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Mozilla lays off 70

(techcrunch.com)
929 points ameshkov | 1 comments | 15 Jan 20 19:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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phonon ◴[15 Jan 20 22:49 UTC] No.22059686[source]▶
She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did.

https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

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1. asveikau ◴[16 Jan 20 04:19 UTC] No.22061657[source]▶
As I read that I figure she had to address the guy's controversial opinions such as to not offend people who were offended by them.

As someone who doesn't know anyone involved the suggestion I would make would be to acknowledge controversy upfront, directly and exactly once and then state that you will not address the most controversial points from there on out, in acknowledgement of the deceased and their loved ones. The fact that she waffles back and forth between praise and condemnation in such tight space makes it seem like she simultaneously doesn't stand for much and doesn't forgive even after a person's death.

Even when we find someone's behavior or opinions abhorrent, there isn't a lot of point in holding grudges against dead people. Maybe she could have said that.