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The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the
by sebmellen 5y ago
The arrogance is hard to believe.
> In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
- CoolGuySteve 5y agoFuck, I'll do it for a mere million dollars. The market has spoken. I can't do much worse than losing 85% market share.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jensson 5y agoDo nonprofits really care about the market? Not sure how that works, what would it take to replace her if she doesn't want to be replaced?
- jonassalen 5y agoThe professionals that work in those nonprofits do. If you want a capable manager or SEO, you need to pay a correct market price.
- mitchdoogle 5y agoMarket rates don't matter all that much if the person setting them has a significant influence on what they are. It's like a child determining their allowance based on which one of their friends was able to grab the most money from their mom's purse.
- selfhoster11 5y agoIf I cared badly enough about the mission and it wasn't a for-profit enterprise, I'd take the pay cut. The non-monetary part of my compensation (the feel-good factor and the actual good done in the world that I can't get in a for-profit enterprise) would more than make up for it, at least for a couple of years.
- makx 5y agoYou'd think that there are even qualified people who would do it for (almost) free, just for the chance of building a resume...
- GekkePrutser 5y agoAlmost everyone in business has an MBA so that qualification is pretty easy to get. The passion they need is a lot harder.
- jonassalen 5y agoAs a professional that gets offers like this ("it will be good for your portfolio") I hate this comment. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
- selfhoster11 5y agoThat's because you're looking at this with your "professional" hat on. If your look at this with your "philanthropist" hat on, the optics are suddenly very different.
- sirwhinesalot 5y agoApparently you get monkeys if you pay millions too...
- mitchdoogle 5y agoWell it's the market rate, right?
- WJW 5y agoThere's a weird type of logic going on where almost everyone who would be willing to do it for almost free is probably not qualified for the job. Would you really stake the future of your foundation on someone who still needs to build their resume?
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
- kelnos 5y agoHer logic assumes that another company would actually pay her that much. Given how disastrous her tenure has been to Firefox's user base, I'm skeptical that another company would even want her as CEO, let alone pay her this much.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThere's supply and demand here. Any replacement CEO is going to be thinking, I'm trying to beat Google, Apple and Microsoft on a tiny budget and if I dont succeed people will blame me personally for it all, complain about me online and claim that no one else should employ me. That's a gamble for anyone coming in who has better options and so attacks on the CEO for being a failure only help to create a moat and increase her bargaining power.
- Ourgon 5y agoThe replacement "CEO" should be someone like Linus Torvalds, someone who is not in it for the money but for the satisfaction of crushing his opponents where it matters: mind share among developers followed by market share. Someone who does not try to go with the flow of fake virtue and bloated CxO remuneration. Someone real. Someone who has the testicular fortitude to say ¨NO" to the social justice crowd. Maybe Brendan Eich can come back? Do a Steve Jobs, take back the project and make it into what it was meant to be, primus inter pares among browsers.
- Azsy 5y agoI'm extremely curious what you think her job is and what her job actually is. I don't know either one. But I must be waaaaaay of base if 2m+ is a reasonable salary for the workload and responsibility. And if we want to get conspiratorial, If she thinks her main job is getting the most money out of the Google deal, then Google would be more than happy to pretend shes doing great in the negotiations and pay 5m extra. The sooner Mozilla loses its dev culture and talent the more power Google has.
- mrinfinite 5y agoomg, i am considering deleting firefox now. terrible.
- behringer 5y agoif you think thars bad, just wait til you hear how google ceo is paid.
- prmoustache 5y agoSounds stupid, you don't pay her salary by using firefox.
- artdigital 5y agoYou forgot the part that comes after: > By 2020, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic. Yikes, makes me also consider just switching off it again
- hammyhavoc 5y agoWhere would we go though? It's bordering on Chromium-derivative or bust at this point.
- artdigital 5y agoSafari or Brave Brave is the most non-google chromium variant, kind of like a Firefox based on chromium, and safari is still a good browser on Mac
- hammyhavoc 5y agoFor me, the crypto wallet built into Brave puts me off. I want my browser to be a browser, nothing more than that. Other than Brave, the option is Vivaldi, but that's not completely open source, and the devs refuse to completely open source it, making me doubt the trustworthiness of it.
- artdigital 5y agoYou can turn the crypto and ads stuff off, that's what I do too. The other built in functionality like IPFS, AdBlocker and Tor make up a nice package I don't trust Vivaldi either to be honest
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI would have zero problems with her salary if firefox wasn't a sinking ship and was actually increasing market share (or at least holding on to it). I continue to use it, as it's a great product, but I wonder how long before google cuts off the spigot of money.
- ashwagary 5y agoAtleast 200% of that payrise makes sense due to inflation. Value of the dollar halved during the past ~10 years.
- Throwawayaerlei 5y agoUnless I calculated wrong 19% in the past 10 years. According to the https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm $100 in January 2012 has the buying power of $124.04 last month.
- ashwagary 5y agoYou seem to imply central bankers are honest and CPI is accurate. This is absolutely not the case and you should update your views. It used to be a 50% haircut every ~10 years, now its closer to a 50% haircut every ~5 years.
- mrtranscendence 5y agoBut the CPI is fairly accurate, and those who calculate it are doing their best with a problem that doesn't have one easy to compute answer. Regardless, I know just from personal experience that your numbers are way off. My grocery bills haven't gone up 50 to 100% since 2012; what I spend on clothes and software and veterinary visits hasn't gone up 50 to 100% either. The only thing that I might buy that contradicts this is a GPU, but that's an exception (and other computer hardware hasn't risen in price that much). Also: as part of my job I can check prices in a major sector of the retail industry as far back as 2015, and I absolutely do not see such major inflation as you're arguing. Inflation is bad right now, but hasn't been that way for several decades.
- ashwagary 5y ago>But the CPI is fairly accurate, and those who calculate it are doing their best Completely disagree. >Also: as part of my job I can check prices in a major sector of the retail industry That is probably the problem. >clothes and software Clothes = imported from countries we export inflation to. Software = ~0 cost to duplicate. Inflation doesnt hit the whole population equally or at the same time, and it doesnt hit all products uniformly. The items/services we all want/need, that are scarce, and can't be imported from our foreign "slaves", are where you will find it concentrated. Healthcare, housing, university, etc... My earlier observation 50%/10y, 50%/5y is closer to reality for the vast majority of the population. How much did housing go up in price in the last 10-12 years (300%? 400%?)? Remember when house prices went up 20-30% in a 6 month period of 2021? Not inflation?
- victor106 5y agofrom her Wikipedia page > Baker was trained as a lawyer. She coordinates business and policy issues. I don't know of any lawyers running a successful tech company.
- Kye 5y agoThey usually run for office instead.
- smt88 5y ago...which makes sense. If someone is going to write, interpret, or enforce laws, you want them to have a deep understanding of the law.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoI don't know of any lawyers running a successful country either :) PS: By success I don't just mean economic...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mcv 5y ago> When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." Then go work somewhere else! If you can make 5 times as much somewhere else, and that's all you care about, quit Mozilla and go work somewhere else. Her attitude and greed are unbelievably infuriating.
- jacquesm 5y agoAssuming she would be in line for a competitive role, which I highly doubt with the current track record.
- BossingAround 5y agoI don't think this has anything to do with arrogance, this is simply the market value speaking. Ginni Rometty did something similar with IBM; while being a terrible CEO ("IBM was the worst-performing large-cap tech stock during Rometty's tenure, dropping 24%" [1]), she got a whopping $20M per year [2] during her first 7 years of being a CEO, and she got $20M golden parachute [3] upon leaving the shell of an IBM. This is not arrogance. This is simply the pay of a CEO, regardless of their performance. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/ibm-was-worst-performing-large-cap-tech-stock-during-romettys-tenure.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/ibm-was-worst-performing-lar... [2] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-31/ginni-romettys-tarnished-record-ibm https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-31/ginni-rome... [3] https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/ibm-ginni-rometty-20m-335402 https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/ibm-ginni-rometty-20m-33...
- II2II 5y agoMozilla is not IBM. They may compete against the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple, yet they are not those companies either. The scope of their business interests are minuscule in comparison. Heck, their share of the markets that they do compete with those companies in pales in comparison. So yes, there is an element of arrogance in her claim.
- BossingAround 5y agoMozilla is not IBM; Rometti got 20 mil while the Mozilla CEO got 2 mil. CEO to CEO, different markets, different rates, the same principle applies.
- lenkite 5y agoIBM revenue was $54.1 billion in 2021. Mozilla around ~0.5 billion - a ratio of ~100. Thus, Mozilla CEO should get only 0.2 million not 2 million.
- BossingAround 5y agoWell, I'd say not everything is linear. All I'm saying is, this is nowhere near as arrogant as the OP made it sound. The difference between 0.2 million and 2 million for a board of directors is literally a rounding error.
- snird 5y agoAnd she raised her pay while firing essential engineers: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313658-mozilla-fires-250-employees-25-percent-of-existing-workforce https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313658-mozilla-fires-2... I'm a firefox user for over 10 years. I think I'm now convinced there is no future, I'll have to start to adapt to another browser now. I'll give Vivaldi a try.
- StillBored 5y agoThat was the layoff where they got rid of all the rust people? Its going to sound harsh, but they are loosing market share to browsers that didn't have to invent a new language to write a browser in. So, getting rid of those people was probably a positive impact for firefox since they were mostly just yak shaving instead of actually improving the end product. The users don't care if you wrote it in C++ or fortran as long as it performs well, doesn't eat all their ram, or create giant backdoors. Letting "the lets rewrite our core product in $COOL_TECH_OF_MONTH" people run a product is a sure sign of something that will fail if its not already. Lets invent our own computer language to do it is even worse.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThe main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money. I agree they probably didn't need to invent rust: that was an happy accident, the kind of things that happen when you have really smart people around. If they had a money making accident we would be talking about something else, but I guess they would need a different type of culture for that to happen. This is not how you run a company and it shows. It's impressive Mozilla is still around if you ask me - but I suspect it has to do with Google, M$ needing someone easily controllable to keep the anti monopoly government people away from browsers.
- account42 5y ago> The main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money. Firefox is owned by the Mozilla foundation, the corp is only there to help develop it since having developers work directly for the foundation is apparently complicated. Non-profit foundations don't need to find ways to make money with their core product and they should not try to - instead they can seek funding elsewhere, for example from donations and government grants.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
- fxtentacle 5y ago"a fish rots from the head"
- fxtentacle 5y agoIt might be that they need to pay that amount to attract top CEO talent. But then again, I'm not sure if Mozilla should be large enough to need a top CEO. I mean effectively reducing it to just the Firefox team would be fine with me. And then it's maybe 80 people to manage in total. So that's one regular office building and you're done. It doesn't sound like the CEO will be critical for anything in this company.