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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 1 comments | 15 Jan 20 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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ameshkov ◴[15 Jan 20 19:55 UTC] 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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raister ◴[15 Jan 20 20:49 UTC] No.22058360[source]▶
It was Microsoft (or other company I don't recall) that every 5 years would lay off 5% of its work force (the least capable or productive people) - this would cause those that remain to work harder next year. Then, they would open positions. Rinse and repeat.
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1. throwawayhhakdl ◴[15 Jan 20 21:01 UTC] No.22058517[source]▶
Note, the fatal mistake in Microsoft’s case was not laying off the bottom 5%, it was laying off the bottom ranked people WITHIN small groups, even if said groups were doing very well.

If you’re going to lay off the bottom x% every n period of time, it might be fine. But you’d better be damn sure your metrics are good (sales comes to mind though even then there’s a lot of ambiguity). If you’re dropping the weakest performer in groups you’re not only going to create the most toxic environment ever, you’re going to lay off plenty who are probably middle of the bell curve.

Microsoft’s plan was, in addition to being unwise, just poorly reasoned statistically.