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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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ameshkov ◴[] No.22057804[source]
Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456

This is about 7% of all their employees.

People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked.

A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-...

> In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision

edit: fixed the numbers, added some more details.

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WilTimSon ◴[] No.22058286[source]
I'm surprised they're laying off security and QA, considering how focused on privacy and security their marketing campaign seems to be. In the last 6 months, I think 90% of cases where I saw Mozilla mentioned were about how it's the 'hot new browser' for the privacy-concerned. Although, perhaps, that's more to do with a good marketing team and less with a sprawling security department? Would love to see some expert opinion on what this means for the company's current trajectory.
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1. dman ◴[] No.22058393[source]
Perhaps Rust is delivering better than expected results.
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2. the_duke ◴[] No.22058456[source]
Only a tiny part of Firefox is in Rust now.

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_Components .

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3. diegocg ◴[] No.22058841[source]
Also, Rust code can have security bugs. Memory safety bugs are not the only kind of bugs.
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4. dman ◴[] No.22058879{3}[source]
Do Mozilla execs understand this?
5. Paul-ish ◴[] No.22071689{3}[source]
Rust code integrated into a C/C++ codebase can have memory safety bugs too unfortunately.