3 ms·

> Mozilla doesn’t need donations. The $450 million it gets from Google each year is enough for a browser. It really isn’t when you factor in Gecko and SpiderMo

> Mozilla doesn’t need donations. The $450 million it gets from Google each year is enough for a browser. It really isn’t when you factor in Gecko and SpiderMonkey. cue the armchair quarterbacks who think you can do all of this with 20 people

someotherperson 5y ago
$450 million is 2,250 people on $200,000 salaries. The pay rise the CEO took over the last five years is equal to an additional 12 engineers receiving the above salary.
- dblohm7 5y ago
  That’s a gross oversimplification of an org’s budgetary needs, even by back-of-the-napkin standards.
  - someotherperson 5y ago
    No, it’s not a gross oversimplification at all. Let’s stop pretending that the company needs more money. I specifically picked 2,250 engineers because that appears to be more than double what Mozilla currently has. The entire Mozilla payroll is about $280 million with the remaining $170 million (!!) being spent on miscellaneous junk. Let’s stop apologising for mismanagement and thinking throwing more money at Mozilla is going to fix its problems.
    - dblohm7 5y ago
      Oh come on, let’s not pretend that the only expenses a software company has are developer salaries. Especially for something like a browser that has significant security requirements. Do you have any idea how many tests are run across all platforms for every commit? [1] The CI bill alone is huge. [1] https://treeherder.Mozilla.org https://treeherder.Mozilla.org
    - 16bytes 5y ago
      A better estimate of fully loaded cost is $350K. That's still a boatload of people if you take your simple estimate, but companies don't spend 100% of revenue on people. Mozilla foundation has about 650 people which gives it a revenue per employee of around 600K, which is less than most SV companies. The overall corporate spending looks very reasonable. You can look at their non-profit report: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-2019-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... From their report, their fully loaded cost is around $280K/FTE which is reasonable for anywhere in SF/SV.

someotherperson 5y ago

$450 million is 2,250 people on $200,000 salaries. The pay rise the CEO took over the last five years is equal to an additional 12 engineers receiving the above salary.

dblohm7 5y ago
That’s a gross oversimplification of an org’s budgetary needs, even by back-of-the-napkin standards.
- someotherperson 5y ago
  No, it’s not a gross oversimplification at all. Let’s stop pretending that the company needs more money. I specifically picked 2,250 engineers because that appears to be more than double what Mozilla currently has. The entire Mozilla payroll is about $280 million with the remaining $170 million (!!) being spent on miscellaneous junk. Let’s stop apologising for mismanagement and thinking throwing more money at Mozilla is going to fix its problems.
  - dblohm7 5y ago
    Oh come on, let’s not pretend that the only expenses a software company has are developer salaries. Especially for something like a browser that has significant security requirements. Do you have any idea how many tests are run across all platforms for every commit? [1] The CI bill alone is huge. [1] https://treeherder.Mozilla.org https://treeherder.Mozilla.org
  - 16bytes 5y ago
    A better estimate of fully loaded cost is $350K. That's still a boatload of people if you take your simple estimate, but companies don't spend 100% of revenue on people. Mozilla foundation has about 650 people which gives it a revenue per employee of around 600K, which is less than most SV companies. The overall corporate spending looks very reasonable. You can look at their non-profit report: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-2019-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... From their report, their fully loaded cost is around $280K/FTE which is reasonable for anywhere in SF/SV.