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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 5 comments | 15 Jan 20 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.225s | source
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strict9 ◴[15 Jan 20 21:06 UTC] No.22058568[source]▶
Not sure of Mozilla’s financial or organizational structure but it seems to be part of a larger trend of de-emphasizing QA departments at software shops large and small over the past 10 or so years.

In many ways test automation tooling has become much easier to use, develop, and manage.

But I suspect the larger driving force is that it’s (arguably) a cost center for an org. The burden of ensuring software quality can be shifted to devs and PMs, though usually with mixed results.

For Mozilla, axing quality and security first is a bad look when those are crucial aspects of a privacy-first company value.

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1. rogueresearch ◴[15 Jan 20 21:36 UTC] No.22058953[source]▶
>The burden of ensuring software quality can be shifted to devs and PMs

Heck, the burden can be shifted to users! But then you might not have so many users in the future. :(

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2. dgellow ◴[15 Jan 20 21:49 UTC] No.22059118[source]▶
That seems to work for Microsoft so far.
3. traskjd ◴[15 Jan 20 22:42 UTC] No.22059630[source]▶
We see this at Raygun with our Crash Reporting and Real User Monitoring products (measuring errors, and end user experience in general). Nearly all power users are more likely to be in product, or very senior/executive developers.

Very low engagement out of QA. I'm not sure if they just have a way they like to work, or they think that if they exist then no bugs make it to prod (don't laugh, plenty of our twitter adverts get comments from folks thinking you don't need any monitoring if you have a tester on the team or if a dev writes unit tests).

Understand how the end user experiences your software. That's the actual source of the truth.

4. scarface74 ◴[16 Jan 20 00:46 UTC] No.22060564[source]▶
i.e. Netscape.

It was a point of nerd pride on Usenet how well your operating system could handle a Netscape crash back in the day.

5. Aperocky ◴[16 Jan 20 03:03 UTC] No.22061336[source]▶
> The burden of ensuring software quality can be shifted to devs and PMs

This in itself is a not a problem, coming from an oncall minded company. You take care of code you write and you're given time budget to KTFLO.