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What does mozilla spend money on outside of personal costs? Mozilla had approximately 1000 employees. If they are grossing 450M a year in revenue and 50% of t

What does mozilla spend money on outside of personal costs? Mozilla had approximately 1000 employees. If they are grossing 450M a year in revenue and 50% of their expenses are personal costs, tht means on average they are spending 225K per employee. for a non profit (even if its a non profit in the tech field and has to compete with tech firms for employees), that seems high. i.e. if one would compare them to Series A or B startups in SV, those would be reasonably high compensation packages (albiet without the stock option upside, but most stock options aren't worth the paper they are printed on, even for series A companies perhaps a bit more likelihood with series B). Even if one says its 33%, that's still 150K per average employee expense. while that wouldn't result in a great SV salary, its would probably be competitive in most of the world. just trying to understand where all the money goes?

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
According to the article: > Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m with a headcount of about 1,000, or about $286,000 per person, on average. Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. Presumably there are large infrastructure fees for things like Firefox Sync, which by the way just introduced storage limits: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storage-sync-in-firefox-79/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storag... But come on, how about saving some for rainy days?
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  > Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-returns-and-financial-information https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-... has some of the information you seek; see the various "Audited financial statements" links. The 2019 one will presumably be available once the audit (which starts on the tax filing deadline, so in July this year) is done. > But come on, how about saving some for rainy days? The 2018 financials show ~$520 million in net assets (assets minus liabilities) at the end of the year. The vast majority if this is in "cash" and "investments".
DangerousPie 6y ago
Keep in mind that employee expense != employee salary since there are also taxes, insurances, pension contributions etc to be paid. Plus you need IT, office space, infrastructure.
- compsciphd 6y ago
  yes, understood, but its a good chunk of it (probably 2/3). and for a non profit to be spending nearly $300K per employee seems problematic. (i.e. average salary is probably close to $200K.
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    Why do you think they should be paying significantly less just because they are a non-profit? I'm sure they can pay a bit less because people join because of their values and not just because of the money but I suspect they still have to stay somewhat competitive. I can see people being okay with making 10-20% less working for a company whose values they really like, but 50% less? Doubt it.
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      When I worked for a non-profit, the rule was that salaries could be no more than 90% of the general going rate for the same job in the same location (we had offices across the country). I don't know if it was a rule specific to this organization, or if it's an industry-wide rule of thumb. Because of this 90% rule, the company never set any salaries. After you passed the interview and they wanted to hire you, they sent your resume and job description to an outside consulting firm, which would then calculate what your salary would be. The consulting firm contacted you directly and let you know what your compensation would be if you accepted the job, and why. It might be common, but it was very new for me.
      - ivalm 6y ago
        90% of going rate in bay is >>200k for senior dev. Check out levels.fyi
jefftk 6y ago
> 225K per employee That is the cost of these employees to their employer ("fully loaded"). The fully loaded cost is typically about twice the employee's nominal compensation, which would be ~$113k. This is about 60% of entry level comp at a FAANG company and about 35% of mid-career comp. [1] Mozilla employs a lot of people who are willing to work under market rate to do a job they believe in, but I doubt they would be able to get and retain the people they need if they offered substantially less. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Apple,Amazon,Netflix&track=Software%20Engineer https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Apple,Amazon...
- compsciphd 6y ago
  SV (and to a slightly lesser extent NY) compensation. not worldwide. Having worked in SV for the past few years and now earning a european salary, its no where near same ballpark. and yes, I called it personnel cost vs salary, because I wasn't talking about the fully loaded cost. if people are willing to work at startups in SV for $150-$180K salaries (with significant experience, and I had enough offers from my time in SV to get a good handle on the market) those same people if they wanted to work at mozilla would earn similar amounts. but these are higher end engineers earning the $180K at a startup. mozilla has a significant number (article I just read said about half) of its employees work remotely.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    For what it's worth the levels.fyi number is ~10% low for me, and I'm in Boston (US East Coast). I agree that outside the US comp is generally substantially lower. But given Mozilla's history and the people they would want to hire, I think it would be extremely difficult for them to move to a model where they primarily employ developers in cheaper countries.
    - dblohm7 6y ago
      Indeed. Those developers would just be picked up by FAANG instead.
- 6y ago
stagger87 6y ago
Mozilla provides financial statements as recent as 2018 which will answer some of your questions. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201... See page 5 for expenses. There are several comments here about Mozilla needing to save cash. The balance sheet as of 2018 shows 100+ million in cash assets.
- brudgers 6y ago
  A quick google says Alphabet has $18,000 million in cash on hand and $101,000 million in marketable securities. But Mozilla was the one documenting standards while Alphabet is breaking them by doing whatever was in its interest. At best Alphabet might work with Apple ($200,000 million cash on hand) and Microsoft ($133,000 million cash on hand) to coordinate the way standards were going when that's in its interests.
nicoburns 6y ago
Why do you think non-profits should pay lower salaries than for-profits? It's good for the world if non-profits can compete with corporations as they tend to act more ethically. Also, from a macro-economic point of view, wages are one of the best things a company can spend it's money on.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  If salaries are unlimited, there's no more motivation to act ethically than a for-profit concern has. Instead of taking the fruits of bad behavior as profits, you're just taking them as salaries. Upper management just takes the place of stockholders/investors. Non-profits commonly warp to the point that they're spending virtually no money on their stated mission. edit: It might be even worse if all salaries fall within a narrow range and all of the workers feel as if they are sharing in the success of the company: the economic motivation in that case would be to become a monoculture of revenue-maximizing behavior, where employees with opinions that threaten cashflow would quickly end up isolated and/or expelled. If everyone gets a salary bump after implementing a dark pattern, there will be a lot of people rationalizing the decision.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > Upper management just takes the place of stockholders/investors. Don't non-profits usually have board of trustees that takes the place of stockholders/investors? They ought to be able to stop this behaviour.
    - cguess 6y ago
      And legal obligations to conform to their mission or lose their non-profit status. That keeps most in line.
  - ttymck 6y ago
    How does "paying market value" become "salaries are unlimited"?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
bfrog 6y ago
CEO makes almost $3M if that's any sign
- _red 6y ago
  Precisely. Everyone fails to see what happen to Brendon was a coup: Not by equality-loving do-gooders, but by cynical MBA middle management who saw their opportunity to loot and plunder once the founders were out of the way. Its pretty amazing they've been able to keep their street-cred alive this long.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > cynical MBA middle management Yeah, those cynical MBA guys who just couldn't stomach working for a homophobe... So what if he didn't want his gay employees to be able to marry? /s, obviously.
    - nix23 6y ago
      Ahh the black and white vision i see....
      - calcifer 6y ago
        Yes, LGBT+ rights are a black and white issue. How is that even controversial in 2020?
        nix23 6y ago
        >LGBT+ rights are a black and white issue. That's where you are wrong, i thinks that everyone has the right to marry anyone else (within limits) BUT i also think that everyone has the right to express his believes, and that is why the WORLD and the Peoples are NOT black or White...can you imagine that i met a Christian Gay who was absolute against Gay-Marriages? Yes that exists and i'm ok with his believes, and when i was 16 i got smashed by a Black Neonazi, i was NOT ok with that...funny eh? In fact that was one of my biggest life lessons ever. EDIT: And i don't say you have to accept those believe, but you have to accept the person who has those believes.
jondubois 6y ago
I don't believe in the term 'non-profit'. Behind any large project which receives a lot of money, there are always people who will find ways to profit from it. They will extract as much money from these projects as the government will allow... And it turns out the government will allow a lot.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Sounds like you've never worked for a non-profit. Or at least not for a good non-profit. I have. Your blanket statement, like so many generalizations in life, is wrong.
gridlockd 6y ago
It's a mistaken belief that "non-profit organization" somehow get to spend less on employees. They have to at least pay market rates like everyone else, or people won't show up, but they can also waste money on employees. After all, when there's no profit, what's the profit motive?
- belorn 6y ago
  Which market are we talking about? If we compare the 3 million ceo pay with a few different organizations we get wildly different rates. Compared to EFF CEO that get paid less than 300k, its an 10 times too high. Compared to the linux foundation, Torvald get a bit above 2 million so mozilla is still paying too much. Compared to IBM, and I would guess their CEO get way more than 3 millions. What is the market rate for employees willing to work on free software and advocacy? What is the market rate of non-profit CEOs?
  - techfoolery 6y ago
    What a ridiculous comparison without context. In 2018, EFF's total support & revenue was 17.2M ($15M being public support) [0]. In 2019, the Linux foundation had $96 million in revenue and $71 million in assets [1]. In 2018, Mozilla's revenue was $450M [2]. So how could you possibly compare EFF CEO's pay to Mozilla's? If Mozilla's CEO performs 10% better than the market average CEO, that's significantly more valuable than if the same thing occurs at EFF. The market rate of good CEO's doesn't simply decline because they work for a non-profit. It depends on the context. [0] https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2018/#FinancialsModal https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2018/#FinancialsModa... [1] https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/the-linux-foundation,460503801/ https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/the-linux-foundation,4... [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...
    - belorn 6y ago
      Is revenue * X a good formula to determine market rate, and if so, what should X be?
scarface74 6y ago
Why would anyone at the talent level that I assume are on par with anyone working at the big tech companies accept the salaries of senior software as a service CRUD developer in any major metropolitan area in the US? I’m not in any way throwing shade on CRUD developers, as a developer that’s what I was until a few months ago, but the minute I saw the opportunity to pivot to make more, I did.
- hinkley 6y ago
  You’ve never taken a job for a product you felt should exist in the world, even if the salary wasn’t the best?
  - scarface74 6y ago
    No because I’ve got a family to feed and bills to pay. I don’t fall for the “We are family and we are trying to make the world a better place” bullshit. How did that work out for all the people who accepted less than half of what they could get at other tech companies and still got laid off? While the CxOs are still living pretty.
pyuser583 6y ago
Real estate?

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

According to the article: > Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m with a headcount of about 1,000, or about $286,000 per person, on average. Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. Presumably there are large infrastructure fees for things like Firefox Sync, which by the way just introduced storage limits: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storage-sync-in-firefox-79/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storag... But come on, how about saving some for rainy days?

bzbarsky 6y ago
> Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-returns-and-financial-information https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-... has some of the information you seek; see the various "Audited financial statements" links. The 2019 one will presumably be available once the audit (which starts on the tax filing deadline, so in July this year) is done. > But come on, how about saving some for rainy days? The 2018 financials show ~$520 million in net assets (assets minus liabilities) at the end of the year. The vast majority if this is in "cash" and "investments".

DangerousPie 6y ago

Keep in mind that employee expense != employee salary since there are also taxes, insurances, pension contributions etc to be paid. Plus you need IT, office space, infrastructure.

compsciphd 6y ago
yes, understood, but its a good chunk of it (probably 2/3). and for a non profit to be spending nearly $300K per employee seems problematic. (i.e. average salary is probably close to $200K.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  Why do you think they should be paying significantly less just because they are a non-profit? I'm sure they can pay a bit less because people join because of their values and not just because of the money but I suspect they still have to stay somewhat competitive. I can see people being okay with making 10-20% less working for a company whose values they really like, but 50% less? Doubt it.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    When I worked for a non-profit, the rule was that salaries could be no more than 90% of the general going rate for the same job in the same location (we had offices across the country). I don't know if it was a rule specific to this organization, or if it's an industry-wide rule of thumb. Because of this 90% rule, the company never set any salaries. After you passed the interview and they wanted to hire you, they sent your resume and job description to an outside consulting firm, which would then calculate what your salary would be. The consulting firm contacted you directly and let you know what your compensation would be if you accepted the job, and why. It might be common, but it was very new for me.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      90% of going rate in bay is >>200k for senior dev. Check out levels.fyi

jefftk 6y ago

> 225K per employee That is the cost of these employees to their employer ("fully loaded"). The fully loaded cost is typically about twice the employee's nominal compensation, which would be ~$113k. This is about 60% of entry level comp at a FAANG company and about 35% of mid-career comp. [1] Mozilla employs a lot of people who are willing to work under market rate to do a job they believe in, but I doubt they would be able to get and retain the people they need if they offered substantially less. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Apple,Amazon,Netflix&track=Software%20Engineer https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Apple,Amazon...

compsciphd 6y ago
SV (and to a slightly lesser extent NY) compensation. not worldwide. Having worked in SV for the past few years and now earning a european salary, its no where near same ballpark. and yes, I called it personnel cost vs salary, because I wasn't talking about the fully loaded cost. if people are willing to work at startups in SV for $150-$180K salaries (with significant experience, and I had enough offers from my time in SV to get a good handle on the market) those same people if they wanted to work at mozilla would earn similar amounts. but these are higher end engineers earning the $180K at a startup. mozilla has a significant number (article I just read said about half) of its employees work remotely.
- jefftk 6y ago
  For what it's worth the levels.fyi number is ~10% low for me, and I'm in Boston (US East Coast). I agree that outside the US comp is generally substantially lower. But given Mozilla's history and the people they would want to hire, I think it would be extremely difficult for them to move to a model where they primarily employ developers in cheaper countries.
  - dblohm7 6y ago
    Indeed. Those developers would just be picked up by FAANG instead.
6y ago

stagger87 6y ago

Mozilla provides financial statements as recent as 2018 which will answer some of your questions. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201... See page 5 for expenses. There are several comments here about Mozilla needing to save cash. The balance sheet as of 2018 shows 100+ million in cash assets.

brudgers 6y ago
A quick google says Alphabet has $18,000 million in cash on hand and $101,000 million in marketable securities. But Mozilla was the one documenting standards while Alphabet is breaking them by doing whatever was in its interest. At best Alphabet might work with Apple ($200,000 million cash on hand) and Microsoft ($133,000 million cash on hand) to coordinate the way standards were going when that's in its interests.

nicoburns 6y ago

Why do you think non-profits should pay lower salaries than for-profits? It's good for the world if non-profits can compete with corporations as they tend to act more ethically. Also, from a macro-economic point of view, wages are one of the best things a company can spend it's money on.

pessimizer 6y ago
If salaries are unlimited, there's no more motivation to act ethically than a for-profit concern has. Instead of taking the fruits of bad behavior as profits, you're just taking them as salaries. Upper management just takes the place of stockholders/investors. Non-profits commonly warp to the point that they're spending virtually no money on their stated mission. edit: It might be even worse if all salaries fall within a narrow range and all of the workers feel as if they are sharing in the success of the company: the economic motivation in that case would be to become a monoculture of revenue-maximizing behavior, where employees with opinions that threaten cashflow would quickly end up isolated and/or expelled. If everyone gets a salary bump after implementing a dark pattern, there will be a lot of people rationalizing the decision.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > Upper management just takes the place of stockholders/investors. Don't non-profits usually have board of trustees that takes the place of stockholders/investors? They ought to be able to stop this behaviour.
  - cguess 6y ago
    And legal obligations to conform to their mission or lose their non-profit status. That keeps most in line.
- ttymck 6y ago
  How does "paying market value" become "salaries are unlimited"?
heavyset_go 6y ago

bfrog 6y ago

CEO makes almost $3M if that's any sign

_red 6y ago
Precisely. Everyone fails to see what happen to Brendon was a coup: Not by equality-loving do-gooders, but by cynical MBA middle management who saw their opportunity to loot and plunder once the founders were out of the way. Its pretty amazing they've been able to keep their street-cred alive this long.
- calcifer 6y ago
  > cynical MBA middle management Yeah, those cynical MBA guys who just couldn't stomach working for a homophobe... So what if he didn't want his gay employees to be able to marry? /s, obviously.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Ahh the black and white vision i see....
    - calcifer 6y ago
      Yes, LGBT+ rights are a black and white issue. How is that even controversial in 2020?
      - nix23 6y ago
        >LGBT+ rights are a black and white issue. That's where you are wrong, i thinks that everyone has the right to marry anyone else (within limits) BUT i also think that everyone has the right to express his believes, and that is why the WORLD and the Peoples are NOT black or White...can you imagine that i met a Christian Gay who was absolute against Gay-Marriages? Yes that exists and i'm ok with his believes, and when i was 16 i got smashed by a Black Neonazi, i was NOT ok with that...funny eh? In fact that was one of my biggest life lessons ever. EDIT: And i don't say you have to accept those believe, but you have to accept the person who has those believes.

jondubois 6y ago

I don't believe in the term 'non-profit'. Behind any large project which receives a lot of money, there are always people who will find ways to profit from it. They will extract as much money from these projects as the government will allow... And it turns out the government will allow a lot.

reaperducer 6y ago
Sounds like you've never worked for a non-profit. Or at least not for a good non-profit. I have. Your blanket statement, like so many generalizations in life, is wrong.

gridlockd 6y ago

It's a mistaken belief that "non-profit organization" somehow get to spend less on employees. They have to at least pay market rates like everyone else, or people won't show up, but they can also waste money on employees. After all, when there's no profit, what's the profit motive?

belorn 6y ago
Which market are we talking about? If we compare the 3 million ceo pay with a few different organizations we get wildly different rates. Compared to EFF CEO that get paid less than 300k, its an 10 times too high. Compared to the linux foundation, Torvald get a bit above 2 million so mozilla is still paying too much. Compared to IBM, and I would guess their CEO get way more than 3 millions. What is the market rate for employees willing to work on free software and advocacy? What is the market rate of non-profit CEOs?
- techfoolery 6y ago
  What a ridiculous comparison without context. In 2018, EFF's total support & revenue was 17.2M ($15M being public support) [0]. In 2019, the Linux foundation had $96 million in revenue and $71 million in assets [1]. In 2018, Mozilla's revenue was $450M [2]. So how could you possibly compare EFF CEO's pay to Mozilla's? If Mozilla's CEO performs 10% better than the market average CEO, that's significantly more valuable than if the same thing occurs at EFF. The market rate of good CEO's doesn't simply decline because they work for a non-profit. It depends on the context. [0] https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2018/#FinancialsModal https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2018/#FinancialsModa... [1] https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/the-linux-foundation,460503801/ https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/the-linux-foundation,4... [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...
  - belorn 6y ago
    Is revenue * X a good formula to determine market rate, and if so, what should X be?

scarface74 6y ago

Why would anyone at the talent level that I assume are on par with anyone working at the big tech companies accept the salaries of senior software as a service CRUD developer in any major metropolitan area in the US? I’m not in any way throwing shade on CRUD developers, as a developer that’s what I was until a few months ago, but the minute I saw the opportunity to pivot to make more, I did.

hinkley 6y ago
You’ve never taken a job for a product you felt should exist in the world, even if the salary wasn’t the best?
- scarface74 6y ago
  No because I’ve got a family to feed and bills to pay. I don’t fall for the “We are family and we are trying to make the world a better place” bullshit. How did that work out for all the people who accepted less than half of what they could get at other tech companies and still got laid off? While the CxOs are still living pretty.

pyuser583 6y ago

Real estate?