Mozilla Corporation is not a typical business and is wholly owned by a Non Profit, it should not be competitive with businesses .
Most non profits ( and investment funds) keep an eye on administrative and management overhead. A well run fund or NGO will keep their administrative overhead as low as possible, most donors/ investors look at this metric.
Legal Aid lawyers / social workers or any number of other professions do not / cannot expect a market competitive salary. why is open source development any different ?
if C-suite is only working at Mozilla because they are getting market competitive salary, perhaps they the wrong hire.
90% of Mozilla Corporation revenue comes from one deal, and this has been the case for 10+ years. All the fancy salaries has not prevented Firefox from losing market share, nothing management has been able to do change this, why should they be paid this much ?
If the management has failed to achieve success as is the case , should not also bear the cost ? or also get laid off/ replaced ?
Wow--read what she wrote here. As far as I know, before she worked at Mozilla, she reported to Netscape's General Counsel. That is not a super competitive position level.
https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z
"Executive compensation is a general topic -- are execs, esp CEOs paid too much? I'm of the camp that thinks the different between exec comp and other comp is high. So then i think, OK what should mozilla do about it? My answer is that we try to mitigate this, but we won't solve this general social problem on our own.
Here's what I mean by mitigate: we ask our executives to accept a discount from the market-based pay they could get elsewhere. But we don't ask for an 75-80% discount. I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
> That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.
s/people and their/me and my
Which is a perfectly reasonable opinion, but in that case maybe it's time to move on to one of the other opportunities, and find someone else for this job.
There are lots of ceos of nonprofits or small companies being paid significantly less. I think the problem is who mozilla is comparing itself with.
Yeah, I feel like the phrasing is just completely wack. It's one thing if the argument is that execs do bring value, and you need to pay that much to have good execs, but
>That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.
80% discount sounds like a lot... until you realize her salary is 2.5 million/year. I'm preeetttty sure most families will do just fine on 500k a year.
In a world with 8 billion people nobody can claim to be worth that much money to a company, I would be surprised if there aren't at least 10.000 people in the US alone who would do her job just as well or maybe better and for less than 500K, those kind of salaries always seem result of people being able to set their own salaries or some other kind of poor management.
Ok, so find one.
I agree that this statement could be true. But is it provable?
And how would you find one of those 10,000 out of a population of 330,000,000 that will accept less money than her? And how would you then know that they're better than she is? Surely if they're just as good as she is then the opportunities open to her would also be open to the 10,000 people.
> Surely if they're just as good as she is then the opportunities open to her would also be open to the 10,000 people.
No, and to be honest I find it hard to believe anyone believes so; a lot of those positions are picked due being friends with the right people, or coming from the same universities as the people already in executive positions, and other hundreds subjective factors that have little to nothing to do with the actual capabilities needed for the role.
It is a lot of money in absolute terms, for sure. But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much? All this moralizing doesn’t help. You can call people greedy as much as you want, but you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all. People have no obligation to accept a lower than market rate salary, they have hard power leverage in negotiations in the sense that they can easily walk away from deals where you offer such a “low” salary.
It's not moral grandstanding. I don't think the exec team earns their keep. It would be one thing if they were leading a growing non profit (that owns a for profit), but rather they're leading a quickly declining ship, all while their own salaries increase over time while they do a shitty job.
The ceo of MSF, who imo does a great job, is paid 120k a year.
Brian Chesky, AirBNB ceo, is paid $0 right now, because at least he can recognize how tone deaf talking about your companies financial struggles is whole you're still taking full comp.
AirBNB isn't even a public company yet.
Brian Chesky is not merely the CEO of AirBnB, he is also the cofounder with a networth of 4.1 billion dollars.
It is one thing for a literal billionaire, who owns the company to undergo 'hardship' in order to save the company they built over the past 10+ years.
It is a whole other thing for a mere employee to sacrifice their salary during a company downturn. To do so is an act of pure charity---which while it may be inline with ethos of a non-profit worker, isn't something that we as total 3rd parties should expect.
Mitchell Baker is just an "employee", despite her long years of service. She was even fired from Netscape during a round of layoffs, and served as a mere volunteer for years.
This is true, but on the other hand the justification for this compensation is that she is able to get much more elsewhere, so asking her to take less is a sacrifice. If that is true, then maybe she should go elsewhere rather than make the sacrifice. If it isn't true then maybe she is overpaid at present.
Just because accepting the sacrifice might not make sense for the current ceo and family doesn't mean that asking for it doesn't make sense for mozilla.
Sure, but it does mean due to her following her personal convictions her family has 2 million less to spend.
For every job, market rates are a thing. Yes, of course you will be able to fill just about any c-role at just about any rate. But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.
And yes, there are other factors at play. Mitchell Baker brings it up: The kind of work you do matters not only to you but also to c-level people and will be priced into the pay.
Who around here (who is also actually qualified enough, that mozilla would want them) would switch over, taking a 50% pay cut over their current pay, right now? Don't tell me you couldn't. Of course you could. Would it mean changing your life style? I am sure it would. But then again, that's a apparently cool to randomly ask of people who (I am assuming) earn a lot more than you do.
There are two reasonable options: You either come to terms with reality, or you change reality. The later means, in this particular case, enticing someone qualified (which includes a) being capable b) willing and c) in a social position to actually "apply" for the job) and to do it for less. Good luck.
> Yes, of course you will be able to fill just about any c-role at just about any rate. But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.
How do you measure how good a CEO is?
Is having to let go 25% of your staff, axing the security team and stopping new developments indicative of good performance?
In isolation, no.
In context of mozillas goals, challenges that arise when leading a company, and limited influence on the movement of the world, maybe. I doubt that either of us is close enough to the ground to realistically be a judge of that.
Maybe that’s why c level employees should be compensated on reaching certain targets, rather than getting at least a million a year. Because, if you are the captain of a schip, you should drown with it if it capsized.
"I think CEO pay is too high. See, I'm one of the good ones! What will I do about it? Well, a couple years back I learned I'm actually being being underpaid, so in a way I've already made a sacrifice. You're welcome!"
I'm certainly not getting paid what she is, but she isn't getting paid what she could get elsewhere.
If someone came along and offered me significantly more money than I make now I would take it, despite liking my current position well enough. My family would also want me to take it. And I believe that basically most of the people here complaining about her would do the same - move to a new job if they got offered more, not want to get a pay cut to stay in the job they are at.
I certainly wouldn't work most places for 5 times less than I make now, and if I did it would be because I expected to recoup that loss somehow.
She stated what is the normal way for most people - to try to maximize their gains - at a time when it is somewhat gauche to state that.
I would agree up to perhaps £100k (or perhaps £150k in an expensive place like SF) but beyond that I think there are very diminishing returns to wealth and other things, like vision/purpose and relationships dominate decision-making. (Well obviously not for everyone, but for a lot of people.)
> I'm certainly not getting paid what she is, but she isn't getting paid what she could get elsewhere.
Sure, but then what happens if she leaves due to small compensation (or for any other reason)?
To me it looks like "not much". She doesn't exactly have some stellar track record in the past few years.
> As far as I know, before she worked at Mozilla, she reported to Netscape's General Counsel. That is not a super competitive position level.
That's a bit of a harsh reading of her career. 26 years ago, she was one of the first legal hires at Netscape and reported to the Netscape CEO initially. Her reporting to the General Counsel was an artifact of scale after that - while reporting to the General Counsel, she also created and headed Netscape's tech-focused legal team. So it's not like she went from "mediocre legal position to Mozilla exec".
She's also been with Mozilla essentially since the beginning. When Netscape open sourced their software and formed Mozilla, she was put in charge as the general manager of it. After AOL bought Netscape and decided to stop their corporate stewardship of Mozilla, she's the one that formed the Foundation[1] to migrate all of the Mozilla assets to[2]. And she did that 17 years ago, when Firefox/Mozilla had very little market adoption and low single digit browser share.
A plausible alternate reality without her could have involved AOL cutting all support for Mozilla, the Mozilla projects going into a state of limbo (with no more corporate support and uncertainty of even legal usage of their existing names/logos), the dev community around those projects either fracturing or fizzling out as a result of the uncertainty, and Internet Explorer retaining 95+% of the browser market.
It's entirely possible someone else would have stepped up and performed the role she did. But in the end she's the one that did it, and her contributions in the early days of Mozilla certainly warrant her current executive position (and the associated salary that comes with it).
That's not to say she isn't overpaid - virtually all executives are overpaid. But she's at least contributed enough to Mozilla since the beginning to get to the point she's at now. That said, many companies are having their executives take pay haircuts to soften the blow of the current environment and mitigate the need or severity of layoffs. The fact that she chose not to do that for Mozilla is incredibly disappointing.
[1] The original Articles of Incorporation from 2003 lists her as the sole incorporator of the foundation: https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-articles-of-incorporation.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-articles-...
[2] This may not sound like much, but those assets were things like the legal rights to the branding of Mozilla and Mozilla projects. Without this, Firefox (et al) would have either had to completely rebrand and reset consumer mindshare, or keep using the Firefox name/logo and hope AOL (or a rando AOL exec) never decides to exert their power and kick up a fuss.
You assume that the c-suite care about the mission, etc more than money. They have "enough".
Imagine that c-suite types may just work for the salary, too, like many of the fellow engineers among the readership of this site. They care about the mission, but they also care about making enough money to support their other obligations (like family and kids) and tend to choose a well-paying place when they can. They try to sell their skills and knowledge not very much below the market rate.
Let's say: hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k? It's close to the US national average, it should be "enough". If you think $60k is too little, ask your colleagues from EU, from India, to say nothing of Africa.
I bet some very mission-driven engineers will remain. But a lot would eventually leave.
Same applies to a lot of values of x in CxO. And you do want highly qualified people there.
These are exceptional times. The original Mozilla posts mentioned the effects COVID19 had on their business.
CEOs of much larger companies, with much larger salaries, have cut or take no salary. Here's a short list of some
Lyft, Fiat Chrysler, GE, Delta, Alaska Airlines, United, Southwest, Jetblue, AirBnB, GE, NBA
How is it not incredibly tone deaf to cut 25% of the company and not at least in a token gesture temporarily eliminate your salary when you're literally a multimillionaire.
---
Also,
>And you do want highly qualified people there.
That would be one thing if Mozilla was in a period of great growth. But it's not; it's in steady decline. Yet c-suite salary has grown in inverse proportion. Highly qualified? Are they?
Those no salarie/$1 salarie CEOs sound oh so noble but they are usually compensated very well with stock options and so it's mostly just a facade of giving a
As long as the stocks have value and are not depreciating.
Given that capital gains are taxed at lower rates then income, its actually a tax-avoidance schema above everything else.
no it's not, unless you can point me at the CEOs receiving more options in lieu of their pay, otherwise it really is a pay cut, even if they're still getting rich, they're getting rich at a decreased rate and that is money they'll never see by taking $1 salary for the year.
It probably takes more skills to get the company from decline into growth. So as a company in decline you want great leadership.
500K !== 60K
500k / 2.5M < 60k / 100k
This is completely out of touch with the reality of life. 500k is enough to live in luxury anywhere, 60k won't be enough to survive in most tech areas.
The marginal utility of a dollar decreases as the absolute number of dollars increases. The only way 2.5 million can provide significantly more utility than 500k (i.e not going towards a mansion in Atherton) is if the person making that much is giving it forward to a large network of friends, family and charities.
> Imagine that c-suite types may just work for the salary, too
That's fine, and if people decided that, I would respect that decision. In which case they could resign, and Mozilla get people willing to work for $500,000.
> hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k?
The problem is you might severely limit your talent pool, to a much greater extent than a cap of $500k would do.
> If you think $60k is too little, ask your colleagues from EU, from India, to say nothing of Africa.
Maybe Mozilla should hire more people in those places, if they need to do so to save money.
> Maybe Mozilla should hire more people in those places, if they need to do so to save money.
They did hire from places with cheaper labor cost, such as Taiwan. They still got axed.
> In which case they could resign, and Mozilla get people willing to work for $500,000.
Exactly. Firing so many people means it's time to reconsider the structure and ambition of the company,and that includes considering whether to compensate the ceo at the level of charity ceos or at the level of successful tech ceos.
> Let's say: hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k?
You can't make this comparison, as $60k are not even enough to survive in many areas of the US, while $500k would still be enough to live in luxury no matter where you live.
"And you do want highly qualified people there."
Why, do you know any?
To be fair, she could bring her salary to 0, and that still would only afford to bring back ~8 out of the 250 developers.
Yes, as a regular developer I think 2.5 mil is pretty crazy for a salary. But even if the C-suite "tightened their belts", that wouldn't bring the company around.
Maybe the company _would_ fall apart, as they say, or close enough. I don't know. If you followed the news by Mozilla over the years, you could notice the trouble they had with finding the next CEO, multiple times.
In the meantime, if MDN is the "gold standard" and so on, where were all the donations to Mozilla from developers around the world to keep the site running?
It's extremely self-serving to ask the employees of an essentially public good company to reduce their salaries to be able to produce the said public good.
Personally, I worry about the death of Servo the most. But if a more niche concern, apparently.
That wasn't my point--I know she has a long history with Mozilla. Rather, there is no evidence that should would otherwise be commanding "competitive" CEO pay commensurate with Mozilla's size otherwise. Her work history pre-Mozilla would not make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5 million dollar position, at least IMHO.
Just because she contributed significantly in some ways years ago does not make her a particularly plausible choice as CEO, much less such a highly paid one. I can say Blake Ross was just as important in making Firefox a success...doesn't mean he would be a good CEO candidate, nor that he should be paid a "market competitive" salary.
It's anecdotal I know--but she is not particularly popular within the ranks of Mozilla, nor has she shown any particular business acumen outside of striking search deals with Yahoo/Google which arguably are only a function of Firefox's market share...which has continued to decline. And speaking for myself, I'm not impressed with her work at the Foundation either....it comes off a very superficial, and "we don't know what we should spend the money we get on, so let's hand it out to "Fellows", put together conferences, and write reports" nobody reads.
> A plausible alternate reality without her could have involved AOL cutting all support for Mozilla, the Mozilla projects going into a state of limbo (with no more corporate support and uncertainty of even legal usage of their existing names/logos), the dev community around those projects either fracturing or fizzling out as a result of the uncertainty, and Internet Explorer retaining 95+% of the browser market.
Ummm...webkit? Also,it's somewhat ironic you point to the non-profit foundation as her success story, while she makes "market rate" pay by virtue of her being CEO of the "for-profit" side of things.