8 ms·

Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

75 points by Etzos 5y ago

qbasic_forever 5y ago
Not even an acknowledgement or mention of the over 250 people laid off at Mozilla over the last year? Yikes.
pm90 5y ago
I would have trusted this more if she had discussed the layoffs that happened recently. From what I understand, it was an event that shook the engineers that worked there and there was some controversy over how it was handled. Surely it was something that she had to deal with last year. (If I’m wrong about the assessment of the importance of that situation, please comment/downvote away)
caslon 5y ago
> And perhaps the most rewarding. Not surprising, given she got a pay raise after sacking much of Mozilla's engineers amid continued declining relevance.
hu3 5y ago
I thought there was going to be some hint on their plan for independence from Google's annual $400mm injection. Alas not today.
- mnadkvlb 5y ago
  as long as the salary of CEO depends on something, you bet they will do anything to not change it !! It has been downhill long since these bean counters had been shilling against this community
- kgraves 5y ago
  this is the real problem that caused this all of this catastrophe for Mozilla. we are now in Mozilla's downfall.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  No, and given this article I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have an independence plan. It's a shame, really - Firefox is still the best alternative to Chrome IMO, Mozilla just has no idea how to grow or maintain themselves. My biggest worry is that they'll either get acquired by some shady company or just fade into irrelevance.
claudiojulio 5y ago
He did not say anything about mass layoffs and the end of the research department. Who did he profit from the purchase of the pocket? Who made money out? And the tall salaries of it? This CEO is a shame. She is destroying Mozilla.
ByTheBook 5y ago
Firefox market share down 85%, during the same period the executives get a 400% raise. Then 250 employees are fired. It feels like it's just the top brass getting as much money they can before the ship sinks at this point.
- 8458e112e7b2 5y ago
  Not only that, they do have their other priorities figured out also: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Which did you move to? Is their compensation more democratic?
    - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      On my phone, I moved from Firefox to Brave. The overall experience is much better. I don't know about democratic compensation, but I don't regularly hear about Brave making political statements or picking sides, which matters to me. I still get ads blocked, and I experience far fewer issues.
      - anshorei 5y ago
        The only issue I have with Brave (and any other Chromium-based browsers) is the memory consumption, it's definitely worse than Firefox on that front. But at least they're looking for ways to improve their browser like they've done with their ad system, integrated Tor and IPFS.
  - anshorei 5y ago
    I had been dissatisfied with their management for a long time, but that was the point where I switched browsers.
rl3 5y ago
>Above all, this year has reinforced for me that sometimes a deeply held mission requires massive wrenching change in order to be realized. Yeah, like firing your researchers. What good was that Servo thing anyways? Don't need no PhDs when you can write endless self-aggrandizing blog posts while increasing your own pay.
- jwilber 5y ago
  Seriously. What a sad arc Mozilla has taken: from one of the most respected companies to one of the least, and all while boosting the executives pay fourfold. Won’t be sad to see them capsize in their current iteration.
- kgraves 5y ago
  Did you really expect Mozilla to care about Servo? I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    In nearly 2 decades a high 90s percentage of their profit has been search deals for Firefox which is where a lot of the stuff from Servo ended up so I'm not sure it could be construed as unsurprising or useless.
  - rl3 5y ago
    >Did you really expect Mozilla to care about Servo? Yes. Servo represented a major technological differentiation from Chromium-based browsers while remaining competitive if not superior. A triumph in any real sense, not just for Mozilla but for everyone who cared about the future of the web. >I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center. WebRender was part of that experimental toy, and it shipped to production years ago. Cutting costs via way of sacking R&D is a type of short-term thinking that's so devoid of foresight it boggles the mind.
claudiojulio 5y ago
It fired people with high technical capacity who worked for the well-being of the web. People who worked at Rust and Servo. And he still has the courage to celebrate.
- ku-man 5y ago
  Is a she
ku-man 5y ago
Worst CEO I can think of. Never seen such incompetence and greedines combined in one entity.
claudiojulio 5y ago
Some organization or group of people has to fork Firefox or start another browser from scratch that has ethical leaders.
- Igelau 5y ago
  There are forks. Ice Weasel. Pale Moon is fun because it kept the old GUI.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    How can they even maintain a secure browser as they drift from Firefox, much less innovate? Pale Moon in particular doesn't have the best security track record.
losvedir 5y ago
Oof, not even a perfunctory nod to a "very difficult decision to layoff some extremely talented individuals, in order to keep mozilla sustainable in the long term" or something to that effect? Anyway, I get the sense that they're focusing on UX related to browser privacy. Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium and provide a compelling application around it (a la Brave and all those browsers) at this point? Rust and Servo were a kind of "swing for the fences" attempt at meaningful technological innovation in the browser, but these days post layoff I can't see their rendering engine doing anything but falling behind.
- majewsky 5y ago
  > Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium The most likely reason that Google continues to pay them for being the default engine, is that Google wants to be able to point at Firefox like "see, we're not a monopoly, there's this other browser as well". If Firefox were just a Chromium frontend, that argument would be weaker, so I could imagine Google tying their payments to Firefox being technologically separate from Chrome.
martinald 5y ago
Deary me. There is literally not one mention of any concrete product development or launch that I can see in that post. This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy discussions. Firefox is so unpopular these days it seems that I am genuinely surprised when I see someone using it. it's sort of like when Firefox first came out and you'd spot someone else using it, but in reverse.
- XorNot 5y ago
  What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I call BS on Mozilla's commitment to privacy until uBlock Origin (or equivalent) is built into Firefox. Nowadays running a browser without an ad blocker is as irresponsible as running a Windows XP machine without antivirus nor firewall a decade ago. Any browser that doesn't implement countermeasures that have been proven to be effective and are available free of charge under a permissive license should be considered defective or having ulterior motives.
    - sciurus 5y ago
      https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote... has been built-in for nearly two years, and new privacy-protecting features are frequently being added. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on this)
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        This is nowhere near enough though, and it used to be even worse. Basic spyware such as Google Analytics could be blocked by uBlock for ages and yet it's only recently that the built-in Firefox solution started blocking it (by replacing it with a neutered shim). Furthermore, considering uBlock Origin and the underlying filter lists are available under a permissive license, what's the point behind developing & maintaining your own (inferior) implementation?
ufmace 5y ago
This post is more notable for what it doesn't say than what it says. I see a lot of words that don't amount to much besides PR fluff. I don't see much about how to maintain the viability of the only independent browser engine left in today's web market, how to be more financially independent, or the fate of that engine after the substantial layoffs they made.
tofuahdude 5y ago
Has Mozilla ever made any serious attempt at technical contributions to crypto?
- sciurus 5y ago
  What do you mean by crypto? I think we do lots of interesting work in that area. Heck, our CTO was the editor of the RFC for TLS 1.3. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-the-levchin-prize-at-the-2019-real-world-crypto-conference/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-... (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but only ever tangentially on this)
  - KingHenryVIII 5y ago
    Oh yeah.. Ekr... on whose watch Moz couldn't even keep up a functioning cert chain for Addons.
- Igelau 5y ago
  Tangentially related: after they canned Brendan Eich he started Brave.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  FF was also pretty involved with DoH and ESNI (now ECH).
antisthenes 5y ago
Really wish the CEO was concentrating on making a technically excellent browser, instead of writing esoteric and vague virtue signalling posts. But Firefox stopped caring about that once they threw out their addon ecosystem a few years back. Obviously they've been in decline even before then, but it surely didn't help. It's a real shame that the browser that once spearheaded the fight against IE's monopoly position has now almost faded into irrelevance.
mathfailure 5y ago
Mark my words: Bitchell Maker will destroy Firefox and Mozilla won't last long without it.
justtruthing 5y ago
If I were an employee at Mozilla who had any ambition, I would leave and go somewhere else after reading this. This lady has no vision or specific market understanding that can lead to any progress.
kgraves 5y ago
This is what you get when you sell your soul to Google and rely on your competitors funding for years on end. And what does Mozilla of today have to show for it? A self aggrandising, navel-gazing, tone deaf, hollow templated puff piece which will cause the unfortunate inevitable sad downfall of Mozilla. There is almost nothing left of this once innovative company, resorting to present a facade as a cover while ignoring the real issue: Not focusing on making a revenue generating product for over 10 years. Also, repeat extremely tone deaf in Mozilla laying off their top engineers on Rust, Servo and Firefox and not a single mention of it in this post. Looks like all those free years of Google money caught up with them.
- KingHenryVIII 5y ago
  Strong narcissism signals in her post. "It's all about me." The problem with her as CEO is about the incentives. She has literally no incentive to do anything other than continue to use the company as a vehicle for her social concerns. Building great products is a complete afterthought.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
If that was my reflection on anything I’d consider myself a vampire
Kye 5y ago
It's unfortunate that Mozilla's slow collapse under the weight of being hooked on Google ad money is being used as proof for people who are perpetually mad about diversity and accountability. The fault is with management that's afraid to disrupt the cash firehose. Not a mishandled CEO hire 7 years ago or the move from the increasingly untenable XUL.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  It seems very common to blame the money from Google (and Yahoo for a bit) for Mozilla's failures 18 years in but how exactly is it causing this collapse? Mozilla is raking in 3x as much off this deal today as it was during peak Firefox usage share and success around 2011 and any collapse is unrelated to where the search box directs you. Mozilla has been trying profit making products to diversify income so it doesn't have to worry about this money in the future but they've all failed to generate that income. In the meantime they still exist. What could they do by disrupting this cash flow? Or is it just nice to imagine a world where Mozilla found a way to become the next trillion dollar tech company that could spend tens of billions on its browser per year and we need something to blame other than it being hard to do so as the reason it hasn't?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
kovac 5y ago
Can't we just get together and build an opensource browser? Considering how we are building very complex things without these executives, middle managers and all the corporate bs. It could be our gift to the next generation of engineers like we inherited Linux and give them a fighting chance.
- john-aj 5y ago
  Yeah, it is pretty incredible how there can be multiple free/open-source operating system kernels, not controlled by corporations, but hardly a single web browser engine like that. Are web browsers really that complex?
the_duke 5y ago
I was prepared to take a somewhat neutral stance on the post despite the negativity in other comments. It's a CEO reflection post, what should you expect? But this is indeed completely empty PR fluff. Vague rambling about data. Lot's of justification for how awesome she is. No mention of of an event that shook the company to it's core - laying off a quarter of employees. Not even a hint of any vision, prospects for a future direction or how to save Mozilla from impending doom. Why even write a post like this if you have nothing to say? I do believe Mozilla will be fine for while. Google will keep paying well as a hedge against further anti trust concerns. To be fair, Mozilla is in a tough position that can't be easily fixed. But this doesn't inspire confidence that they have the right leadership to get there.
Mandatum 5y ago
I truly hope Mozilla survives the next decade. They need leadership with opinionated direction, and I don't think this is it. Right now they're looking to be lead without a good funding avenue.
kgarten 5y ago
Don’t understand the negative comments about Firefox. I use it everyday and even though I share some of the criticism, compared to other browsers for me it’s the best compromise so far. Can’t use chrome or edge as Google and Microsoft showed again and again that they don’t value the end users. Safari (especially mobile safari) is holding back the web technology adaption. Firefox (since they incorporated some rust code) is fast and awesome and Mozilla is the least evil of the bunch. The accessibility and privacy features are the best out there … Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755252 If you have other browser recommendations. Happy to hear them. Currently I use Firefox for most of my browsing, sometimes brave, opera in case I need to check social media websites (as a container). Huge fan of qutebrowser and nyxt (keyboardbased). Thanks to Mozilla folks for keeping up the great work.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  That's all the browser engines you get that can load most pages today so if one is out for being too far behind what's implemented and another is out for personal reasons that leaves you with Firefox. People not using Firefox anymore (95% on desktop and 99% on mobile) just have different personal reasons that outrank "I trust the organization behind it values me" when selecting their browser. As far as fun tech things Flow looks like it could be interesting but they aren't interested in being your day to day browser (yet at least) and it's still early in it's life. For "chromium browsers that aren't a megacorp" Brave and Vivaldi are oft talked about. I don't really see all the appeal of Brave myself but it does have some decent customization options while still being able to be typical Chromium. Vivaldi is the old Opera spirit of "your browser can be a pane window with a web page in it or modern emacs" but the way it is implemented causes it to become a bit slower than other Chromium browsers. Ungoogled chromium is also a popular thing, basically Chromium minus some stuff. For another fun tech thing "wexond" is a browser built in... Electron :). It used to have some whacky ideas but these days it's turning into more of a "chrome built out of chrome's guts". It has (and still is) been a work in progress and I'm not sure it has a fully reliable security policy for use day to day but it's still interesting to check out for fun if that's your thing https://github.com/wexond/browser-base/releases/tag/v5.2.0 https://github.com/wexond/browser-base/releases/tag/v5.2.0 notably it's the only browser I've seen with a built in single line tabs/url/extensions/menu/window-buttons gui option.
wejick 5y ago
Many people always discuss how the CEO is over paid for multimillion dollars. Do we have benchmark on the CEO benefit from the same scale of company? I'm just thinking whether it's a norm to pay that much to get good talent to lead the corp. (I'm not saying she is good or not)
- ordx 5y ago
  What scale? They lost most of their market share and they have a pretty low headcount. Wikipedia says they have around 750 people, but after the most recent layoff it's probably closer to 500. For comparison, Lime (scooter company) has about the same number of people. I think it's fair to compare Mozilla to a medium-sized non-profit, which would put CEO's salary in the 500k range.
crowf 5y ago
Well, he's only CEO because the previous one decided to donate some of his own money in private to a mainstream political campaign. I guess the most important thing is how woke this CEO is.
emerged 5y ago
I literally in my most honest sense of what is good and real in this world, don’t believe you could be the CEO of Mozilla in 2021 and have a decent and genuine, moral and ethical soul. Unless you’re busy day to day removing people from the company in order to synchronize it’s supposed purpose with reality.
IceWreck 5y ago
Yeah, she fired the security threat team, the servo team, the rust team, the mdn team and more but more than doubled her own salary, all while Firefox usage is declining. This is what happens when lawyers are in charge of tech.

75 points by Etzos 5y ago

Not even an acknowledgement or mention of the over 250 people laid off at Mozilla over the last year? Yikes.

pm90 5y ago

I would have trusted this more if she had discussed the layoffs that happened recently. From what I understand, it was an event that shook the engineers that worked there and there was some controversy over how it was handled. Surely it was something that she had to deal with last year. (If I’m wrong about the assessment of the importance of that situation, please comment/downvote away)

caslon 5y ago

> And perhaps the most rewarding. Not surprising, given she got a pay raise after sacking much of Mozilla's engineers amid continued declining relevance.

hu3 5y ago

I thought there was going to be some hint on their plan for independence from Google's annual $400mm injection. Alas not today.

mnadkvlb 5y ago
as long as the salary of CEO depends on something, you bet they will do anything to not change it !! It has been downhill long since these bean counters had been shilling against this community
kgraves 5y ago
this is the real problem that caused this all of this catastrophe for Mozilla. we are now in Mozilla's downfall.
kmeisthax 5y ago
No, and given this article I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have an independence plan. It's a shame, really - Firefox is still the best alternative to Chrome IMO, Mozilla just has no idea how to grow or maintain themselves. My biggest worry is that they'll either get acquired by some shady company or just fade into irrelevance.

claudiojulio 5y ago

He did not say anything about mass layoffs and the end of the research department. Who did he profit from the purchase of the pocket? Who made money out? And the tall salaries of it? This CEO is a shame. She is destroying Mozilla.

ByTheBook 5y ago

Firefox market share down 85%, during the same period the executives get a 400% raise. Then 250 employees are fired. It feels like it's just the top brass getting as much money they can before the ship sinks at this point.

8458e112e7b2 5y ago
Not only that, they do have their other priorities figured out also: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Which did you move to? Is their compensation more democratic?
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    On my phone, I moved from Firefox to Brave. The overall experience is much better. I don't know about democratic compensation, but I don't regularly hear about Brave making political statements or picking sides, which matters to me. I still get ads blocked, and I experience far fewer issues.
    - anshorei 5y ago
      The only issue I have with Brave (and any other Chromium-based browsers) is the memory consumption, it's definitely worse than Firefox on that front. But at least they're looking for ways to improve their browser like they've done with their ad system, integrated Tor and IPFS.
- anshorei 5y ago
  I had been dissatisfied with their management for a long time, but that was the point where I switched browsers.

rl3 5y ago

>Above all, this year has reinforced for me that sometimes a deeply held mission requires massive wrenching change in order to be realized. Yeah, like firing your researchers. What good was that Servo thing anyways? Don't need no PhDs when you can write endless self-aggrandizing blog posts while increasing your own pay.

jwilber 5y ago
Seriously. What a sad arc Mozilla has taken: from one of the most respected companies to one of the least, and all while boosting the executives pay fourfold. Won’t be sad to see them capsize in their current iteration.
kgraves 5y ago
Did you really expect Mozilla to care about Servo? I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  In nearly 2 decades a high 90s percentage of their profit has been search deals for Firefox which is where a lot of the stuff from Servo ended up so I'm not sure it could be construed as unsurprising or useless.
- rl3 5y ago
  >Did you really expect Mozilla to care about Servo? Yes. Servo represented a major technological differentiation from Chromium-based browsers while remaining competitive if not superior. A triumph in any real sense, not just for Mozilla but for everyone who cared about the future of the web. >I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center. WebRender was part of that experimental toy, and it shipped to production years ago. Cutting costs via way of sacking R&D is a type of short-term thinking that's so devoid of foresight it boggles the mind.

claudiojulio 5y ago

It fired people with high technical capacity who worked for the well-being of the web. People who worked at Rust and Servo. And he still has the courage to celebrate.

ku-man 5y ago
Is a she

ku-man 5y ago

Worst CEO I can think of. Never seen such incompetence and greedines combined in one entity.

claudiojulio 5y ago

Some organization or group of people has to fork Firefox or start another browser from scratch that has ethical leaders.

Igelau 5y ago
There are forks. Ice Weasel. Pale Moon is fun because it kept the old GUI.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  How can they even maintain a secure browser as they drift from Firefox, much less innovate? Pale Moon in particular doesn't have the best security track record.

losvedir 5y ago

Oof, not even a perfunctory nod to a "very difficult decision to layoff some extremely talented individuals, in order to keep mozilla sustainable in the long term" or something to that effect? Anyway, I get the sense that they're focusing on UX related to browser privacy. Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium and provide a compelling application around it (a la Brave and all those browsers) at this point? Rust and Servo were a kind of "swing for the fences" attempt at meaningful technological innovation in the browser, but these days post layoff I can't see their rendering engine doing anything but falling behind.

majewsky 5y ago
> Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium The most likely reason that Google continues to pay them for being the default engine, is that Google wants to be able to point at Firefox like "see, we're not a monopoly, there's this other browser as well". If Firefox were just a Chromium frontend, that argument would be weaker, so I could imagine Google tying their payments to Firefox being technologically separate from Chrome.

martinald 5y ago

Deary me. There is literally not one mention of any concrete product development or launch that I can see in that post. This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy discussions. Firefox is so unpopular these days it seems that I am genuinely surprised when I see someone using it. it's sort of like when Firefox first came out and you'd spot someone else using it, but in reverse.

XorNot 5y ago
What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I call BS on Mozilla's commitment to privacy until uBlock Origin (or equivalent) is built into Firefox. Nowadays running a browser without an ad blocker is as irresponsible as running a Windows XP machine without antivirus nor firewall a decade ago. Any browser that doesn't implement countermeasures that have been proven to be effective and are available free of charge under a permissive license should be considered defective or having ulterior motives.
  - sciurus 5y ago
    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote... has been built-in for nearly two years, and new privacy-protecting features are frequently being added. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on this)
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      This is nowhere near enough though, and it used to be even worse. Basic spyware such as Google Analytics could be blocked by uBlock for ages and yet it's only recently that the built-in Firefox solution started blocking it (by replacing it with a neutered shim). Furthermore, considering uBlock Origin and the underlying filter lists are available under a permissive license, what's the point behind developing & maintaining your own (inferior) implementation?

ufmace 5y ago

This post is more notable for what it doesn't say than what it says. I see a lot of words that don't amount to much besides PR fluff. I don't see much about how to maintain the viability of the only independent browser engine left in today's web market, how to be more financially independent, or the fate of that engine after the substantial layoffs they made.

tofuahdude 5y ago

Has Mozilla ever made any serious attempt at technical contributions to crypto?

sciurus 5y ago
What do you mean by crypto? I think we do lots of interesting work in that area. Heck, our CTO was the editor of the RFC for TLS 1.3. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-the-levchin-prize-at-the-2019-real-world-crypto-conference/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-... (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but only ever tangentially on this)
- KingHenryVIII 5y ago
  Oh yeah.. Ekr... on whose watch Moz couldn't even keep up a functioning cert chain for Addons.
Igelau 5y ago
Tangentially related: after they canned Brendan Eich he started Brave.
zamadatix 5y ago
FF was also pretty involved with DoH and ESNI (now ECH).

antisthenes 5y ago

Really wish the CEO was concentrating on making a technically excellent browser, instead of writing esoteric and vague virtue signalling posts. But Firefox stopped caring about that once they threw out their addon ecosystem a few years back. Obviously they've been in decline even before then, but it surely didn't help. It's a real shame that the browser that once spearheaded the fight against IE's monopoly position has now almost faded into irrelevance.

mathfailure 5y ago

Mark my words: Bitchell Maker will destroy Firefox and Mozilla won't last long without it.

justtruthing 5y ago

If I were an employee at Mozilla who had any ambition, I would leave and go somewhere else after reading this. This lady has no vision or specific market understanding that can lead to any progress.

kgraves 5y ago

This is what you get when you sell your soul to Google and rely on your competitors funding for years on end. And what does Mozilla of today have to show for it? A self aggrandising, navel-gazing, tone deaf, hollow templated puff piece which will cause the unfortunate inevitable sad downfall of Mozilla. There is almost nothing left of this once innovative company, resorting to present a facade as a cover while ignoring the real issue: Not focusing on making a revenue generating product for over 10 years. Also, repeat extremely tone deaf in Mozilla laying off their top engineers on Rust, Servo and Firefox and not a single mention of it in this post. Looks like all those free years of Google money caught up with them.

KingHenryVIII 5y ago
Strong narcissism signals in her post. "It's all about me." The problem with her as CEO is about the incentives. She has literally no incentive to do anything other than continue to use the company as a vehicle for her social concerns. Building great products is a complete afterthought.

AzzieElbab 5y ago

If that was my reflection on anything I’d consider myself a vampire

Kye 5y ago

It's unfortunate that Mozilla's slow collapse under the weight of being hooked on Google ad money is being used as proof for people who are perpetually mad about diversity and accountability. The fault is with management that's afraid to disrupt the cash firehose. Not a mishandled CEO hire 7 years ago or the move from the increasingly untenable XUL.

zamadatix 5y ago
It seems very common to blame the money from Google (and Yahoo for a bit) for Mozilla's failures 18 years in but how exactly is it causing this collapse? Mozilla is raking in 3x as much off this deal today as it was during peak Firefox usage share and success around 2011 and any collapse is unrelated to where the search box directs you. Mozilla has been trying profit making products to diversify income so it doesn't have to worry about this money in the future but they've all failed to generate that income. In the meantime they still exist. What could they do by disrupting this cash flow? Or is it just nice to imagine a world where Mozilla found a way to become the next trillion dollar tech company that could spend tens of billions on its browser per year and we need something to blame other than it being hard to do so as the reason it hasn't?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

kovac 5y ago

Can't we just get together and build an opensource browser? Considering how we are building very complex things without these executives, middle managers and all the corporate bs. It could be our gift to the next generation of engineers like we inherited Linux and give them a fighting chance.

john-aj 5y ago
Yeah, it is pretty incredible how there can be multiple free/open-source operating system kernels, not controlled by corporations, but hardly a single web browser engine like that. Are web browsers really that complex?

the_duke 5y ago

I was prepared to take a somewhat neutral stance on the post despite the negativity in other comments. It's a CEO reflection post, what should you expect? But this is indeed completely empty PR fluff. Vague rambling about data. Lot's of justification for how awesome she is. No mention of of an event that shook the company to it's core - laying off a quarter of employees. Not even a hint of any vision, prospects for a future direction or how to save Mozilla from impending doom. Why even write a post like this if you have nothing to say? I do believe Mozilla will be fine for while. Google will keep paying well as a hedge against further anti trust concerns. To be fair, Mozilla is in a tough position that can't be easily fixed. But this doesn't inspire confidence that they have the right leadership to get there.

Mandatum 5y ago

I truly hope Mozilla survives the next decade. They need leadership with opinionated direction, and I don't think this is it. Right now they're looking to be lead without a good funding avenue.

kgarten 5y ago

Don’t understand the negative comments about Firefox. I use it everyday and even though I share some of the criticism, compared to other browsers for me it’s the best compromise so far. Can’t use chrome or edge as Google and Microsoft showed again and again that they don’t value the end users. Safari (especially mobile safari) is holding back the web technology adaption. Firefox (since they incorporated some rust code) is fast and awesome and Mozilla is the least evil of the bunch. The accessibility and privacy features are the best out there … Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755252 If you have other browser recommendations. Happy to hear them. Currently I use Firefox for most of my browsing, sometimes brave, opera in case I need to check social media websites (as a container). Huge fan of qutebrowser and nyxt (keyboardbased). Thanks to Mozilla folks for keeping up the great work.

zamadatix 5y ago
That's all the browser engines you get that can load most pages today so if one is out for being too far behind what's implemented and another is out for personal reasons that leaves you with Firefox. People not using Firefox anymore (95% on desktop and 99% on mobile) just have different personal reasons that outrank "I trust the organization behind it values me" when selecting their browser. As far as fun tech things Flow looks like it could be interesting but they aren't interested in being your day to day browser (yet at least) and it's still early in it's life. For "chromium browsers that aren't a megacorp" Brave and Vivaldi are oft talked about. I don't really see all the appeal of Brave myself but it does have some decent customization options while still being able to be typical Chromium. Vivaldi is the old Opera spirit of "your browser can be a pane window with a web page in it or modern emacs" but the way it is implemented causes it to become a bit slower than other Chromium browsers. Ungoogled chromium is also a popular thing, basically Chromium minus some stuff. For another fun tech thing "wexond" is a browser built in... Electron :). It used to have some whacky ideas but these days it's turning into more of a "chrome built out of chrome's guts". It has (and still is) been a work in progress and I'm not sure it has a fully reliable security policy for use day to day but it's still interesting to check out for fun if that's your thing https://github.com/wexond/browser-base/releases/tag/v5.2.0 https://github.com/wexond/browser-base/releases/tag/v5.2.0 notably it's the only browser I've seen with a built in single line tabs/url/extensions/menu/window-buttons gui option.

wejick 5y ago

Many people always discuss how the CEO is over paid for multimillion dollars. Do we have benchmark on the CEO benefit from the same scale of company? I'm just thinking whether it's a norm to pay that much to get good talent to lead the corp. (I'm not saying she is good or not)

ordx 5y ago
What scale? They lost most of their market share and they have a pretty low headcount. Wikipedia says they have around 750 people, but after the most recent layoff it's probably closer to 500. For comparison, Lime (scooter company) has about the same number of people. I think it's fair to compare Mozilla to a medium-sized non-profit, which would put CEO's salary in the 500k range.

crowf 5y ago

Well, he's only CEO because the previous one decided to donate some of his own money in private to a mainstream political campaign. I guess the most important thing is how woke this CEO is.

emerged 5y ago

I literally in my most honest sense of what is good and real in this world, don’t believe you could be the CEO of Mozilla in 2021 and have a decent and genuine, moral and ethical soul. Unless you’re busy day to day removing people from the company in order to synchronize it’s supposed purpose with reality.

IceWreck 5y ago

Yeah, she fired the security threat team, the servo team, the rust team, the mdn team and more but more than doubled her own salary, all while Firefox usage is declining. This is what happens when lawyers are in charge of tech.