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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 2 comments | 15 Jan 20 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.439s | source
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falcolas ◴[15 Jan 20 20:44 UTC] No.22058292[source]▶
70 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA).

It feels like a better compromise could have been made.

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ameshkov ◴[15 Jan 20 20:49 UTC] No.22058363[source]▶
This might be a sign for other employees that they need to focus on the things that can help Mozilla actually earn more and not just be a good guy. It may sound horrible, but considering their market share dynamics it makes sense.
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Hydraulix989 ◴[15 Jan 20 20:54 UTC] No.22058439[source]▶
Remember the PR disaster they had when they bundled Pocket?
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1. ameshkov ◴[15 Jan 20 21:01 UTC] No.22058521[source]▶
Well, yeah, but focusing on earning does not mean they should start doing stupid things like that or adding a banner place to the start page.

For instance, I would have considered paying for some premium features like additional privacy-related functionality or a VPN.

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2. Yoric ◴[15 Jan 20 21:56 UTC] No.22059184[source]▶
Well, Mozilla is selling VPN services (in some countries). Are you a user?