8 ms·

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’

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.

stu2b50 6y ago
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.
- true_religion 6y ago
  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.
  - kybernetikos 6y ago
    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.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      That’s just asking for Mozilla to fire her because the company did so poorly that other employees were laid off. I don’t really understand why we should do that... we aren’t stockholders in Mozilla, nor are we customers of them, or even employees. Why should we demand that anyone is fired?
      - feanaro 6y ago
        Are we forgetting that Mozilla was a non-profit and that the Corporation was spun off relatively recently to allegedly better support the non-profit's Foundation's mission? In the sense of that mission, all those interested in a decentralized, open web are stakeholders. If Mozilla is turning around to be a simple, ordinary business, that is quite the shark jump and will in turn lead to a large loss in advocacy. I have no interest in supporting a company just looking to make a quick buck if I'm not compensated.
        notyourday 6y ago
        This is a rather typical structure of the non-profit world. Mozilla Corporation is a sub of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Foundation controls Mozilla Corporation shares. Mozilla Foundation should based on the bylaws of Mozilla Corporation either have the board fire the C suite or replace the board of the Mozilla Corporation with those that will fire the C suite. Mozilla Foundation is not doing that because it is not interested in changes. Running a large non-profit is a low effort, low risk, super lucrative job. The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues.
        phonon 6y ago
        >The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues. Un(?)fortunately, donations to the Mozilla Foundation are only a few million dollars a year--mostly because they don't do anything particularly interesting. (Seriously--look at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ )
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    What I would like to know is how much of Mozilla's executive pay is linked to performance and how that performance is measured. I don't think many would complain about their salaries if what they did actually worked. But Mozilla is being run into the ground before our eyes. If the availability of people with a non-profit ethos affects competitive pay for non-profits, then that should be taken into a account. Maybe such a person exists to lead Mozilla. But the primary goal should be to find someone who can turn the organisation around. I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that current management can do it.
    - sam_goody 6y ago
      I really think Brendan Eich would have done an excellent job had he been given a chance. After all, as much as there are complaints about Brave, he managed to make a legitimately well known contender from scratch in a world that already has seen many other browser attempts go nowhere (and of course, he in some form created and grew Firefox). Of course, "cancel culture" means you have to throw out someone from being CEO, even if that means the whole internet will suffer greatly, because he had a different opinion than whatever was woke. Which is a shame, because the net loss to everyone is much much much greater than the $1000 dollars he gave as a donation, even if it is acceptable to destroy someone's life because they have a opinion that disagrees with yours.
      - true_religion 6y ago
        What, Brendan Eich, did was comparable to opposing the fair housing act in 1966. At the time, he was a member of the majority vote, fighting to continue oppressing a minority group. While, he no doubt would find support, since he is part of the status quo, it’s still reasonable to protest his actions. I don’t think his life was destroyed. He remained a multimillionaire, and immediately founded another competing company. The people whose lives were destroyed were the millions who didn’t have basic marriage rights for decades, and who were systematically humiliated merely for openly being in love.
        afiori 6y ago
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  Well sure, he owns a 15% share of a company whose current market cap is somewhere around $50 billion. IF, as CEO, he can raise the value of AirBNB by 1%, that's equivalent to a $75 million per year salary.
- bjo590 6y ago
  > The ceo of MSF, who imo does a great job, is paid 120k a year. I know a few organizations that might fall under that abbreviation. Can you be more specific?
  - phonon 6y ago
    https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/2018%20Form%20990%20PUBLIC%20DISCLOSURE%20COPY.pdf https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7. $63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.
- nandhinianand 6y ago
  By MSF do you mean medicine sans frontiers(https://www.msf.org/ https://www.msf.org/) ??
  - phonon 6y ago
    https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/2018%20Form%20990%20PUBLIC%20DISCLOSURE%20COPY.pdf https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7. $63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.
phonon 6y ago
Why don't you ask Brendan Eich how much he was willing to be paid to be CEO? Being CEO of Mozilla could attract highly qualified, passionate people, who are not primarily driven by "competitive compensation". You know; the same impulse that underlies the whole open source movement.
- notyourday 6y ago
  Brendan Eich was a technie. These are non-profit execs. They exist to fleece the donors and live off the spoils. It just happened that the non-profit in question has a mission appealing to the technologists.
mvn9 6y ago
You will always find a person willing to be called CEO for $500,000. The question is: which skills do you get for that money? Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?
- cabalamat 6y ago
  > Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? With a greater probability than the current management, yes.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  > Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? That question is impossible to answer, but my instinct leans towards ‘yes, potentially’. Even if they do not, they’re still 2M/year better off.
- xxs 6y ago
  I doubt you would get worse than the current management team.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  I find it weird that people so often think that only those who want lots of money can do a good job > Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? I think there's such people among the engineers at Mozilla, but maybe not among the current execs
Dylan16807 6y ago
If you slightly expand your requirements for recruiting, instead of fighting over existing CEOs, you'll hit tons of qualified people that are not making millions and are not getting offers to make millions. And there's enough of them that if all companies did this the glut of supply would drop median CEO pay like a rock.
belorn 6y ago
There are many CEO that earn a lot less, especially in the non-profit sector. Market rate can be quite misleading when you are including widely different markets with very different goals. If mozilla want to be more like EFF and focus on the advocacy aspect then maybe they should be similar paid. Even better, merge the two organizations and replace the leadership with the one in EFF. No need to go and look for a CEO willing to be paid 1/10th of current wages as there is already one available doing that now.
Aeolun 6y ago
> you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all I can guarantee that you’d find a perfectly willing CEO somewhere in the people laid off now if you told them you’d only pay them 500k.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Apparently [0] the EFF pay their CEO $257,500. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195
  - driverdan 6y ago
    The EFF is also about 1/50th the size of Mozilla.
    - pantalaimon 6y ago
      Is CEO pay a function of the number of employees? Then a 25% cut would be justified.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  I don't get why we decided at some point you need someone anointed with CEO Fairy Dust to be CEO. I 100% guarantee the job is not so damn hard, subtle, or complex that practically no-one on Earth can do it. There are probably 20 people at Mozilla right now (haha, OK, maybe not anymore) who could step into the role and would gladly do so at $500,000/yr. Unless the responsibilities, procedures, and state of things at that level is so poorly understood and documented that someone else coming in would have to start from scratch, which seems like a massive organizational failure if that's the case. It's. Just. A. Job. I suspect this is yet another manifestation of the crippling, organizationally-irrational-but-individually-rational levels of risk avoidance we're operating under now.
  - pm90 6y ago
    The elevation of CSuite as magical makers of wealth, when most of that value is created by the organization, needs to stop. Good leadership is important, but CEO comp is completely atrocious and unsustainable. Especially if the alternative is to lay off a ton of employees just to maintain operations. We can see it right here how it’s killing a value generation vehicle. The CEO won’t accept a pay cut, but is willing to shut down entire product lines. A similar story has played out across America.
rvense 6y ago
Developer here. I'd be very happy to take a paycut to work at Mozilla - until yesterday's announcement, that was actually my explicit medium-term career goal. I'd be there for the mission, and I would expect the same for the C-level. I feel like the CEO is absolutely in the wrong here. If they're making 20x what a technical writer or tester is making, it absolute is a bad look not to take a paycut when you're sending 250 people into the street.
onion2k 6y ago
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. There would be a very long queue of people willing to do any of the C-suite jobs for $500k.
- xxs 6y ago
  I wonder how the 'market' rate was estimated. Was it compared to other non-profit org, or just picked some random SV ones?
  - mcguire 6y ago
    https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-executive-officer-salary https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-execu...
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  Or $800k. Or $1m. Or $1.2m. The $2.5m -> $500k is an easy soundbite, but it doesn't have to even be that drastic. Granted, shaving 'only' $1m off might only allow you to 'save', say 8-12(?) jobs, but... that's 8-12 people, some with families
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Yes but would they be the right people? You know. The right ones. Who are friends with members of the board, and are therefore already rich enough and socialized such that they can be friends with members of the board.
phone8675309 6y ago
> But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much? Why should their CEO get any money and not a pink slip? Their mismanagement and financial games caused the company to have to lay off 250 people.
- mkr-hn 6y ago
  The situation seems to create a paradox where any new CEO will expect that much or more to risk the career/reputation damage of not being able to save it if they take over.
notyourday 6y ago
> 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. This is not about an abstract CEO. This is about a CEO who is a total utter failure that could only get this job in a non-profit/corp hybrid.
mcguire 6y ago
"...you can’t find a CEO at all..." Would that be a bad thing? How? I'm sure somebody would step up to make decisions, and you never know, they might actually be competent. The odds don't seem markedly worse.
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  You seriously underestimate how important it is to have a good leader in a large organization. No, making everything flat won't magically make things work. Github was leaderless for a long time. And during that period it was chaos. The company had no direction, employees were doing random, incoherent things. And multiple factions fought for power.

stu2b50 6y ago

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.

true_religion 6y ago
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.
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  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.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    That’s just asking for Mozilla to fire her because the company did so poorly that other employees were laid off. I don’t really understand why we should do that... we aren’t stockholders in Mozilla, nor are we customers of them, or even employees. Why should we demand that anyone is fired?
    - feanaro 6y ago
      Are we forgetting that Mozilla was a non-profit and that the Corporation was spun off relatively recently to allegedly better support the non-profit's Foundation's mission? In the sense of that mission, all those interested in a decentralized, open web are stakeholders. If Mozilla is turning around to be a simple, ordinary business, that is quite the shark jump and will in turn lead to a large loss in advocacy. I have no interest in supporting a company just looking to make a quick buck if I'm not compensated.
      - notyourday 6y ago
        This is a rather typical structure of the non-profit world. Mozilla Corporation is a sub of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Foundation controls Mozilla Corporation shares. Mozilla Foundation should based on the bylaws of Mozilla Corporation either have the board fire the C suite or replace the board of the Mozilla Corporation with those that will fire the C suite. Mozilla Foundation is not doing that because it is not interested in changes. Running a large non-profit is a low effort, low risk, super lucrative job. The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues.
        phonon 6y ago
        >The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues. Un(?)fortunately, donations to the Mozilla Foundation are only a few million dollars a year--mostly because they don't do anything particularly interesting. (Seriously--look at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ )
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  What I would like to know is how much of Mozilla's executive pay is linked to performance and how that performance is measured. I don't think many would complain about their salaries if what they did actually worked. But Mozilla is being run into the ground before our eyes. If the availability of people with a non-profit ethos affects competitive pay for non-profits, then that should be taken into a account. Maybe such a person exists to lead Mozilla. But the primary goal should be to find someone who can turn the organisation around. I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that current management can do it.
  - sam_goody 6y ago
    I really think Brendan Eich would have done an excellent job had he been given a chance. After all, as much as there are complaints about Brave, he managed to make a legitimately well known contender from scratch in a world that already has seen many other browser attempts go nowhere (and of course, he in some form created and grew Firefox). Of course, "cancel culture" means you have to throw out someone from being CEO, even if that means the whole internet will suffer greatly, because he had a different opinion than whatever was woke. Which is a shame, because the net loss to everyone is much much much greater than the $1000 dollars he gave as a donation, even if it is acceptable to destroy someone's life because they have a opinion that disagrees with yours.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      What, Brendan Eich, did was comparable to opposing the fair housing act in 1966. At the time, he was a member of the majority vote, fighting to continue oppressing a minority group. While, he no doubt would find support, since he is part of the status quo, it’s still reasonable to protest his actions. I don’t think his life was destroyed. He remained a multimillionaire, and immediately founded another competing company. The people whose lives were destroyed were the millions who didn’t have basic marriage rights for decades, and who were systematically humiliated merely for openly being in love.
      - afiori 6y ago
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Well sure, he owns a 15% share of a company whose current market cap is somewhere around $50 billion. IF, as CEO, he can raise the value of AirBNB by 1%, that's equivalent to a $75 million per year salary.
bjo590 6y ago
> The ceo of MSF, who imo does a great job, is paid 120k a year. I know a few organizations that might fall under that abbreviation. Can you be more specific?
- phonon 6y ago
  https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/2018%20Form%20990%20PUBLIC%20DISCLOSURE%20COPY.pdf https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7. $63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.
nandhinianand 6y ago
By MSF do you mean medicine sans frontiers(https://www.msf.org/ https://www.msf.org/) ??
- phonon 6y ago
  https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/2018%20Form%20990%20PUBLIC%20DISCLOSURE%20COPY.pdf https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7. $63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.

phonon 6y ago

Why don't you ask Brendan Eich how much he was willing to be paid to be CEO? Being CEO of Mozilla could attract highly qualified, passionate people, who are not primarily driven by "competitive compensation". You know; the same impulse that underlies the whole open source movement.

notyourday 6y ago
Brendan Eich was a technie. These are non-profit execs. They exist to fleece the donors and live off the spoils. It just happened that the non-profit in question has a mission appealing to the technologists.

mvn9 6y ago

You will always find a person willing to be called CEO for $500,000. The question is: which skills do you get for that money? Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?

cabalamat 6y ago
> Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? With a greater probability than the current management, yes.
Aeolun 6y ago
> Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? That question is impossible to answer, but my instinct leans towards ‘yes, potentially’. Even if they do not, they’re still 2M/year better off.
xxs 6y ago
I doubt you would get worse than the current management team.
cutemonster 6y ago
I find it weird that people so often think that only those who want lots of money can do a good job > Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable? I think there's such people among the engineers at Mozilla, but maybe not among the current execs

Dylan16807 6y ago

If you slightly expand your requirements for recruiting, instead of fighting over existing CEOs, you'll hit tons of qualified people that are not making millions and are not getting offers to make millions. And there's enough of them that if all companies did this the glut of supply would drop median CEO pay like a rock.

belorn 6y ago

There are many CEO that earn a lot less, especially in the non-profit sector. Market rate can be quite misleading when you are including widely different markets with very different goals. If mozilla want to be more like EFF and focus on the advocacy aspect then maybe they should be similar paid. Even better, merge the two organizations and replace the leadership with the one in EFF. No need to go and look for a CEO willing to be paid 1/10th of current wages as there is already one available doing that now.

Aeolun 6y ago

> you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all I can guarantee that you’d find a perfectly willing CEO somewhere in the people laid off now if you told them you’d only pay them 500k.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Apparently [0] the EFF pay their CEO $257,500. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195
- driverdan 6y ago
  The EFF is also about 1/50th the size of Mozilla.
  - pantalaimon 6y ago
    Is CEO pay a function of the number of employees? Then a 25% cut would be justified.
spanhandler 6y ago
I don't get why we decided at some point you need someone anointed with CEO Fairy Dust to be CEO. I 100% guarantee the job is not so damn hard, subtle, or complex that practically no-one on Earth can do it. There are probably 20 people at Mozilla right now (haha, OK, maybe not anymore) who could step into the role and would gladly do so at $500,000/yr. Unless the responsibilities, procedures, and state of things at that level is so poorly understood and documented that someone else coming in would have to start from scratch, which seems like a massive organizational failure if that's the case. It's. Just. A. Job. I suspect this is yet another manifestation of the crippling, organizationally-irrational-but-individually-rational levels of risk avoidance we're operating under now.
- pm90 6y ago
  The elevation of CSuite as magical makers of wealth, when most of that value is created by the organization, needs to stop. Good leadership is important, but CEO comp is completely atrocious and unsustainable. Especially if the alternative is to lay off a ton of employees just to maintain operations. We can see it right here how it’s killing a value generation vehicle. The CEO won’t accept a pay cut, but is willing to shut down entire product lines. A similar story has played out across America.

rvense 6y ago

Developer here. I'd be very happy to take a paycut to work at Mozilla - until yesterday's announcement, that was actually my explicit medium-term career goal. I'd be there for the mission, and I would expect the same for the C-level. I feel like the CEO is absolutely in the wrong here. If they're making 20x what a technical writer or tester is making, it absolute is a bad look not to take a paycut when you're sending 250 people into the street.

onion2k 6y ago

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. There would be a very long queue of people willing to do any of the C-suite jobs for $500k.

xxs 6y ago
I wonder how the 'market' rate was estimated. Was it compared to other non-profit org, or just picked some random SV ones?
- mcguire 6y ago
  https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-executive-officer-salary https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-execu...
mgkimsal 6y ago
Or $800k. Or $1m. Or $1.2m. The $2.5m -> $500k is an easy soundbite, but it doesn't have to even be that drastic. Granted, shaving 'only' $1m off might only allow you to 'save', say 8-12(?) jobs, but... that's 8-12 people, some with families
spanhandler 6y ago
Yes but would they be the right people? You know. The right ones. Who are friends with members of the board, and are therefore already rich enough and socialized such that they can be friends with members of the board.

phone8675309 6y ago

> But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much? Why should their CEO get any money and not a pink slip? Their mismanagement and financial games caused the company to have to lay off 250 people.

mkr-hn 6y ago
The situation seems to create a paradox where any new CEO will expect that much or more to risk the career/reputation damage of not being able to save it if they take over.

notyourday 6y ago

> 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. This is not about an abstract CEO. This is about a CEO who is a total utter failure that could only get this job in a non-profit/corp hybrid.

mcguire 6y ago

"...you can’t find a CEO at all..." Would that be a bad thing? How? I'm sure somebody would step up to make decisions, and you never know, they might actually be competent. The odds don't seem markedly worse.

FooBarWidget 6y ago
You seriously underestimate how important it is to have a good leader in a large organization. No, making everything flat won't magically make things work. Github was leaderless for a long time. And during that period it was chaos. The company had no direction, employees were doing random, incoherent things. And multiple factions fought for power.