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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 10

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 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.

petagonoral 7y ago
> She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet Like what? The wiki page doesn't tell. You are making it sounds like she created Mozilla & products herself, rather than an admin/exec role throughout. And also making it sound like her presence alone is what is bringing in ~$500 million. Is there some connection you would like to disclose? by the way, I'm not arguing her position.i'm arguing her compensation. nice chart from brendan eich (formerly of mozilla) https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584
- dang 7y ago
  > Is there some connection you would like to disclose? You're not allowed to post insinuations like that to HN. It's nearly always imaginary and poisons discussion badly. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - baud147258 7y ago
    I think the connection the parent was asking was between the 500M$ and Mitchell Baker
    - dang 7y ago
      If that's the case, I misread and I'm sorry. Moderation is guesswork done in haste, so that does happen sometimes.
malachismith 7y ago
What "foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the Internet" did Mitchell Baker "directly author"? If you make a claim like that, you need to provide some evidence or citation to back it up.
- pgsbathhouse 7y ago
  Were you unable to find any supporting evidence in a preliminary research context on this subject?
  - slenk 7y ago
    Correct, I am unable to find anything claiming she helped author foundational pieces of the internet. She has really done anything for the internet besides working for Mozilla.
zelly 7y ago
Why not do if for less, if you are so dedicated to the supposed Mozilla cause? It is a non-profit after all. Random non-profit: Goodwill (way bigger than Mozilla) CEO makes $1,114,375[1]. PETA's CEO makes $31,285[2]. TOR Project executives receive $0 compensation[3]. [1] https://paddockpost.com/2018/02/03/executive-salaries-at-goodwill/ https://paddockpost.com/2018/02/03/executive-salaries-at-goo... [2] https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk-earn-per-year/ https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk... [3] https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2017-TorProject-Form990.pdf https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2017-TorProject-For...
- malachismith 7y ago
  Again... The Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.
  - hu3 7y ago
    Then it's DOA since without Google's half a billion dollar "donation" per year it would go bankrupt.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    But they're fully controlled by the non-profit Mozilla foundation, no?
- bscphil 7y ago
  > PETA's CEO makes $31,285[2]. TOR Project executives receive $0 compensation[3]. I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think there must be something missing here. Are they receiving some other form of compensation? How much does the median PETA employee make? More than that, I hope!
  - zelly 7y ago
    It seems about median. > Thirty-seven percent of PETA’s dedicated staff earn between $30,000 and $44,999, including President Ingrid Newkirk, who made $31,285 during the fiscal year ending July 31, 2016. Seven percent of PETA’s dedicated staff only earn between $16,000 and $29,999, and the remaining 56 percent make more than $45,000 per year. Most staff members give a portion of their earnings back to PETA’s lifesaving programs through payroll deductions. https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk-earn-per-year/ https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk...
phonon 7y ago
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-gervase-markham/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...
- catalogia 7y ago
  That's appalling. How did that make people still working at Mozilla feel? I can't imagine working under somebody like that.
  - cookiecaper 7y ago
    It seems that there was some subsection of Mozilla employees who were offended by Gerv's views and thus publicly ambivalent, though undoubtedly privately relieved, to hear of his passing. [0] While that doesn't excuse the "obit" Baker posted, I'm sure it had some effect on her thought process. Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. [0] http://archive.today/2020.01.16-002922/https://twitter.com/christi3k/status/1023300369416249346 http://archive.today/2020.01.16-002922/https://twitter.com/c...
    - pgsbathhouse 7y ago
      >Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. You are subtly advocating for exactly the thing you are snarkly accusing the entire tech industry of.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      It's better to criticize people when they're still alive, rather than shortly after their death. Where I come from at least, it's considered crass at best to speak ill of the dead, unless they were some sort of heinous violent criminal. I would feel deeply uncomfortable if my boss were to post an obit like that about a deceased coworker, even if I had hated that persons guts. It just isn't something you do, as you say it violates common decency.
dom96 7y ago
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?
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  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 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.)
  - toyg 7y ago
    > 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.
    - dom96 7y ago
      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.
      - BrendanEich 7y ago
        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.
ryuukk_ 7y ago
and look at the result, Firefox only 5% usershare, and yet she got even more money i keep repeat it mozilla is a shady org
athms 7y ago
>She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. This statement is a fabrication. She was trained and worked as a lawyer. She went to Berkeley, not to study computer science or electrical engineering, but to study law. She graduated and went to a San Francisco law firm that specialized in intellectual property and had many clients in Silicon Valley. She eventually left and worked for Sun in the legal department. Netscape recruited her to help set up their legal department and that is how she became an executive at a technology company. She stayed at Netscape when it was bought by AOL to work on policy issues, but was eventually fired during a series of layoffs. The only "foundational" piece of Mozilla she authored was the Mozilla Public License. Any company that lost that much market share would have fired their CEO. At a minimum, she should take a deep pay cut and her compensation needs to be tied to performance.
- pdog 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - sabujp 7y ago
    but you do need one to get a decent paying job at FAANG
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- voldacar 7y ago
  Is it correct that this person has literally never written a line of code? wow
  - PyroLagus 7y ago
    Why would it matter whether the CEO can code?
pnako 7y ago
For comparison, Linus total compensation at the Linux Foundation is around 1.6m; Greg KH around 400k.
staticassertion 7y ago
Has she brought 2.5m of growth to the company in the last year?
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I don't think that way of looking at things is fruitful, a CEO may have "presided" over huge growth, way above their compensation, but in practice that growth is most likely down to an amalgam of all the workers (and might have been higher without the CEO, for example). Each worker gives the same, ultimately, an hour of their precious life each hour they work.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    Workers have goals, and they can accomplish those goals while macro goals like 'company success' fail. The ceo is responsible for those macro goals. Those macro goals are failing, ergo while most works should be receiving increases in comp, the CEO should be seeing a decrease.

petagonoral 7y ago

> She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet Like what? The wiki page doesn't tell. You are making it sounds like she created Mozilla & products herself, rather than an admin/exec role throughout. And also making it sound like her presence alone is what is bringing in ~$500 million. Is there some connection you would like to disclose? by the way, I'm not arguing her position.i'm arguing her compensation. nice chart from brendan eich (formerly of mozilla) https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584

dang 7y ago
> Is there some connection you would like to disclose? You're not allowed to post insinuations like that to HN. It's nearly always imaginary and poisons discussion badly. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- baud147258 7y ago
  I think the connection the parent was asking was between the 500M$ and Mitchell Baker
  - dang 7y ago
    If that's the case, I misread and I'm sorry. Moderation is guesswork done in haste, so that does happen sometimes.

malachismith 7y ago

What "foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the Internet" did Mitchell Baker "directly author"? If you make a claim like that, you need to provide some evidence or citation to back it up.

pgsbathhouse 7y ago
Were you unable to find any supporting evidence in a preliminary research context on this subject?
- slenk 7y ago
  Correct, I am unable to find anything claiming she helped author foundational pieces of the internet. She has really done anything for the internet besides working for Mozilla.

zelly 7y ago

Why not do if for less, if you are so dedicated to the supposed Mozilla cause? It is a non-profit after all. Random non-profit: Goodwill (way bigger than Mozilla) CEO makes $1,114,375[1]. PETA's CEO makes $31,285[2]. TOR Project executives receive $0 compensation[3]. [1] https://paddockpost.com/2018/02/03/executive-salaries-at-goodwill/ https://paddockpost.com/2018/02/03/executive-salaries-at-goo... [2] https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk-earn-per-year/ https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk... [3] https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2017-TorProject-Form990.pdf https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2017-TorProject-For...

malachismith 7y ago
Again... The Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.
- hu3 7y ago
  Then it's DOA since without Google's half a billion dollar "donation" per year it would go bankrupt.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  But they're fully controlled by the non-profit Mozilla foundation, no?
bscphil 7y ago
> PETA's CEO makes $31,285[2]. TOR Project executives receive $0 compensation[3]. I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think there must be something missing here. Are they receiving some other form of compensation? How much does the median PETA employee make? More than that, I hope!
- zelly 7y ago
  It seems about median. > Thirty-seven percent of PETA’s dedicated staff earn between $30,000 and $44,999, including President Ingrid Newkirk, who made $31,285 during the fiscal year ending July 31, 2016. Seven percent of PETA’s dedicated staff only earn between $16,000 and $29,999, and the remaining 56 percent make more than $45,000 per year. Most staff members give a portion of their earnings back to PETA’s lifesaving programs through payroll deductions. https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk-earn-per-year/ https://www.peta.org/misc/how-much-money-does-ingrid-newkirk...

phonon 7y ago

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

catalogia 7y ago
That's appalling. How did that make people still working at Mozilla feel? I can't imagine working under somebody like that.
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  It seems that there was some subsection of Mozilla employees who were offended by Gerv's views and thus publicly ambivalent, though undoubtedly privately relieved, to hear of his passing. [0] While that doesn't excuse the "obit" Baker posted, I'm sure it had some effect on her thought process. Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. [0] http://archive.today/2020.01.16-002922/https://twitter.com/christi3k/status/1023300369416249346 http://archive.today/2020.01.16-002922/https://twitter.com/c...
  - pgsbathhouse 7y ago
    >Common decency is apparently not valued above political homogeneity in the tech industry. You are subtly advocating for exactly the thing you are snarkly accusing the entire tech industry of.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    It's better to criticize people when they're still alive, rather than shortly after their death. Where I come from at least, it's considered crass at best to speak ill of the dead, unless they were some sort of heinous violent criminal. I would feel deeply uncomfortable if my boss were to post an obit like that about a deceased coworker, even if I had hated that persons guts. It just isn't something you do, as you say it violates common decency.

dom96 7y ago

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?

hutzlibu 7y ago
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 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.)
- toyg 7y ago
  > 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.
  - dom96 7y ago
    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.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      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.

ryuukk_ 7y ago

and look at the result, Firefox only 5% usershare, and yet she got even more money i keep repeat it mozilla is a shady org

athms 7y ago

>She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. This statement is a fabrication. She was trained and worked as a lawyer. She went to Berkeley, not to study computer science or electrical engineering, but to study law. She graduated and went to a San Francisco law firm that specialized in intellectual property and had many clients in Silicon Valley. She eventually left and worked for Sun in the legal department. Netscape recruited her to help set up their legal department and that is how she became an executive at a technology company. She stayed at Netscape when it was bought by AOL to work on policy issues, but was eventually fired during a series of layoffs. The only "foundational" piece of Mozilla she authored was the Mozilla Public License. Any company that lost that much market share would have fired their CEO. At a minimum, she should take a deep pay cut and her compensation needs to be tied to performance.

pdog 7y ago
[deleted]
- sabujp 7y ago
  but you do need one to get a decent paying job at FAANG
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
voldacar 7y ago
Is it correct that this person has literally never written a line of code? wow
- PyroLagus 7y ago
  Why would it matter whether the CEO can code?

pnako 7y ago

For comparison, Linus total compensation at the Linux Foundation is around 1.6m; Greg KH around 400k.

staticassertion 7y ago

Has she brought 2.5m of growth to the company in the last year?

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I don't think that way of looking at things is fruitful, a CEO may have "presided" over huge growth, way above their compensation, but in practice that growth is most likely down to an amalgam of all the workers (and might have been higher without the CEO, for example). Each worker gives the same, ultimately, an hour of their precious life each hour they work.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  Workers have goals, and they can accomplish those goals while macro goals like 'company success' fail. The ceo is responsible for those macro goals. Those macro goals are failing, ergo while most works should be receiving increases in comp, the CEO should be seeing a decrease.