11 ms·

Of course. It's a necessary sacrifice. That money will go on to support the livelihoods of the most vulrenable and needy of the Mozilla team, namely the C-suite

Of course. It's a necessary sacrifice. That money will go on to support the livelihoods of the most vulrenable and needy of the Mozilla team, namely the C-suite. "She actually responded to my question about her salary in a q&a and said it was too much of a financial burden to ask of the c-suite to cut their salaries down to $500k“ https://mobile.twitter.com/lizardlucas42/status/1293232090985705478 https://mobile.twitter.com/lizardlucas42/status/129323209098... Could you imagine a chief something officer only making 500k? They'd be laughed out of the country club, which is against the Geneva convention.

merpnderp 6y ago
You should start a business and when you need execs you could just pay them what you think is fair, and with the money you save you’ll dominate the competition. Maybe everyone in the world will notice the key to your success and exec pay will be reduced.
- thatcat 6y ago
  Once it became successful the people at the top would organize together to raise their own salaries then maintain that even when economic times change, against the interests of the rest of the company.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    That's how it works now. C-suite compensation is set by compensation committees composed of—you guessed it—C-suite executives.
- bscphil 6y ago
  You think you're making a point here, but there's a mistake in your reasoning. You're thinking that "fair" pay is whatever allows you to beat the market, and since if Mozilla only paid its c-suite $300k-$500k, it would not (you think) be able to compete with other companies with high paid execs, this proves that whatever they're paying the execs now must be fair. But ... "fair" pay does not mean the same thing as "whatever is financially best for the company to pay its employees". Take the other end of that bargain: is it fair for Mozilla to pay their janitors a reproduction level wage? Most of us (except the hard core right-wing libertarians) say no, that's why we have a minimum wage (which many of us also think is too low). The elision of the distinction between "fair" and "whatever the market rewards you for doing" isn't an argument, it's just crass market-worship. Edit: this post is pretty clearly argued, and downvoting without even a comment is exactly the kind of ideological nonsense that this site simultaneously prides itself on not doing (contra Reddit), and yet hilariously symbolizes.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Have my upvote. But be aware that the edit at the end will probably trigger the downvote reflex for a number of people here (it did on me too, I just consciously overruled it ;-)
  - Feolkin 6y ago
    I wish the site would just get rid of downvotes. Your post is constructive and well-written, doesn't say anything egregiously offensive and isn't trolling and doesn't lack effort. The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. Which is bullshit. You can still respect people who don't share your views, and I wish the site cared to foster that kind of community, instead of promoting another echo chamber.
    - cabalamat 6y ago
      > The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. That's not true, I downvoted the past because it complained at being downvoted.
      - Feolkin 6y ago
        And you're just as much a part of the problem. You're blindly punishing him for pointing out that the system is unfair und his post is not and was not deserving of downvotes. It has nothing to do with the content of his actual comment. You're not contributing positively in any way. You're just reinforcing that anybody who speaks out or has a different point of view isn't welcome here.
        jessaustin 6y ago
        Downvoting complaints about downvotes is an attempt not to have to read complaints about downvotes. But here's another: please don't complain about downvotes!
    - bscphil 6y ago
      > The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. It's a very frustrating thing about this site, because, ironically, most people here think of themselves as nearly perfectly rational and open to new ideas, but in fact the opposite is almost always the case. If I think of myself as perfectly rational, that ironically gives me a way to think that anyone who disagrees with me must be trolling or must be saying something obviously wrong, even if I don't take the time to work out what that might be. I admittedly added that just to complain, expecting it to trigger another wave of downvotes - because frankly, I don't care about getting downvoted. What I care about is how often this site turns into an ideological echo chamber for one of two popular worldviews, and on some level I wanted to try to call attention to that.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  >Airbnb has suspended all of its marketing in an attempt to save $800 million this year. Its founders will also not take any salary for the next six months, and top executives will take a 50 percent pay cut, according to Reuters. It's one thing to pay market rate for execs who do an excellent job on a rising company for a for-profit, another for a non-profit in decline. And it's a different thing entirely when it's in a global pandemic and recession. CEOs of FOR PROFIT companies with far more financial success have cut their pay if nothing else as good symbol for the rest of the company.
- manquer 6y ago
  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 ?
- dgb23 6y ago
  There are examples of this. Satoru Iwata comes to mind as a famous one. Another one would be an ex exec I know personally (who was also a founder). Worked two years straight w/o pay to keep the company afloat. Oh and there are also worker cooperatives. They are usually very stable and have a much smaller income gap. > dominate the competition The people/companies who operate like this usually don't have this as a goal. Quite the opposite. They are typically collaborative and opt for stability and sustainability over everything else.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  ah yes, a foolproof path to change
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  Usually when you start a business you don’t pay your CEO 2.5 million. I’d net for most medium sized companies it’s not anywhere near that.
james412 6y ago
I wonder how things may have played out had Brendan Eich still been at the reins (Serious comment, not some challenge to test how quickly Godwin's law can be invoked)
- skyfaller 6y ago
  If the result of Eich being in charge would have been Firefox being bundled with a cryptocurrency, as Brave is, then I think we dodged a fucking bullet there.
  - jopsen 6y ago
    I suspect brave could do things firefox couldn't.. it rather wasn't willing to risk doing. I suspect adblocking and anti tracking features might have been higher on the list.
- unreal37 6y ago
  How you can separate out the CEO Brendan Eich from the man who donated to block gay marriage in California though? https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-br...
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Better opsec on Brendans part. Don't hire people who look for something to be insulted by. Stronger laws to protect peoples personal lives from media and activists.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Surprisingly many upvotes, so I think it might be good to clarify something: > Don't hire people who look for something to be insulted by. For context: I used to be like that, looking for a fight, even though it was for different cause. I don't believe in behaving that way anymore, and I think I might have done more harm than good back then even if I had the best intentions.
phonon 6y ago
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."
- rsa25519 6y ago
  > That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to. s/people and their/me and my
  - kybernetikos 6y ago
    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.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  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.
nine_k 6y ago
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.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  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?
  - coopsmgoops 6y ago
    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
    - rusticpenn 6y ago
      As long as the stocks have value and are not depreciating.
    - 6y ago
hvis 6y ago
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.
- NeutronStar 6y ago
  8 developers for 2mil? more like 8-20. So you think it's preferable to keep the C-suite happy versus having 8-20 more developers?

merpnderp 6y ago

You should start a business and when you need execs you could just pay them what you think is fair, and with the money you save you’ll dominate the competition. Maybe everyone in the world will notice the key to your success and exec pay will be reduced.

thatcat 6y ago
Once it became successful the people at the top would organize together to raise their own salaries then maintain that even when economic times change, against the interests of the rest of the company.
- dhosek 6y ago
  That's how it works now. C-suite compensation is set by compensation committees composed of—you guessed it—C-suite executives.
bscphil 6y ago
You think you're making a point here, but there's a mistake in your reasoning. You're thinking that "fair" pay is whatever allows you to beat the market, and since if Mozilla only paid its c-suite $300k-$500k, it would not (you think) be able to compete with other companies with high paid execs, this proves that whatever they're paying the execs now must be fair. But ... "fair" pay does not mean the same thing as "whatever is financially best for the company to pay its employees". Take the other end of that bargain: is it fair for Mozilla to pay their janitors a reproduction level wage? Most of us (except the hard core right-wing libertarians) say no, that's why we have a minimum wage (which many of us also think is too low). The elision of the distinction between "fair" and "whatever the market rewards you for doing" isn't an argument, it's just crass market-worship. Edit: this post is pretty clearly argued, and downvoting without even a comment is exactly the kind of ideological nonsense that this site simultaneously prides itself on not doing (contra Reddit), and yet hilariously symbolizes.
- eitland 6y ago
  Have my upvote. But be aware that the edit at the end will probably trigger the downvote reflex for a number of people here (it did on me too, I just consciously overruled it ;-)
- Feolkin 6y ago
  I wish the site would just get rid of downvotes. Your post is constructive and well-written, doesn't say anything egregiously offensive and isn't trolling and doesn't lack effort. The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. Which is bullshit. You can still respect people who don't share your views, and I wish the site cared to foster that kind of community, instead of promoting another echo chamber.
  - cabalamat 6y ago
    > The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. That's not true, I downvoted the past because it complained at being downvoted.
    - Feolkin 6y ago
      And you're just as much a part of the problem. You're blindly punishing him for pointing out that the system is unfair und his post is not and was not deserving of downvotes. It has nothing to do with the content of his actual comment. You're not contributing positively in any way. You're just reinforcing that anybody who speaks out or has a different point of view isn't welcome here.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Downvoting complaints about downvotes is an attempt not to have to read complaints about downvotes. But here's another: please don't complain about downvotes!
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. It's a very frustrating thing about this site, because, ironically, most people here think of themselves as nearly perfectly rational and open to new ideas, but in fact the opposite is almost always the case. If I think of myself as perfectly rational, that ironically gives me a way to think that anyone who disagrees with me must be trolling or must be saying something obviously wrong, even if I don't take the time to work out what that might be. I admittedly added that just to complain, expecting it to trigger another wave of downvotes - because frankly, I don't care about getting downvoted. What I care about is how often this site turns into an ideological echo chamber for one of two popular worldviews, and on some level I wanted to try to call attention to that.
stu2b50 6y ago
>Airbnb has suspended all of its marketing in an attempt to save $800 million this year. Its founders will also not take any salary for the next six months, and top executives will take a 50 percent pay cut, according to Reuters. It's one thing to pay market rate for execs who do an excellent job on a rising company for a for-profit, another for a non-profit in decline. And it's a different thing entirely when it's in a global pandemic and recession. CEOs of FOR PROFIT companies with far more financial success have cut their pay if nothing else as good symbol for the rest of the company.
manquer 6y ago
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 ?
dgb23 6y ago
There are examples of this. Satoru Iwata comes to mind as a famous one. Another one would be an ex exec I know personally (who was also a founder). Worked two years straight w/o pay to keep the company afloat. Oh and there are also worker cooperatives. They are usually very stable and have a much smaller income gap. > dominate the competition The people/companies who operate like this usually don't have this as a goal. Quite the opposite. They are typically collaborative and opt for stability and sustainability over everything else.
schwartzworld 6y ago
ah yes, a foolproof path to change
pantalaimon 6y ago
Usually when you start a business you don’t pay your CEO 2.5 million. I’d net for most medium sized companies it’s not anywhere near that.

james412 6y ago

I wonder how things may have played out had Brendan Eich still been at the reins (Serious comment, not some challenge to test how quickly Godwin's law can be invoked)

skyfaller 6y ago
If the result of Eich being in charge would have been Firefox being bundled with a cryptocurrency, as Brave is, then I think we dodged a fucking bullet there.
- jopsen 6y ago
  I suspect brave could do things firefox couldn't.. it rather wasn't willing to risk doing. I suspect adblocking and anti tracking features might have been higher on the list.
unreal37 6y ago
How you can separate out the CEO Brendan Eich from the man who donated to block gay marriage in California though? https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-br...
- skinkestek 6y ago
  Better opsec on Brendans part. Don't hire people who look for something to be insulted by. Stronger laws to protect peoples personal lives from media and activists.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Surprisingly many upvotes, so I think it might be good to clarify something: > Don't hire people who look for something to be insulted by. For context: I used to be like that, looking for a fight, even though it was for different cause. I don't believe in behaving that way anymore, and I think I might have done more harm than good back then even if I had the best intentions.

phonon 6y ago

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."

rsa25519 6y ago
> That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to. s/people and their/me and my
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  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.
stu2b50 6y ago
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.

nine_k 6y ago

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.

stu2b50 6y ago
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?
- coopsmgoops 6y ago
  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
  - rusticpenn 6y ago
    As long as the stocks have value and are not depreciating.
  - 6y ago

hvis 6y ago

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.

NeutronStar 6y ago
8 developers for 2mil? more like 8-20. So you think it's preferable to keep the C-suite happy versus having 8-20 more developers?