5 ms·

> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have

by shock 6y ago

> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today. To each of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks and deepest regrets that we have come to this point. This is a humbling recognition of the realities we face, and what is needed to overcome them. What a load of bull! How many people did she save from firing by taking a pay cut? I agree that it would have been an insignificant number of the 250 people fired, but it would have made a difference in the life of the employees not fired and it would have given meaning to her words. Words are extremely cheap (including the ones I'm writing right now). Statements only become principles when they imply a personal cost, otherwise they are just ideas.

Spivak 6y ago
You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. She gets paid about $1m/yr which includes performance incentives. So if she just gave up her whole salary she would only have to fire 96% of the people let go today. C suite members raking in high salaries is the tiniest most insignificant issue when it comes to a large orgs finances. In most large orgs if C sites were paid $0 the average employee wouldn't even notice the difference.
- hu3 6y ago
  4% might be just a number to you but to those people it would mean the world.
  - williamstein 6y ago
    Layoffs can be as much about spending less money as refocusing the company. The company might layoff people who are very good at X but have no experience with Y because the company is not doing X anymore and is focusing on Y. From the announcement, "our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included [...] investing in innovation and creating new products", which suggests they hired people who were very experienced at X (a new product) but have decided to kill development on X. It would be nice if the post actually said what X was, since this whole post is totally generic. Retraining people to work on Y rather than laying them off would be nice, but maybe that would take too long and those people don't want to be retrained to work on Y, and will be much happier working on X somewhere else.
    - hu3 6y ago
      Would you tell that to those 250 people with a straight face while laying them off? Guess you'd be a good CEO. I couldn't.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      I read in this thread that they removed servo people, given that this was one of the best investments of mozilla in the past few years I would argue that refocusing is an issue itself.
- shock 6y ago
  Yes, I specifically addressed that point in my post: > I agree that it would have been an insignificant number of the 250 people fired, but it would have made a difference in the life of the employees not fired and it would have given meaning to her words. Are you saying it would not have been worth it?
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Like it definitely wouldn't have been worth it. Playing some weird self-sacrifice game to save a few highly skilled employees that will absolutely be able to find work elsewhere is silly. Yes the whole situation sucks, layoffs are never fun. I'm sure this decision was genuinely hard for her to make and she doesn't need to self-flagellate to prove to anyone that she cared.
    - shock 6y ago
      > Playing some weird self-sacrifice game to save a few highly skilled employees that will absolutely be able to find work elsewhere is silly. Silly or not, it would have shown that Mitchell Baker is a leader. This way it shows that she is not. Guess what happens to organizations without a leader.
      - zaroth 6y ago
        The layoffs themselves show that Mitchell Baker is a leader. Layoffs are by far the hardest thing for a CEO to do. Assessing the reality of their market position, examining their future opportunities and revenue streams, and positioning the company to still be around in 10 years sometimes means deciding that the people you have currently aren’t the people you need to ultimately be successful and stay in business. You should never give a CEO a pay cut for doing their job and making the hard decisions to help keep the company in the black.
        shock 6y ago
        > Layoffs are by far the hardest thing for a CEO to do. Seeing up close and personal several CEOs that laid off people, I saw very little evidence of that. Some even happily talked about vacations and buying yachts, when not in employee company.
- shock 6y ago
  You do get that the CEO has the most power in directing where the company goes and the CEO is directly reponsible, at least in part, for the current situation Mozilla is in. As a result I think the CEO should have been the first to suffer the consequences of the reality they were (partly) responsible for creating, before the first employee would have been impacted. The way I see it, the employees that had almost no control over Mozilla's direction over the last years are suffering the consequences.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Right but this makes no sense except as some weird punishment thing. Like it seems it would be the same to you if they still fired all 250 employees but also cut the CEOs salary as a slap on the wrist. Like this stance is crazy if you apply it to anyone but the CEO. Can you imagine if you got punished for writing bad code or not making a project deadline by having your salary cut? Regardless of whether you think she's doing a good job as the CEO, she's still doing her job and deserves to be paid. Your just asking for CEOs to be company whipping boys.
    - shock 6y ago
      > Can you imagine if you got punished for writing bad code or not making a project deadline by having your salary cut? But I do get punished as part of the regular Performance Review, if I don't do my job right. Luckily, I am very good at my job.
- sciurus 6y ago
  > 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr Mozilla is very engineering-heavy. While I don't know other people's salaries, I do know that the fully loaded cost of a developer almost anywhere is much higher than $100k/yr.
- shock 6y ago
  > You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. In 2018 she received almost $2.5 million comp from Mozilla. Assuming that her comp has not decreased since then, that would be 25 FTEs (according to your numbers) that she could have chosen not to fire at no other cost than her compensation. Do with that what you will.

by shock 6y ago

Spivak 6y ago

You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. She gets paid about $1m/yr which includes performance incentives. So if she just gave up her whole salary she would only have to fire 96% of the people let go today. C suite members raking in high salaries is the tiniest most insignificant issue when it comes to a large orgs finances. In most large orgs if C sites were paid $0 the average employee wouldn't even notice the difference.

hu3 6y ago
4% might be just a number to you but to those people it would mean the world.
- williamstein 6y ago
  Layoffs can be as much about spending less money as refocusing the company. The company might layoff people who are very good at X but have no experience with Y because the company is not doing X anymore and is focusing on Y. From the announcement, "our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included [...] investing in innovation and creating new products", which suggests they hired people who were very experienced at X (a new product) but have decided to kill development on X. It would be nice if the post actually said what X was, since this whole post is totally generic. Retraining people to work on Y rather than laying them off would be nice, but maybe that would take too long and those people don't want to be retrained to work on Y, and will be much happier working on X somewhere else.
  - hu3 6y ago
    Would you tell that to those 250 people with a straight face while laying them off? Guess you'd be a good CEO. I couldn't.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    I read in this thread that they removed servo people, given that this was one of the best investments of mozilla in the past few years I would argue that refocusing is an issue itself.
shock 6y ago
Yes, I specifically addressed that point in my post: > I agree that it would have been an insignificant number of the 250 people fired, but it would have made a difference in the life of the employees not fired and it would have given meaning to her words. Are you saying it would not have been worth it?
- Spivak 6y ago
  Like it definitely wouldn't have been worth it. Playing some weird self-sacrifice game to save a few highly skilled employees that will absolutely be able to find work elsewhere is silly. Yes the whole situation sucks, layoffs are never fun. I'm sure this decision was genuinely hard for her to make and she doesn't need to self-flagellate to prove to anyone that she cared.
  - shock 6y ago
    > Playing some weird self-sacrifice game to save a few highly skilled employees that will absolutely be able to find work elsewhere is silly. Silly or not, it would have shown that Mitchell Baker is a leader. This way it shows that she is not. Guess what happens to organizations without a leader.
    - zaroth 6y ago
      The layoffs themselves show that Mitchell Baker is a leader. Layoffs are by far the hardest thing for a CEO to do. Assessing the reality of their market position, examining their future opportunities and revenue streams, and positioning the company to still be around in 10 years sometimes means deciding that the people you have currently aren’t the people you need to ultimately be successful and stay in business. You should never give a CEO a pay cut for doing their job and making the hard decisions to help keep the company in the black.
      - shock 6y ago
        > Layoffs are by far the hardest thing for a CEO to do. Seeing up close and personal several CEOs that laid off people, I saw very little evidence of that. Some even happily talked about vacations and buying yachts, when not in employee company.
shock 6y ago
You do get that the CEO has the most power in directing where the company goes and the CEO is directly reponsible, at least in part, for the current situation Mozilla is in. As a result I think the CEO should have been the first to suffer the consequences of the reality they were (partly) responsible for creating, before the first employee would have been impacted. The way I see it, the employees that had almost no control over Mozilla's direction over the last years are suffering the consequences.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Right but this makes no sense except as some weird punishment thing. Like it seems it would be the same to you if they still fired all 250 employees but also cut the CEOs salary as a slap on the wrist. Like this stance is crazy if you apply it to anyone but the CEO. Can you imagine if you got punished for writing bad code or not making a project deadline by having your salary cut? Regardless of whether you think she's doing a good job as the CEO, she's still doing her job and deserves to be paid. Your just asking for CEOs to be company whipping boys.
  - shock 6y ago
    > Can you imagine if you got punished for writing bad code or not making a project deadline by having your salary cut? But I do get punished as part of the regular Performance Review, if I don't do my job right. Luckily, I am very good at my job.
sciurus 6y ago
> 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr Mozilla is very engineering-heavy. While I don't know other people's salaries, I do know that the fully loaded cost of a developer almost anywhere is much higher than $100k/yr.
shock 6y ago
> You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. In 2018 she received almost $2.5 million comp from Mozilla. Assuming that her comp has not decreased since then, that would be 25 FTEs (according to your numbers) that she could have chosen not to fire at no other cost than her compensation. Do with that what you will.