4 ms·

> 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

by 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.

phonon 6y ago
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.
- cosmie 6y ago
  > 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. Of course her work history prior to Mozilla wouldn't make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive position. But that's a bit of a false premise, as the Mitchell of today has nearly two decades of executive experience that she did not have prior to Mozilla. If you include the totality of her career (inclusive of Mozilla), she very much does have the work history to be a strong candidate for market rate executive positions. That being said, it does seem like she's just coasting on her prior momentum and is no longer materially contributing anything of value to Mozilla. In which case, Mozilla would be better served with her stepping down and someone else taking the reins. But that'd be true irrespective of whether she was paid market rate or below. > Ummm...webkit? I said it was a plausible alternative, not that it was the only one. Both KHTML (itself spurred by Mozilla's release[1]) and Webkit after Apple forked KHTML, could have also destabilized Microsoft's browser dominance. But I'm not very confident either of them would have done so - KHTML may not have had the resources to achieve what Firefox did, while Apple had the resources but Webkit at the time was only targeting Apple's Mac platform. > 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. In the context of her success story, you can't look at each side in a vacuum. The for-profit side only exists because the non-profit side created it as a wholly owned subsidiary. And the non-profit would never have been able to grow Mozilla to where it's at today without having created the for-profit. The hybrid structure thus optimized Mozilla's potential and has generated billions more in income than Mozilla otherwise would have, while also protecting those billions from being syphoned off by private owners or public shareholders, allowing it to be re-invested into Mozilla's mission. Taken as a whole, it's a point of success that bolsters her case for being a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive role. [1] KHTML's development wasn't predicated on Mozilla, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf1rT0Rn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf1rT0Rn0 gives the impression that Mozilla's existence nudged it out of a development lull

by cosmie 6y ago

phonon 6y ago

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.

cosmie 6y ago
> 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. Of course her work history prior to Mozilla wouldn't make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive position. But that's a bit of a false premise, as the Mitchell of today has nearly two decades of executive experience that she did not have prior to Mozilla. If you include the totality of her career (inclusive of Mozilla), she very much does have the work history to be a strong candidate for market rate executive positions. That being said, it does seem like she's just coasting on her prior momentum and is no longer materially contributing anything of value to Mozilla. In which case, Mozilla would be better served with her stepping down and someone else taking the reins. But that'd be true irrespective of whether she was paid market rate or below. > Ummm...webkit? I said it was a plausible alternative, not that it was the only one. Both KHTML (itself spurred by Mozilla's release[1]) and Webkit after Apple forked KHTML, could have also destabilized Microsoft's browser dominance. But I'm not very confident either of them would have done so - KHTML may not have had the resources to achieve what Firefox did, while Apple had the resources but Webkit at the time was only targeting Apple's Mac platform. > 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. In the context of her success story, you can't look at each side in a vacuum. The for-profit side only exists because the non-profit side created it as a wholly owned subsidiary. And the non-profit would never have been able to grow Mozilla to where it's at today without having created the for-profit. The hybrid structure thus optimized Mozilla's potential and has generated billions more in income than Mozilla otherwise would have, while also protecting those billions from being syphoned off by private owners or public shareholders, allowing it to be re-invested into Mozilla's mission. Taken as a whole, it's a point of success that bolsters her case for being a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive role. [1] KHTML's development wasn't predicated on Mozilla, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf1rT0Rn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf1rT0Rn0 gives the impression that Mozilla's existence nudged it out of a development lull