27 ms·

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 posit

by 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.
- mattigames 6y ago
  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.
  - xapata 6y ago
    Ok, so find one.
    - mattigames 6y ago
      Pay me to do it and I would (don't worry, I charge much less than 500K to find them)
      - xapata 6y ago
        Wouldn't the market pay you? On a second read, I see you wrote, "I would be surprised if ...". I don't remember seeing that the first time, but maybe I read too quickly. In that case, I'll turn it around: I'd be surprised if you could find anyone who can supply comparable evidence of competence who'd accept substantially less compensation.
  - Peaches4Rent 6y ago
    I agree that this statement could be true. But is it provable?
    - cabalamat 6y ago
      Not quite the same thing, but there was a study a few years ago that should that CEO compensation was inversely correlated with company success.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    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.
tdeck 6y ago
"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!"
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  If they would bring results it could be another story...
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
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.
- room271 6y ago
  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.)
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > 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.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I think you're probably right about the "not much" but I'm not sure if the lack of success for Mozilla is not so much due to incompetence of the management as it is to the much stronger position of Google; some battles cannot be managed to win, only managed to decrease the loss.
cosmie 6y ago
> 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.
- 6y ago

by phonon 6y ago

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.

mattigames 6y ago
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.
- xapata 6y ago
  Ok, so find one.
  - mattigames 6y ago
    Pay me to do it and I would (don't worry, I charge much less than 500K to find them)
    - xapata 6y ago
      Wouldn't the market pay you? On a second read, I see you wrote, "I would be surprised if ...". I don't remember seeing that the first time, but maybe I read too quickly. In that case, I'll turn it around: I'd be surprised if you could find anyone who can supply comparable evidence of competence who'd accept substantially less compensation.
- Peaches4Rent 6y ago
  I agree that this statement could be true. But is it provable?
  - cabalamat 6y ago
    Not quite the same thing, but there was a study a few years ago that should that CEO compensation was inversely correlated with company success.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  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.

tdeck 6y ago

"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!"

raxxorrax 6y ago
If they would bring results it could be another story...

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

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.

room271 6y ago
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.)
The_Colonel 6y ago
> 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.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I think you're probably right about the "not much" but I'm not sure if the lack of success for Mozilla is not so much due to incompetence of the management as it is to the much stronger position of Google; some battles cannot be managed to win, only managed to decrease the loss.

cosmie 6y ago

> 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.

6y ago