as first in line. No longer.. now I consistently see other sites, some of which I only visited once. Now part of browsing is dilligent URL address bar data-entry.

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

#970

Post by kybernetikos »

jka wrote: post #203
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…

The quote in context is available here: https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z Let's assume good faith and that executive pay in general at Mozilla was not competitive. That would be similar to a company noticing that it has been underpaying software engineers and then choosing to bump up compensation significantly. A question that raises is: do executives (and software engineers?) bring the value tha…

> Let's assume good faith and that executive pay in general at Mozilla was not competitive.

The problem is that this is a very subjective claim. If you think of mozilla as belonging to the same category as tech giants or successful tech startups, and believe it needs to compete with them to attract talent then it's not unreasonable. If you think of firefox as a charity then it's completely insane.

Compensation for charity CEOs, even tech focussed ones (like the EFF, TOR, wikimedia, khan academy) are lower, usually much lower. A number of charities have managed to attract impressive CEOs despite not paying 'market' rates.

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