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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 9 comments | 15 Jan 20 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 1.18s | source | bottom
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petagonoral ◴[15 Jan 20 21:03 UTC] No.22058534[source]▶
in 2018, mozilla had 368 million USD in assets:

2018 financials: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...

wow, 2.5 million for the executive chair of Mozilla in 2018. is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company. this is in addition to the 2.x million from the year before. 10s of million exfiltrated out of a non-profit by one person over the last few years. nice job if you can get it.

edit: 1 million USD in 2016 and before.jumped to 2.3 million in 2017! pg8 of form 990 available at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/

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shawndrost ◴[15 Jan 20 22:05 UTC] No.22059281[source]▶
The person we're talking about is Mitchell Baker, who has spent over 20 years contributing to Mozilla, including years as a volunteer. She has been on Time's 100 most influential people list. She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. She is the founding CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, which pays her paycheck from its ~$500M in revenue. Mozilla Corp is the highly-profitable source of the $368 million in Foundation assets that parent cited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker

I understand why people are generally peeved about executive compensation, but this conversation is very rote and this is a particularly flamebait-y framing of it.

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1. dom96 ◴[15 Jan 20 23:06 UTC] No.22059813[source]▶
Am I the only one who thinks no single person should be earning more than $1 million per year? especially if they are working for a non-profit?
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2. hutzlibu ◴[16 Jan 20 00:41 UTC] No.22060536[source]▶
Not the only one, but you are part of a very small group.

Anyway, I also disagree in general. If a person brings so much value, than why not compensate that person adequately?

The "only" thing that is bothering me with the insanely high salary of CEO's etc. is that they quite often seem disconnected from actual success. Like in this case:

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584

The market share of Firefox goes down, yet her compensation goes up. Why???

(Also, in a ideal world, I think the biggest compensation for a technical product should be for the technical people. And not the lawers.)

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3. toyg ◴[16 Jan 20 01:45 UTC] No.22060914[source]▶
> The market share of Firefox goes down, yet her compensation goes up. Why???

Obvious: because she has to make bank before the ship sinks for good. I'm sure she would put forward a lot of arguments for it (all the extra time she spent over the years "underpaid" etc etc).

Baker has been more than "a lawyer" to Mozilla, for a very long time. She shouldered a lot of decisions - some good, some bad, some terrible. It's not surprising that she might be reaching for the money (most execs will, at that level), but rather that nobody at the corporation or the foundation is willing or able to stop her anytime soon.

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4. swfsql ◴[16 Jan 20 04:28 UTC] No.22061690[source]▶
I don't follow those numbers, but I presume they expected to it to fall even harder? So a soft fall is kinda an up-trending! XD
5. pcurve ◴[16 Jan 20 05:13 UTC] No.22061852[source]▶
you're not the only one.

doctors without borders / msf pay their execs org non-profit salary. Chief makes less than 150k. 9 next highest paid makes around 100k.

https://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/81-doctor...

Compare that to red cross or others.

More prestigious the org is, the less reason there should be to pay egregious salary.

6. badpun ◴[16 Jan 20 09:18 UTC] No.22062872[source]▶
> If a person brings so much value, than why not compensate that person adequately?

The question isn't only if the person brings that much value, but also - is there any other person who would bring as much value, but would work for less salary?

7. dom96 ◴[16 Jan 20 17:14 UTC] No.22066540[source]▶
> Anyway, I also disagree in general. If a person brings so much value, than why not compensate that person adequately?

I'd be very interested to learn how a CEOs worth is evaluated, I cannot imagine it being a fair process that truly demonstrates that they deserve this much money.

8. dom96 ◴[16 Jan 20 17:18 UTC] No.22066583{3}[source]▶
Maybe it's up to the community to stop this kind of behaviour. Maybe it's time to create another non-profit focused on Mozilla's goals, with a promise of having a more sane salary structure and just fork Firefox.
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9. BrendanEich ◴[16 Jan 20 18:12 UTC] No.22067202{4}[source]▶
Nonprofits don’t fund something the size of Firefox (which doesn’t need 1100 people or now 1030 or whatever the headcount may be, but needs hundreds). They must give grants to get bigger grants as well as annual pledge drive donations from the long tail. They end up depending on the biggest foundations, which are tools of a relative-few billionaires.