3 ms·

> Mozilla has quickly been identified by a few as a way to make a quick buck This is always, always so fascinating to me, to see how many people will never eve

> Mozilla has quickly been identified by a few as a way to make a quick buck This is always, always so fascinating to me, to see how many people will never ever consider this, at least in public. There's this most basic of basic incentives, money, a huge pile of money sitting around, and everybody piously pretends it doesn't matter to everybody who's in control of it. So fascinating.

zanny 11y ago
Google for a long time has operated / operates in much the same way. Huge pile of adsense money, think of the best way to persuade others to waste it all on whatever insane idea you have.
anon1007 11y ago
Exactly! Why are Mitchell Baker and other execs at Mozilla being rewarded for lack-luster performance with nearly $1 million a year in compensation, meanwhile the actual programmers that toil on Mozilla's products go underpaid or even unpaid?
- notlukejr 11y ago
  Source or link to actual salaries?
  - anon1007 11y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230668 Notice also that this topic was quickly flagged off the front page, just like the linked one.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  I won't comment on whether I felt I was underpaid in my years at Mozilla (though I'll say I do make more now, at a for-profit company), but it is at least worth pointing out that Mozilla's bonus system extended to everyone. And until early 2015 it was based on company-wide performance, so even if you had a project that was languishing you could still get a good bonus if the company as a whole was doing well (in 2015 it switched to a significant chunk being based on individual performance and metrics, and I wasn't there long enough afterward to have a worthwhile opinion on how that change turned out).
  - anon1007 11y ago
    > though I'll say I do make more now, at a for-profit company That's what I meant by underpaid. It's well known that Mozilla pays below-market rate salaries. Instead it deceptively uses its supposed non-profit status (actually a for-profit owned by a non-profit shell) to motivate people to take a pay-cut by working there, meanwhile Baker and a handful of others at the top are getting rich (even by Bay Area standards) off their under-compensated, altruistically-minded labor. Disgusting.
- threatofrain 11y ago
  Why talk with a sense of moral indignation as opposed to the lens of leverage? People aren't paid by what they deserve; they're paid by leverage. Do engineers in the US have a professional association or union?

zanny 11y ago

Google for a long time has operated / operates in much the same way. Huge pile of adsense money, think of the best way to persuade others to waste it all on whatever insane idea you have.

anon1007 11y ago

Exactly! Why are Mitchell Baker and other execs at Mozilla being rewarded for lack-luster performance with nearly $1 million a year in compensation, meanwhile the actual programmers that toil on Mozilla's products go underpaid or even unpaid?

notlukejr 11y ago
Source or link to actual salaries?
- anon1007 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230668 Notice also that this topic was quickly flagged off the front page, just like the linked one.
ubernostrum 11y ago
I won't comment on whether I felt I was underpaid in my years at Mozilla (though I'll say I do make more now, at a for-profit company), but it is at least worth pointing out that Mozilla's bonus system extended to everyone. And until early 2015 it was based on company-wide performance, so even if you had a project that was languishing you could still get a good bonus if the company as a whole was doing well (in 2015 it switched to a significant chunk being based on individual performance and metrics, and I wasn't there long enough afterward to have a worthwhile opinion on how that change turned out).
- anon1007 11y ago
  > though I'll say I do make more now, at a for-profit company That's what I meant by underpaid. It's well known that Mozilla pays below-market rate salaries. Instead it deceptively uses its supposed non-profit status (actually a for-profit owned by a non-profit shell) to motivate people to take a pay-cut by working there, meanwhile Baker and a handful of others at the top are getting rich (even by Bay Area standards) off their under-compensated, altruistically-minded labor. Disgusting.
threatofrain 11y ago
Why talk with a sense of moral indignation as opposed to the lens of leverage? People aren't paid by what they deserve; they're paid by leverage. Do engineers in the US have a professional association or union?