5 ms·

wow, the are way too many toxic teams at Mozilla :( I'd expect the company to be pretty democratic. but every month you hear a story like that. specially shoc

by gcb0 9y ago

wow, the are way too many toxic teams at Mozilla :( I'd expect the company to be pretty democratic. but every month you hear a story like that. specially shocking: "What business a not-for-profit company, based primarily on doing open-source, web-based engineering has making physical, commercial products is questionable, but it failed long before that could be considered." ...and that was right after their failed mobile phone line failure!

owebmaster 9y ago
I guess one of the problems of Mozilla (as a not-for-profit company and with current trend on social media behavior) is that every single person working there feels entitled to criticize the strategy, just like what happens today in polítics.
- daenney 9y ago
  Why shouldn't they criticize strategy? Do you expect people to just blindly follow and abide by what the company's leadership sets out to do?
  - ksk 9y ago
    Depends on who's doing it. In the abstract, everyone has a "right" to speak their mind, and everybody else has a "right" to ignore them. But that gets you nowhere. IMHO Unless you've done something that makes your opinion worth something, you should be focused on proving yourself.
  - rockdoe 9y ago
    Mozilla people for some reason feel they can criticize their own company publicly. That just isn't done elsewhere. You criticize internally and form a front to the outside. Meanwhile, Mozilla employees cry for their own CEO to be fired. That's just insane and wouldn't fly elsewhere.
    - fabrice_d 9y ago
      No one in Mozilla Corp asked for their CEO to be fired. These were Mozilla Foundation employees.
      - rockdoe 9y ago
        Did I claim otherwise in my post? The nuance is BS anyway. One is a subsidiary of the other, IIRC.
        icebraining 9y ago
        You said "their own CEO". The Foundation's CEO is Mark Suman, has been for almost a decade.
        BrendanEich 9y ago
        You did claim otherwise. You wrote just above that "Meanwhile, Mozilla employees cry for their own CEO to be fired." Mozilla Corporation (of which I was CEO) was the subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, not vice versa. So in no case were those few Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted against me, the people who had me as "their own CEO". Are you stupid, or dishonest? Pick one. Your posts are BS, and crucial logical contradictions are not "nuance".
    - geoelectric 9y ago
      Mozilla has never run under the model of a traditional closed-walls corporation, at least with respect to personnel. It's first and foremost an open-source community, and some people are paid by Mozilla Corp. or Mozilla Foundation to dedicate their entire working time to that community. Allowing open dissent has always been one of the community values, so long as it's otherwise respectful. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part... At least as of a couple of years ago when I left, there were no internal guidelines above and beyond these. Socially, of course, you could shoot yourself in the foot just like anywhere else, but we did enjoy a great deal of intellectual freedom and were expected to be vocal if we thought something should be different. I can't possibly view that as a bad thing. The Eich situation was and still is touchy, and I won't go much deeper into that other than to echo Fabrice's comment that it was originally driven by a handful of Foundation employees that weren't part of his company (Mozilla Corporation is a different corporate entity than Mozilla Foundation) and to add that within Corp there was a diverse range of opinions, both privately and publicly expressed. As for "wouldn't fly elsewhere," there's never been any particular ethical reason why an employee shouldn't publicly speak their mind short of spilling trade secrets. The reason has always been fear of being fired. Influence via fear has some pretty sharp downsides, and I'm happy to see the current trend of people submitting to it less.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    Because for a software developer/designer to criticize a strategy they must have some skills that most of the time they don't, so their critics are most probably wrong (at least most of the times, for obvious 101 statistics), but their own ignorance don't let them see it and then they jeopardize their chief strategy :) And the same happens in politics and economy: everybody also thinks that been a citizen makes then elected to say how the economy and the politics should be lead. But their efforts stops there, in talking. No hands on works, neither in politics, neither in the company they are complaining. Mostly because as they don't know the core business that much, they can't get the big picture and start thinking in a binary way.
- jopsen 9y ago
  That's because Mozilla is far more open than competitors... there are pros/cons to openness. This has upsides too, I'm fairly confident Mozilla wouldn't be able to comply with a secret court order.
  - BrendanEich 9y ago
    Andreas Gal and I wrote about this question here: https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ Our plan then (while we were still at Mozilla), and my advice now, is to avoid blind trust. Use systems where you can both trust and verify that your data is not being secretly surveilled.
romanovcode 9y ago
I didn't found anything "toxic" in the article at all. Only stupid decisions.
- rockdoe 9y ago
  Only stupid decisions. Especially in hindsight.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TokenDiversity 9y ago
Mozilla's job was to help out where there weren't enough players. I felt let down when they ventured into this.

by gcb0 9y ago

owebmaster 9y ago

I guess one of the problems of Mozilla (as a not-for-profit company and with current trend on social media behavior) is that every single person working there feels entitled to criticize the strategy, just like what happens today in polítics.

daenney 9y ago
Why shouldn't they criticize strategy? Do you expect people to just blindly follow and abide by what the company's leadership sets out to do?
- ksk 9y ago
  Depends on who's doing it. In the abstract, everyone has a "right" to speak their mind, and everybody else has a "right" to ignore them. But that gets you nowhere. IMHO Unless you've done something that makes your opinion worth something, you should be focused on proving yourself.
- rockdoe 9y ago
  Mozilla people for some reason feel they can criticize their own company publicly. That just isn't done elsewhere. You criticize internally and form a front to the outside. Meanwhile, Mozilla employees cry for their own CEO to be fired. That's just insane and wouldn't fly elsewhere.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    No one in Mozilla Corp asked for their CEO to be fired. These were Mozilla Foundation employees.
    - rockdoe 9y ago
      Did I claim otherwise in my post? The nuance is BS anyway. One is a subsidiary of the other, IIRC.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        You said "their own CEO". The Foundation's CEO is Mark Suman, has been for almost a decade.
      - BrendanEich 9y ago
        You did claim otherwise. You wrote just above that "Meanwhile, Mozilla employees cry for their own CEO to be fired." Mozilla Corporation (of which I was CEO) was the subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, not vice versa. So in no case were those few Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted against me, the people who had me as "their own CEO". Are you stupid, or dishonest? Pick one. Your posts are BS, and crucial logical contradictions are not "nuance".
  - geoelectric 9y ago
    Mozilla has never run under the model of a traditional closed-walls corporation, at least with respect to personnel. It's first and foremost an open-source community, and some people are paid by Mozilla Corp. or Mozilla Foundation to dedicate their entire working time to that community. Allowing open dissent has always been one of the community values, so long as it's otherwise respectful. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part... At least as of a couple of years ago when I left, there were no internal guidelines above and beyond these. Socially, of course, you could shoot yourself in the foot just like anywhere else, but we did enjoy a great deal of intellectual freedom and were expected to be vocal if we thought something should be different. I can't possibly view that as a bad thing. The Eich situation was and still is touchy, and I won't go much deeper into that other than to echo Fabrice's comment that it was originally driven by a handful of Foundation employees that weren't part of his company (Mozilla Corporation is a different corporate entity than Mozilla Foundation) and to add that within Corp there was a diverse range of opinions, both privately and publicly expressed. As for "wouldn't fly elsewhere," there's never been any particular ethical reason why an employee shouldn't publicly speak their mind short of spilling trade secrets. The reason has always been fear of being fired. Influence via fear has some pretty sharp downsides, and I'm happy to see the current trend of people submitting to it less.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  Because for a software developer/designer to criticize a strategy they must have some skills that most of the time they don't, so their critics are most probably wrong (at least most of the times, for obvious 101 statistics), but their own ignorance don't let them see it and then they jeopardize their chief strategy :) And the same happens in politics and economy: everybody also thinks that been a citizen makes then elected to say how the economy and the politics should be lead. But their efforts stops there, in talking. No hands on works, neither in politics, neither in the company they are complaining. Mostly because as they don't know the core business that much, they can't get the big picture and start thinking in a binary way.
jopsen 9y ago
That's because Mozilla is far more open than competitors... there are pros/cons to openness. This has upsides too, I'm fairly confident Mozilla wouldn't be able to comply with a secret court order.
- BrendanEich 9y ago
  Andreas Gal and I wrote about this question here: https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ Our plan then (while we were still at Mozilla), and my advice now, is to avoid blind trust. Use systems where you can both trust and verify that your data is not being secretly surveilled.

romanovcode 9y ago

I didn't found anything "toxic" in the article at all. Only stupid decisions.

rockdoe 9y ago
Only stupid decisions. Especially in hindsight.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TokenDiversity 9y ago

Mozilla's job was to help out where there weren't enough players. I felt let down when they ventured into this.