3 ms·

She's been with Netscape since 1994 and remained a volunteer for Mozilla after the 2001 layoffs. She was one of the people who founded the Mozilla Foundation in

by geofft 6y ago

She's been with Netscape since 1994 and remained a volunteer for Mozilla after the 2001 layoffs. She was one of the people who founded the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and has been with them ever since. Meanwhile, the degree in Chinese studies is from before C++ or TCP/IP even existed, so I'm not sure what you expected her to learn in college instead that would have helped her run a company doing compiler development and internet standards. There are valid criticisms you can make of Baker (see the compensation issue discussed elsewhere in these comments) but "She has the wrong degree" doesn't seem like one of them, unless you think that Mozilla engineers - the people doing the deeply technical work - must be required to have a CS degree.

jeswin 6y ago
My point is that since Mozilla is a technology product company, she will have to rely on advice (from within Mozilla) to make the most important strategic decisions for the company. As a CEO, that's a huge handicap. Mozilla needs a CEO who can understand its technology and its partners (developers) at a very fundamental level. Mozilla needs a Lisa Su.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > She's been with Netscape since 1994 and remained a volunteer for Mozilla after the 2001 layoffs. She was one of the people who founded the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and has been with them ever since. That sounds like pretty solid technology industry experience for an exec, no?
  - hu3 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Her experience very much depends on her positions there. For example in my tech related company, the HR folks know little beyond Word and Excel despite some having worked for years there. What were her roles up to now?
    - geofft 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker President and founder of the Mozilla Foundation 2003 onwards, and also previously CEO of the Mozilla Corporation 2005-2008. Also she wrote the Mozilla Public License before that. I suspect she knows a little bit more than Word and Excel. Seriously - go criticize her for her salary, or failure to execute, or for-profit vision, or something. There's lots of criticisms that can be actually substantiated. The hypothesis that she doesn't understand what Mozilla is requires significant evidence. It's entirely possible a Mozillian could show up and say that actually she's been a clueless and politically savvy leader, but outsiders speculating that she can't possibly be qualified need to provide more than speculation.
      - jeswin 6y ago
        > Seriously - go criticize her for her salary, or failure to execute ... I am well aware of her tenure and good work at Mozilla (from public sources). The argument I was making was that the failure to execute is correlated with not understanding technology well enough. Certainly not claiming that's the only factor, but it might play a part in it. How will you make expensive long-term bets otherwise? The proof is in the execution, or the mis-execution. 1. Mozilla retired Firefox OS in 2016/17. And in a couple of years, a fork of it (KaiOS, which shares 95% of the same code) gets pre-installed on upwards of 80 million (probably more) units. It could have been a lot more if the OS was better; it really had a shot at low-end phones and TVs. 2. If the team says they need to commit tens of millions of dollars and half a decade or more to create a new, safe programming language for browsers and a prototype - will the CEO approve? And if yes, wouldn't it have been entirely based on advise from others in the room? 3. The world needs an efficient browser engine for multi-core devices coming with bundled GPUs. Requires nearly a decade to get right - how does one commit to that unless the complexity (and not just the rewards) are fully understood? 4. The failure to sell the Servo vision (safety, multi-core) to device manufacturers ultimately rests on the CEO. Instead, the Servo team got axed. Every technology company needs a CEO who deeply understands the technology.
        adamsea 6y ago
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

by geofft 6y ago

jeswin 6y ago

My point is that since Mozilla is a technology product company, she will have to rely on advice (from within Mozilla) to make the most important strategic decisions for the company. As a CEO, that's a huge handicap. Mozilla needs a CEO who can understand its technology and its partners (developers) at a very fundamental level. Mozilla needs a Lisa Su.

adamsea 6y ago
> She's been with Netscape since 1994 and remained a volunteer for Mozilla after the 2001 layoffs. She was one of the people who founded the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and has been with them ever since. That sounds like pretty solid technology industry experience for an exec, no?
- hu3 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Her experience very much depends on her positions there. For example in my tech related company, the HR folks know little beyond Word and Excel despite some having worked for years there. What were her roles up to now?
  - geofft 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker President and founder of the Mozilla Foundation 2003 onwards, and also previously CEO of the Mozilla Corporation 2005-2008. Also she wrote the Mozilla Public License before that. I suspect she knows a little bit more than Word and Excel. Seriously - go criticize her for her salary, or failure to execute, or for-profit vision, or something. There's lots of criticisms that can be actually substantiated. The hypothesis that she doesn't understand what Mozilla is requires significant evidence. It's entirely possible a Mozillian could show up and say that actually she's been a clueless and politically savvy leader, but outsiders speculating that she can't possibly be qualified need to provide more than speculation.
    - jeswin 6y ago
      > Seriously - go criticize her for her salary, or failure to execute ... I am well aware of her tenure and good work at Mozilla (from public sources). The argument I was making was that the failure to execute is correlated with not understanding technology well enough. Certainly not claiming that's the only factor, but it might play a part in it. How will you make expensive long-term bets otherwise? The proof is in the execution, or the mis-execution. 1. Mozilla retired Firefox OS in 2016/17. And in a couple of years, a fork of it (KaiOS, which shares 95% of the same code) gets pre-installed on upwards of 80 million (probably more) units. It could have been a lot more if the OS was better; it really had a shot at low-end phones and TVs. 2. If the team says they need to commit tens of millions of dollars and half a decade or more to create a new, safe programming language for browsers and a prototype - will the CEO approve? And if yes, wouldn't it have been entirely based on advise from others in the room? 3. The world needs an efficient browser engine for multi-core devices coming with bundled GPUs. Requires nearly a decade to get right - how does one commit to that unless the complexity (and not just the rewards) are fully understood? 4. The failure to sell the Servo vision (safety, multi-core) to device manufacturers ultimately rests on the CEO. Instead, the Servo team got axed. Every technology company needs a CEO who deeply understands the technology.
      - adamsea 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]