38 ms·

Mozilla lays off 70

• ameshkov 7y ago
  Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456 This is about 7% of all their employees. People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked. A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for-subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-... > In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision edit: fixed the numbers, added some more details.
  • pasttense01 7y ago
    From the 2018 State of Mozilla annual report: With over 1,000 full-time employees worldwide https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/
    • ameshkov 7y ago
      I don't know why, but for some reason, I was thinking there were about 600 of them. Thanks for the link, I've edited my comment.
  • WilTimSon 7y ago
    I'm surprised they're laying off security and QA, considering how focused on privacy and security their marketing campaign seems to be. In the last 6 months, I think 90% of cases where I saw Mozilla mentioned were about how it's the 'hot new browser' for the privacy-concerned. Although, perhaps, that's more to do with a good marketing team and less with a sprawling security department? Would love to see some expert opinion on what this means for the company's current trajectory.
    • dman 7y ago
      Perhaps Rust is delivering better than expected results.
      • the_duke 7y ago
        Only a tiny part of Firefox is in Rust now. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_Components https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_Components .
        • diegocg 7y ago
          Also, Rust code can have security bugs. Memory safety bugs are not the only kind of bugs.
          • dman 7y ago
            Do Mozilla execs understand this?
          • Paul-ish 7y ago
            Rust code integrated into a C/C++ codebase can have memory safety bugs too unfortunately.
    • dan_quixote 7y ago
      Unless they really were redundant, firing QA/Security/Release engineers strikes me as an act of desperation. Cutting back on those disciplines will really jack up the interest rate on your tech debt.
  • raister 7y ago
    It was Microsoft (or other company I don't recall) that every 5 years would lay off 5% of its work force (the least capable or productive people) - this would cause those that remain to work harder next year. Then, they would open positions. Rinse and repeat.
    • drcross 7y ago
      See: stack ranking
    • ceejayoz 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Microsoft
    • walshemj 7y ago
      General Electric was famous for doing this is the problem is you cant keep doing it every year. Also people just game the system and only do what will get them a good review. I know some on at a big UK company who was bucking for a promotion and they blew through 1 Mill and 15 Man years for no good reason.
      • asdasdasdasdwd 7y ago
        > Also people just game the system and only do what will get them a good review. Wouldn't doing a good job earn a good review? This reminds me of the xkcd comic about the bots starting to have constructive messages to avoid spam filters. Mission fucking accomplished.
        • zozbot234 7y ago
          > Wouldn't doing a good job earn a good review? Nope, because incentives are not aligned to that extent. The whole point of a company is that it's not a pure market where incentives are everything by definition; it's a rather more complex organization and these often rely on "soft" constraints as better sources of drive, guidance, cooperation/coordination etc. If you're relying on "hard" incentives (like firing the 'worst' 5% no matter what) you'll invariably distort behaviors in ways that are hard to even predict, and are almost never what you really want.
  • tracker1 7y ago
    I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place. I'm also surprised they haven't tried to create commercial mail and communications products. Thunderbird used to be one of the best options out there, and they could easily spin this off into a SaaS and self-host product on the server component. As much as I hated Lotus Notes, something between Lotus Notes, Outlook and MS Teams could be something great and that the Mozilla org would be in a good position to create. I know they may have good reach with the VPN service as well... I'm unsure how they can reduce security, qa and release management people when orchestration, automation and verification are such huge needs. They get enough income from search (for now) that they could concentrate on best of breed tech, build mindshare from that, then re-introduce marketing for critical mass.
    • agumonkey 7y ago
      Totally, I'd be a lot happier if they cut efforts on the branding side of things and strengthen the technical one.
      • unlinked_dll 7y ago
        I kinda disagree, as a huge Mozilla fan. I think their technical development is fine, if not fantastic (especially for all they're doing with WebRender/Servo). Personally I'd like to see them roll out paid privacy products. Like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1. I currently pay for that, and if Mozilla rolled out a similar service across the Firefox ecosystem I'd gladly pay for that too.
        • tracker1 7y ago
          I'm not saying their development isn't fine, but they're laying off the people that support development... which will make it worse, when they're spending far in excess of that cost in marketing and imho not even getting the best value out of that space.
    • Sammi 7y ago
      The world today is different. Can't skimp on marketing any more, as the competition is extremely heavy on marketing.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  TechCrunch has more info: "Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue" https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for-subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-...
  • dang 7y ago
    Ok, we changed to that from https://twitter.com/KingstonTime/status/1217498737397903363 https://twitter.com/KingstonTime/status/1217498737397903363. Thanks!
• falcolas 7y ago
  70 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA). It feels like a better compromise could have been made.
  • petagonoral 7y ago
    Would love to see the compensation their board members and execs are claiming.
    • falcolas 7y ago
      """ For VPs and above, we benchmark compensation against a blended peer group comprised of 70% similarly-sized public and private tech companies and 30% non-profit organizations. This approach serves to reinforce our mission-first orientation. Consistent with market best practice, at least 70% of compensation for senior leadership is “at risk” and tied to individual and company performance. """ The CEO (Mitchell Baker) made around $2.3M in 2017.
      • riffraff 7y ago
        given the lackluster performance of firefox in recent years, and 70% being performance based, how has this number gone up? ($2.5M in 2018)
        • throw16012020 7y ago
          For the past couple of years the main measurable objective has been the second derivative of Firefox market share, ie. just slowing down the bleed was enough to get 100% (or over 100%) company performance based bonuses.
        • throwawayjava 7y ago
          Because the benchmark went up.
    • 7y ago
• stuff4ben 7y ago
  Besides donating and the as-yet-to-be-released VPN service, how else can we support Mozilla? I don't see anything they're actually selling and I hate for stuff like this to happen.
  • rchaud 7y ago
    I feel like the kind of money Mozilla needs to keep going each year isn't something that can be crowdsourced like Wikipedia. Unfortunately I think big corps will continue to be Mozilla's major donors. And the big cheques they cut will come with strings attached, just not in writing.
  • Nextgrid 7y ago
    From what I heard from other HN comments, donations don't actually go to the browser's development, instead they go to auxiliary projects of (IMO) dubious value like community outreach, etc.
  • yoasif_ 7y ago
    Personally, I run nightlies and report bugs -- I think that is more effective (but people who want more assurance may want to run beta instead) than most other things I might do (and doesn't really require a lot of commitment). You can also donate your voice here: https://voice.mozilla.org https://voice.mozilla.org
• chrshawkes 7y ago
  I find it interesting they are laying off 7% of their staff while hiring new developers. I say this as they had a job post in DC recently saying we could join their growing company. Are they growing or retracting?
  • blackearl 7y ago
    Maybe it's like a controlled burn. Get rid of a bunch of low performers or those who they don't really need currently, hire quickly into what they do need.
    • grilled_cheese 7y ago
      remember you're talking about people who just lost their job...
    • yborg 7y ago
      It hasn't been my observation as a daily driver of Firefox that Mozilla needs a lot less QA.
  • quotemstr 7y ago
    People are not fungible.
• tus88 7y ago
  I thought Mozilla was a foundation not a company.
  • mattl 7y ago
    Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corp.
    • tus88 7y ago
      There is a Mozilla Corp? Who knew...
    • teraflop 7y ago
      It's not quite clear to me -- were the laid-off employees working for the foundation, or for the corporation?
      • Yoric 7y ago
        Corp
  • kevingadd 7y ago
    It's both. When I worked there, the Foundation (non-profit) owned the Corporation (for-profit). If you donate to Mozilla it's going to the non-profit org.
    • dullroar 7y ago
      Would be interested in hearing more about your views on this. I use Firefox and Thunderbird almost exclusively, and every time I think about donating money I then remember all the wasted time and effort they've poured into what seem to be pipe dreams over the years. I WANT them to succeed. I WANT there to be an alternative on the desktop to Chrome (now that Edge is basically rebranded Chromium), and on iOS to both Chrome and Safari, I WANT to support their excellent documentation portal (which everyone else rides on the back of - even MS points to it a lot now). But man, I just don't trust the powers-that-be there to make non-braindead strategic decisions, year after year. Talk me out of that prejudice against them, please?
• jahlove 7y ago
  I don't understand Mozilla. How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends $450m annually and dedicates $43m just for future endeavors? Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team?
  • jen20 7y ago
    Would you cut, say, Rust?
    • echelon 7y ago
      Rust is perhaps the best thing to come out of any corporation in years. Protobuf, Envoy, Kubernetes, ... -- I struggle to think of anything better for our industry than Rust.
      • throwaway17_17 7y ago
        You could feel that Rust as a programming language is the greatest thing to ever happen to computer science, the big question for a corporation’s C-suite is can it make money. I’d assume (perfect possible that I’m wrong) that Rust does nothing but cost money for Mozilla. This is not to say I think it will be cancelled or force to expatriate and become a separate legal entity, but management is beholden to shareholders, not the tech community at large. And yes I know that Rust does receive some corporate funding from other entities, but it is still a Mozilla product.
        • UnpossibleJim 7y ago
          I'm a Rust fanboy, let's state that at the beginning. It does, however, have a slow production adoption even though there is a fairly quick developer adoption (much to my chagrin). I think it would do better to become it's own entity in light of this news, and the fact that it doesn't really get managed by Mozilla anymore anyway.
        • i_dursun 7y ago
• petagonoral 7y ago
  in 2018, mozilla had 368 million USD in assets: 2018 financials: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf 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/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/
  • m_b 7y ago
    They probably need to feed their children.
    • jakearmitage 7y ago
      Feed them what? Gold?
      • justwalt 7y ago
        Right? How does one even consider posing food as a counterpoint to the claim that someone shouldn’t be making 2.3 million in one year?
        • m_b 7y ago
          I was indeed being sarcastic.
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
      • nkingsy 7y ago
        I believe it’s a Shaquille O’Neil quote
• WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
  I'm looking forward to some paid products from Mozilla (including the vpn). Privacy focused personal zeroknowledge cloud things are needed. I'd love to have a more elaborate version of Firefox Sync that worked across chromium (and I'd pay for it). The obvious calendar, mail, etc. I'd pay for a zeroknowledge hosted Berners Lee Solid service. Do this stuff and I'll pay well for it.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    Why do you want sync with chromium? Firefox syncs just fine with Firefox on any platform, including mobile. Just use it everywhere, no?
    • Spivak 7y ago
      But then your bookmarks only live in Firefox which isn't always convenient. NextCloud Bookmarks, Floccus for browser sync and an API to add them everywhere else is really nice. I get that Pocket exists but the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth -- paying $5/mo to remove ads in a bookmarking service that should just be a built-in feature of sync is gross.
    • WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
      Because, to me, even lockin to Firefox isn't a good thing. I still use Chromium for garbage web time coughhackernews*cough for example. All my actual work and projects are Firefox (tons of vertical tabs) and I don't want them polluted with my trash reading but would still like to see history/tabs etc at least browseable across browsers. Containers are getting a bit more viable to combine work and consumption but not quite there. edit - and yes I'm actually just about 100% Firefox mobile already
  • doctorpangloss 7y ago
    Maybe just keychain integration on macOS. It's too bad that's not a priority. [1] Keychain support is the only reason I recommend Safari, because password sharing with iOS is so important. On Windows it's a big mindshare problem. So I'm supportive of their marketing efforts. Their best bet is to do affiliate selling. E.g. discount Dropbox subs originating from Firefox. Don't focus on stuff that Google does well, like e-mail. Focus on stuff Windows does poorly, like OneDrive. So you're right on the money with password sync. Basically nonexistent in Windows. 1password affiliate selling = A+. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400
• strict9 7y ago
  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.
  • rogueresearch 7y ago
    >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. :(
    • dgellow 7y ago
      That seems to work for Microsoft so far.
    • traskjd 7y ago
      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.
    • scarface74 7y ago
      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.
    • Aperocky 7y ago
• tapoxi 7y ago
  Mozilla should just ship Chromium with privacy oriented features. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel and keep iterating on Gecko when its obvious there's less and less demand for it, especially when it costs them so much money. If Firefox was actually gaining share I'd feel differently, but I'd rather see Mozilla switch tech stacks than fizzle out and die.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    Firefox is our last bastion of hope against the browser monoculture. If you think that the new browser monoculture would be any better than the previous one (IE5-6), you are horribly, horribly wrong.
    • tapoxi 7y ago
      I don't understand that argument, IE was a closed source browser, Chromium is BSD-licensed. If anything the closest comparison is probably the widespread use of Linux.
      • Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
        BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive. Imagine this: Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos), and cites this as an excuse to close sources. Then, it starts updating it's own websites with specific code that can run properly only in new (proprietary) versions of Chrome. Of course, outcry in tech press, but average Joe User does not care, he just needs stuff to work. Then, developers say, screw it, we just need stuff to work for users. Just like they did in 2004. This is a very crude model, reality will likely be more subtle, but I hope you get the idea
        • tapoxi 7y ago
          > BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive. So can a Mozilla licensed browser, the licenses are very similar. > Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos) This already exists, it's called Widevine and browsers download it as a binary blob. This is also a different argument, Chrome vs Chromium. If there was a healthy ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers then one vendor not playing by the rules would have limited impact.
• sciurus 7y ago
  Statement from Mozilla: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-future-at-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-fu...
• dman 7y ago
  Brendan Eich has a helpful chart of Compensation of Highest paid executive at Mozilla vs Firefox market share over time. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/p...
  • dralley 7y ago
    I don't much care for Eich but that graph (as in, what it represents) is just shameful.
    • aidenn0 7y ago
      The salary of top executives has gone way up in the past 20 years or so across industries, and largely without relation to company performance.
      • BrendanEich 7y ago
        Nice deflection. I'm a founder of mozilla.org, Mitchell joined 8 months after, we worked closely for 15+ years. She set the salaries with board approval, always made somewhat more than I did, I never complained. Neither of us was making more than high six figures, until after I left. Something changed, and it is not generic to "industries". No excuses!
        • aidenn0 7y ago
          I didn't intend for it to come off as a deflection, though I see that it would be easy to read it that way. I agree that something changed at Mozilla, but I've seen it get justified at other previously reasonable organizations with excuses like "everyone else is doing it," or "This is still below-market rate for C-level talent." The fact that it's happening everywhere doesn't make it less nauseating. [edit] Mitchell could drop her salary to a "mere" 6 figures and lay off 7 fewer people, but you hardly ever see executives do things like that.
    • BrendanEich 7y ago
• ChrisArchitect 7y ago
  man, the chromium-based MS Edge browser launched today....hm
• johanekblad 7y ago
  Hacker news, please block topics from techcrunch- and verison media-articles. They use a lot of third party cookies, ad banners, fingerprinting and other evil stuff.
  • floatingatoll 7y ago
    You should email this to the mods using the Contact link in the footer, as they'll be able to see your comment and respond to it.
• jeremyperson 7y ago
  If you are a Mozilla product user, this is the link to donate to a great nonprofit. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount=30&utm_source=support.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=footer&currency=usd https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• csdreamer7 7y ago
  This feels really bad. I feel she seems to be hinting that they are cutting people in case they lose revenue. As others have posted their financials: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201... They seem to be very dependent on search engine revenue: 91% and 93% for their revenue. Once again, I feel she is worried Mozilla will be cut off very soon. Still feels like really bad news for Firefox. Microsoft cut their QA people for Windows. Windows 10 to this day still has update issues. I do agree that Mozilla needs more products to stay competitive. Especially when the Google docs team doesn't fix issues that make Google sheets very frustrating to enter data into with Firefox. Just listen to Linus(TechTips) complain about Google Calendar issues when he pays for the commercial version of GSuite. I wonder if Mozilla gets cut off from search engine revenue means they will start to develop products/fund OSS competitors to GSuite? Still, when you introduce new products, that is when you need Q/A the most. However, Pocket is not one these products. I disable the pocket button on every new Firefox install I do. They have an entire page on it in their financial statement. And I don't feel the CEO should be increasing her pay when the workforce suffers (from $2.3m to $2.5m). Nintendo's management took a pay cut during their Wii U years before the Switch. And that is what management in general should be doing well before a layout. The Mozilla steering committee certainly didn't consider this when "we plan to eliminate about 70 roles from across MoCo... ...(were) considered as part of our 2020 planning and budgeting exercise only after all other avenues were explored."
  • Yoric 7y ago
    > I wonder if Mozilla gets cut off from search engine revenue means they will start to develop products/fund OSS competitors to GSuite? How would Mozilla fund this? > And I don't feel the CEO should be increasing her pay when the workforce suffers (from $2.3m to $2.5m). Where do you find this? At the moment, Mozilla doesn't have a CEO, only an interim CEO, are you sure that's her?
    • flurdy 7y ago
      > Where do you find this? https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584
• ndesaulniers 7y ago
  Some of my friends are affected; does anyone have advice from experience that could help?
  • Yoric 7y ago
    1. Don't panic. 2. Your worst enemy at this stage is depression/exhaustion. Sport and social life are important to keep this at bay. 3. Brush up your CV, your interview skills. 4. Organize cross-reading of CVs, simulate interviews for each other. 5. You may need to go through numerous interviews. It sucks.
• aazaa 7y ago
  > All of this is part of the organization’s plans to become less reliant on income from search partnerships and to create more revenue channels. In 2018, the latest year for which Mozilla has published its financial records, about 91 percent of its royalty revenues came from search contracts. This raises the question of what products Mozilla plans to make that will generate revenue. The article doesn't address this. I found these after a quick search, all of which appear to depend on Firefox to some extent: - VPN/password manager called Lockvise - Pocket recommendations and sponsored content - Firefox Monitor, "a free service which allows people to check whether their email address has been a part of a recent security breach" - "DNS over HTTPS" and "Encrypted Server Name Indication", "... both of which we’ve partnered with Cloudflare to test in the U.S. market." https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/
• ww520 7y ago
  Mozilla should provide products and services that are one level above the cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GC) since it doesn't have the scale and datacenter resources to compete. Mozilla should provide at the product level that's consumer facing. Mozilla can focus on online related communication and collaboration products. Some examples: email, messenger & audio/video conference, online identity, and security. Email - make a web-based and an offline version. Messenger & audio/video conference - can be easily tied in with the browser. Online identity - people and company pay to have verified online identities and brands. Security - encrypted communication/email/message, anonymous services, vpn, etc. SSL, domain name, DNS.
• elkos 7y ago
  Mozilla blog update: "Readying for the Future at Mozilla" https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-future-at-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-fu...
• bookAlot 7y ago
  Generating outcomes for the future. I still like my Mozilla Firefox browser more than anything I own. It's the best.
• mjw1007 7y ago
  I wonder if they got less (if anything) from the settlement from the Yahoo (Oath) lawsuit than they'd been planning on.
• tanilama 7y ago
  If MSFT bought Mozilla to counter Google, that will be hilariously glorious to fulfill a cycle, but makes logical sense.
  • jml7c5 7y ago
    Come to think of it, did Microsoft ever consider replacing their rendering engine with Gecko, rather than Blink? I'm surprised they ceded such control over the future direction of the web to Google.
  • thrower123 7y ago
    If it was still Ballmer Microsoft, this would be absolutely on brand - spend a couple years and a huge effort on pivoting Edge to Chromium, then acqu-hire a different product in the same lane and mothball all of that investment.
• pos52 7y ago
  Sad
• lizzard 7y ago
  Well, it's been a truly amazing place to work, and I've enjoyed it so much, right up until being laid off today. Really the smartest and coolest engineers I've ever known and the best community! I have had my hand in shipping every version of Firefox since around version 30 and it's been great. Especially working in such an open environment. Onward to the next adventure.
  • mattlondon 7y ago
    Sorry to hear you were laid off today. Good luck with your next adventure and thanks for your work with Firefox! Yours, An appreciative Firefox user.
  • x2f10 7y ago
    I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for helping create an amazing browser. Best wishes!
  • Aperocky 7y ago
    As someone who jumped from chrome since quantum came out, I can't appreciate Mozilla enough, sadly things are not made to last... I'm guilty too having used such great tool but haven't directly contributed anything. But from what I hear, it seem the layoffs are directed not by technical reasons, and amazing people were let go. In this case, I fear for the future of firefox, which are not well protected or funded like the open sourced titan Linux.
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Mozilla gets $$$$ from Google, they seem pretty well funded?
      • merb 7y ago
        actually I'm pretty sure that the money goes to the mozilla innovation fund and not directly to mozilla? not sure how easily they can withdraw money from there.
      • tehbeard 7y ago
• remote_phone 7y ago
  My friend used to work for Mozilla. She said she has never had a more boring job. She said there was no work to be done, her boss was remote and never asked her for deliverables. She was well paid with a 40% cash bonus and she would go on yearly boondoggles. I told her she should stay but she couldn’t bear it so she left after 2 years. She said part of it was that they couldn’t save money because they were a non profit so all the money they got they had to spend, which caused over hiring.
  • zozbot234 7y ago
    This would be the Mozilla Foundation (not Corp), right? And I don't think it's literally true that a charitable foundation has to spend everything it gets - they can still save for a rainy day or even build up an endowment over time. They can't disburse profits obviously, but AIUI that's not the same thing as saving money internally.
  • IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
    > She said part of it was that they couldn’t save money because they were a non profit so all the money they got they had to spend, which caused over hiring. She-if she exists-is wrong. And I’m doubting her existence because nobody working at an NGO would be able to hold onto such superficial misconceptions for long.
• mindfulhack 7y ago
  This article and thread has put a baad taste in my mouth regarding Firefox. But like Tesla, I still want Firefox to succeed. I'm not sure I'll donate again however. They seem to be just fine on their own.
• sida 7y ago
  I am starting to see a lot of tech layoffs. Bubble popping?
• musicale 7y ago
  > “You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search. This did not happen I don't want subscription garbage, and I don't want Firefox advertising stuff to me. However, I have no idea how I'd try to fund Mozilla when most of their work is on a product that they give away for free. I can't imagine that grants from foundations or the government could cover their budget, and I can't really see them being amazingly successful with apps (although I would pay for a bulletproof, high quality ad blocker for iPhone) or hardware (although Purism's phones and laptops seem kind of in Mozilla's ballpark, I doubt they are making much money.) Nobody wants to pay for web services, and it's hard to compete with the many cloud incumbents, so those don't really seem like a good options either. Running a consulting business to fund the browser doesn't seem like a winning idea. Development tools seem to be free from the likes of {Microsoft, Apple, Google} as well, so that doesn't seem like a great business. I can't imagine many people paying for Rust or webasm tools either. Perhaps web game development tools or platforms? Anyway, it's a hard problem. So HN, does anyone have any actual, serious, good ideas on how Mozilla can make money and keep delivering a good Firefox browser (and Rust, webasm, etc.) for free?
  • rudolph9 7y ago
    Donate.
  • mtm7 7y ago
    This is a difficult problem. Donations wouldn't be reliable/stable enough to fund the company, and selling a different product (SaaS, consulting, etc.) would realign Mozilla's incentives to have its best people working on its revenue generator instead of the browser. I know this'll be an unpopular suggestion (and it's not something I necessarily want), but the elephant in the room is _selling_ Firefox: I would be happy to pay for their browser provided it was more polished than the competition. I would even pay a yearly fee. (Again, not ideal, but I'm just brainstorming.) Or maybe find a way to sell an "enterprise" Firefox to nontechnical companies who are privacy-oriented? I'm not sure how realistic this is. The only other way they're going to be able to do this is to find something as creative as reCAPTCHA's business model [0]. With so many users, maybe there's an idea there. [0] https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/recaptcha-the-brilliant-business-model-that-only-one-man-could-create/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/recaptcha-...
• Slashbot2 7y ago
  Those fucking idiots can't even do a browser right anymore... And that is literately what they started out with... I mean is there any fucking reason why Mozilla can't add the same features that used to exist as addons for there own fucking browser pre quantum shit direction. When Vivaldi a chromium clone with far less staff and money behind it, has been able to implement at least some of the popular power addons Firefox used to have, as core supported features?! ... NO THERE IS NO REASON FOR THAT OTHER THAN COMPLETE INCOMPETENCE AND STUPID MANAGEMENT IMO, just look at Bugzilla, and the countless reports and feature requests for API changes or feature requests for them to implement things that are blocked by idiots at Mozilla staff. The only thing that made Firefox even good ie Firefox 2.5-3.x, 4.x upto the Quantum crappy chrome clone direction .... was the addon developers who made rich and extensive addons to improve things where Mozilla did the bare minimum .. after 4.x Mozilla spent more time removing good things and introducing shit things.... Don't get me wrong they have at least kept up with making sure the browser backend can render latest HTML5, CSS3 spec etc, However the the tech that made Firefox so developer customizable.. the thing that really gave evangelists and power users reason to promote the fucking thing, over shit like chrome which was faster but did fuck all really.. unless you consider its crappy and limited extension system actually good, when its complete shit and most the power addons firefox used to have can no longer be created web extensions. Anyway yeah Mozilla.. retards, I'm sure most the skilled people have left already and its only run by SJW idiots.
• rexreed 7y ago
  Why does Mozilla Corporation have 1,000 employees? Just an honest question.
  • bzbarsky 7y ago
    Because browsers are hard. See my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22059393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22059393 for some comparative numbers.
• ausjke 7y ago
  I guess, in addition to Chrome, Microsoft just _Edged_ Mozilla out a little more. I use Linux as desktop and for me Chrome has been the choice for the last few years. The only thing I use most often from Mozilla is its MDN site, which is absolutely great.
• Dewriter 7y ago
  I love Mozilla but it doesn't work on my phone, what's actually the reason?
• modzu 7y ago
  i submit a bug report to the ff bugzilla and their reply to me was, "can you fix it"? i thought, uh oh..
• Slashbot2 7y ago
  Well I dunno.,. maybe it was good.. ever since Windows 8 came out (which was a pile of fucking shit) I would say things have gotten worse.. Windows is complete garbage as far as actual desktop improvements. From Win98>Win2000>WinXP>Win7 it has been a slow but steady improvement in stability and features.. sure could have been better, but compared to Linux desktop distro's which none of them can barely even fucking match WinXp in terms desktop features and stability.. nvm the power shell extensions and eco system which don't exist. Because that only comes from good API's documentation and community that isn't completely stupid ... I would say that MS had a fairly good team of people up until the release of Win7, after that they seemed to have got a retarded shit for brains CEO Satyan noob tard, and replaced all the skilled people with fellow idiots. And now Win10 is a stinking pile of broken and bug infested noob trash... it's built on the work that proceeded it, but they sure have done as much as possible to ruin that while doing fuck useful as an improvement in the underlying system let alone the UX/UI which hasn't improved at all its at best worse, they've just tacked on crap everywhere.
  • disordinary 7y ago
    I don't have the same issues with Windows 10 but I only really use it for work and some gaming so I'm hardly an authority on it. Any issues you have might be due to the fact that they got rid of the Windows team awhile back.
  • lostmsu 7y ago
    Sadly, I have to agree. There have been just a few of really good features in Windows after 7: app sandboxing, first party VR support (if not for that, we'd only have locked down VR platforms like PS VR and Oculus), the new Mail client, and using voice to set reminders and alarms (when it works). Maybe better support for tablet mode in Mail, browser and the Start Menu, and the dark mode lately. Outside of that list, I'd struggle to name a single thing in Windows, that became better. Number of bugs certainly increased. Specifically, search and language switching are the worst offenders.
  • TheGrassyKnoll 7y ago
    I don't use Windows (linux), so couldn't say how great it is or not, but the shareholders are loving Satya Nadella. MSFT is up about 160% in the last two years.
• sstangl 7y ago
  I'm one of the 70. There were no signs that this was imminent, although Mozilla has been struggling financially for many years. I expected that it would happen eventually; I'm relatively well-prepared for it; and it's not too shocking. I did however expect that there would be some warning signs in the lead-up, but that was not the case. I was working on Cranelift, the WebAssembly compiler that is also a plausible future backend for Rust debug mode. Before that, I worked on the SpiderMonkey JITs for 9 years. If anyone has need for a senior compiler engineer with 10 years of experience writing fast, parallel code, please do let me know.
  • apaprocki 7y ago
    We... like SpiderMonkey very much. Contact in profile ;)
    • Redoubts 7y ago
      Oh lol, almost forgot about your terminal stack.
  • gregschlom 7y ago
    Friendly tip: maybe put your contact info in your HN profile?
    • sstangl 7y ago
      Oh, thank you! I added it.
  • _kp6z 7y ago
    Sounds like a pretty clueless layoff, I guess I expected better from Mozilla than usual corporate derp. If there was truly no dead weight, surely the management could have scaled back their own comp for misdirecting the company? Very few people understand what it means to be a leader in corporate world.
    • scarface74 7y ago
• ntnsndr 7y ago
  Any word about whether this affects Thunberbird?
  • sciurus 7y ago
    AFAIK no Mozilla Corporation employees have been paid to work on Thunderbird for years now, so there's nothing to cut.
• nicolas_t 7y ago
  I would have expected in that email from the CEO something like, "I will myself take a massive salary reduction and divide my salary by 2". But strangely, it's never something we see during mass layoffs... I mean her salary is pretty much the salary 15 to 20 software engineers.
• ryuukk_ 7y ago
  they probably fired the people who pump the articles/posts/comments with fake votes
• billlyIdols 7y ago
  the decline of Mozilla has nothing to do with a "rabid cultural witch-hunt" including the illegal (?) dismissal of (male) Brendan Eich for supporting traditional marriage ? and post-mortum vilification of Gervase Markham ? pure coincidence ?
• flybyair2038 7y ago
  What did Mitchell mean by "Most will not join us in Berlin"?
  • yoasif_ 7y ago
    They are meeting for an all-hands meeting in Berlin soon.
• thecrumb 7y ago
  This is sad. I don't really have any interest in whatever 'services' Firefox has in mind but I'd actually pay for a good browser - maybe a monthly fee. I really use no local apps these days - everything is IN my browser so whatever I was paying for apps I'd be happy to chuck towards a secure, updated browser...
• overcast 7y ago
  Only in fairy tale land does CEO/Executive compensation reflect performance.
  • manfredo 7y ago
    Many CEOs derive a significant portion - often even the majority - of their compensation from performance-based bonuses. Compensation not only reflects performance, it is directly tied to it.
    • bostonvaulter2 7y ago
      Short-term performance, which can often warp long-term incentives
    • conductr 7y ago
      Not always attributable to executives. The company may just have some inertia and the guy who negotiates the best employment contract wins.
    • nitwit005 7y ago
      The price of oil goes up, and all the oil company executives get bonuses (it sounds silly, but this genuinely does happen). A lot of these compensation packages are well intended, but they aren't without problems. People who make bad decisions often get performance bonuses regardless.
      • thu2111 7y ago
        Those are the ones you hear about in the press, but the press looks for outrage. "CEO earns 10x less than previous year due to declining stock price linked to market share loss" is not a headline to set pulses racing. Performance linked comp works OK most of the time. Sometimes CEOs negotiate deals that are terrible for the company, where they get paid lots even if the firm tanks. My experience has been that this usually happens when the firm is in deep trouble anyway, the CEO knows they probably can't turn it around, but will have a tarnished reputation regardless. Getting experienced people to try and turn the Titanic is expensive and many will want a big reward for even trying. Also, badly run companies do things like sign bad deals. But it's a circular problem. If they were well run they wouldn't be signing bad CEO deals to begin with.
• swills 7y ago
  Something I noticed about Firefox today, when I was trying to troubleshoot something: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1601925 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1601925 There are quite a few places where the browser makes requests and they are not logged in the Network section of the Inspector.
• _nickwhite 7y ago
  To the 70: Thank you for contributing to such incredible software for all these years. Your contribution to my life is not insignificant. Good luck on your next chapter. To Mozilla: Let's figure out this monetization thing. Heck, I'd pay for Firefox to keep it as great as it is and independent.
• alwillis 7y ago
  Apparently Brenden Eich, who helped develop Firefox when he was at Mozilla, seems to be innovating with monetizing a browser, first with cryptocurrency and now with sponsored images: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061348
• im3w1l 7y ago
  Sad they for these people, for Mozilla and for the whole web. Hope Mozilla's fortune turns.
• Brokedamouth 7y ago
  I was at Mozilla for a while and it was a two-class system. The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures. This is not even included in comp. One time, the CFO sent out a missive urging everyone to stay in AirBnB to save money and the execs (literally the following week) booked $500/night rooms at a hotel in NYC. I think the moment that made it clear as day was during a trip to Hawaii for the company all hands. The plane was a 737 so you had to walk past first class. These all hands are a huge deal for families - many were struggling down the aisle, carrying booster seats, etc. And they were passing two of the C-levels sitting in giant first-class seats sipping tropical cocktails. The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last. Mozilla has always reversed that rule and the result was a pretty toxic culture, all around.
  • gred 7y ago
    Hawaii. Huh. Families haven't been invited to our company Christmas party for the past 7 years.
  • webboynews 7y ago
    Explains why all their focus these days is on "cool" stuff and PR and sjw'ism rather than plain getting shit done.
  • kamaal 7y ago
    Two days back I wrote this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034293 I doubt if this is just with Mozilla. Things like these are come as job perks when you enter management. And this one of the reasons why you must aspire to be a manager and not a programmer on the longer run. >>The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures. They will always come up with reasons why they need to do this. The most common one is they need to be fresh with brains in clouds so that they can to talk to clients etc well. And they are doing this for the employees good. “Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.” - George Orwell. >>This is not even included in comp. Things like this generally go in some top level budget and the are approvals are not even audited at item level spending. Like no asks if you had a $100 dinner. It just goes into a group by statement in some dashboard. This is also why so many managers spend lavishly. It's almost anonymous spending. And money once given is never asked back. If you think this is saying something. Wait till you discover how comp works in those roles. Pretty much anything given is never audited and its given fairly unchecked. Big bonuses and stock grants are just every day activities. As in Indian who worked in the US for a while, I've even seen Green cards handed to manager's pets like candies. Again no asks questions, no audits done. Its just how awesome managerial jobs are. >>The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last. I doubt if military or any people structure works this way. Don't fall for these pep talk like speeches.
• fapjacks 7y ago
  Mismanagement. Let me have Rome for but a single eight-hour workday.
• webboynews 7y ago
  As a user from 2006, fx ux has worsened considerably. If I could get a chrome which syncs (but not to Google) I'd switch. They are trying things they shouldn't and not doing well on things they should be. I will never understand the dumb decision to make address bar row single line long from two lines earlier. It's basic ux! Just because chrome does it doesn't make it right
• iamleppert 7y ago
  Mitchell Baker should be ashamed of her performance at Mozilla. Serious missteps in the development of Firefox led to the rise of Google Chrome, and only recently (and arguably too little, too late) have they seen the light and prioritized the re-development of Firefox. Nearly all of the other projects at Mozilla that aren't related to the browser itself have been abject failures. They have not only failed in their core product against Google, but have shown that they are completely incapable of innovation in other areas of tech. Her letter reads like someone who is completely clueless. Getting rid of people while earmarking $40 million for a so-called "innovation fund" with no real strategy? They are hoping some half-baked VPN product generates enough revenue to make them independent of Google's search deal? Please remember this post when that product fails to deliver. It's not a matter of time, it just makes no sense in any kind of timeline and at this point Mitchell Baker is grasping at straws.
  • the_duke 7y ago
    Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product. (they finally caught up again now, I switched back to Firefox about 2 years ago) But: Google pushed Chrome on desktop very aggressively via Google Search and bundling Chrome with every software download imaginable. Then came the rise of mobile and tablets, with forced Safari on iOS and Chrome by default on Android/Chrome OS, with little incentive to switch... The bulk of market share loss was inevitable.
    • Yoric 7y ago
      > Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product. This happened in 2011-2015 when Google was investing looooooooots of money in Chrome and Mozilla was betting the farm on FirefoxOS. Since then, Mozilla has improved Firefox a lot, but it's hard to compete with a company that has a way larger budget on essentially the same product.
    • dependenttypes 7y ago
• ex_mozillian 7y ago
  Look at the changes to the executive team at Mozilla in 2017 and 2018 if you want to see the root of the problem. Look at the changes Chief People Office Michael D'Angelo introduced (after leaving Pinterest), especially the multi-tier bonus system that crystallized the executive hierarchy and made ironclad the gap between Mozilla leaders and the Mozilla proletariat. How much does he make? Ask yourself- what value or improvement did Chris Lin, VP of Mozilla's horrid IT, hired from Facebook, bring to the company? And look at his overpaid group of Directors, who do not have a single win between them that improved Mozilla's bottom line. Why did they hire a leader from Facebook? Were they trying to sink the ship? Ask yourself- with all of Mozilla's failed marketing initiatives, why has the CMO never been held to account? There was great hope that Mitchell Baker would return and clean house where it was needed, starting with many of the execs. This layoff, with so far no indication of leaders being held to account, is a sign that things are not going to improve. It's a shame, because the people of Mozilla are the finest people you could ever work with. They don't deserve this leadership. The rank and file at Mozilla are amazing, though some of the best were let go today.
  • jdance 7y ago
    As an outsider there are constantly small details that are off in product and marketing that hint to this. Its really sad to see, I keep using firefox and get a little sad every time I see these signs that this company does not know what it wants to do. In many ways it behaves like a public company without long term direction
• IGotThroughIt 7y ago
  Wouldn't have happened if they hadn't forced Brendan Eich out. Just saying. I know as a patron I trust him and followed him over to brave especially for its privacy offering. Removing founders is hardly ever a good idea.
• itsangaris 7y ago
  "officeoftheceo@mozilla.com", aka Mitchell, has a number grammar issues with their email. It's surprising that someone in such a high leadership position, who communicates for a living doesn't have an intuitive sense of basic grammar—especially for such an important announcement…
• Cyclone_ 7y ago
  I don't think they've had any vision ever since Eich left.
• abinaya_rl 7y ago
  Sorry to hear this news! If you are looking for a remote job, check out https://remoteleaf.com https://remoteleaf.com, we curate the best remote jobs from tons of job boards and from all over the internet. Last week I've spent more than 15 hours to curate the remote jobs from "HN Who is hiring?" thread. You can find everything is free here -> https://remoteleaf.com/whoishiring https://remoteleaf.com/whoishiring
• siwatanejo 7y ago
  If any of the ones laid off is interested in working for a startup developing a browser extension with WASM (from C#), poke me via email: andrew.forsure at gmail (remote working is welcome; part-time ok too)
• dependenttypes 7y ago
  They should have fired some of the designers and managers instead.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mherrmann 7y ago
  A reminder that you can donate to Mozilla [1]. I think it's very important for a free web. [1]: https://give.mozilla.org/ https://give.mozilla.org/
• unlit_spark 7y ago
  What's this mean? Do their jobs get automatized or is this the beginning of the end for Mozilla?
• whatthefoxer 7y ago
  I had Mozilla hr straight up tell me they wanted me to hire someone based on color regardless of performance difference even if somewhat large and obvious. For you ladies, they indicated clearly that "we have enough women in engineering". This wasn't exactly a fun moment. I left Mozilla after this. Most of the reason i post all this here now.
• anon463637 7y ago
  Too many chiefs, and they can the good braves. Top heavy org chart is going to commence years of random re-orgs to dance around the real problem: management. Firefox is of course even more likely to founder going forward.
• jug 7y ago
  If Google moved to more in-house development of Chromium, there wouldn't be many scraps soon left for proponents of the open web to browse with... It's sad to see Microsoft as well as Opera and Brave picking Chromium for their engine when at least I think Gecko is still very much on par with web standards support. It feels like a more sensible choice, including for their own business safety in case Google does some sneaky move to "streamline their development" and "focus on the next generation of smartphones and Fuchsia OS" or something like that. That would be a power move we used to attribute to Microsoft in the past. I wish Mozilla good luck although I'm shaken by these news and how far reaching the restructuring seems to be. I hope it's not the beginning of a negative spiral where they end up lacking manpower in development and QA to deliver a stable browser supporting the latest web standards and lagging behind, because then they're truly out. We should see already in a couple of years.
• Vinnl 7y ago
  Interesting announcement not two weeks after announcing that the MoFo board would be expanded: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/08/expanding-mozillas-boards-in-2020/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/08/expanding-mozillas-...
• MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  Mr. Corbet is predicting 'perturbations in the job market' for this year. I wonder if he will turn out to be right (also interesting that this news item did get this huge amount of comments) https://lwn.net/Articles/807748/ https://lwn.net/Articles/807748/
• butterNaN 7y ago
  As someone who looks up to Mozilla as a "dream job company", this is disheartening.
• 0xdead 7y ago
  Mozilla doesn't need employees when it has so many people white-knighting it on the internet.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• dgudkov 7y ago
  Mozilla lays off people, yet it still doesn't accept donations. I don't understand it - there are tons of people (including me) would gladly donate to Mozilla to keep it afloat. Yet, you can only donate to the Mozilla foundation, but not to Mozilla Corporation (that develops the browser).
  • gr__or 7y ago
    Afaik companies can't ask for donations in the US.
  • malachismith 7y ago
    Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit business
• solarengineer 7y ago
  I diligently donate to Mozilla, Wikimedia, and openbsd. After reading about executives and their largesse on various threads today, I do want to know: do donations to the Mozilla Foundation go towards paying the salaries and various expenses of the executives at Mozilla the corporate?
• monadamon 7y ago
  What was Mozilla thinking?!? I'm hiring a WebAssembly compiler expert. We're an all Rust shop, too. damon@nearprotocol.com