8 ms·

I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I've been working at Mozilla since its inception. And eventually left the company 2 years ago. And I'm so mad. M

I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I've been working at Mozilla since its inception. And eventually left the company 2 years ago. And I'm so mad. Mozilla is not the Mozilla that was created almost 20 years ago. It's not the same people there. After the Firefox 4 nightmare, they started hiring product managers from big corp. We started seeing some ex-twitter, ex-microsoft, ex-amazon joining the company. People with more professional ambitions. We didn't know how to react to Google Chrome and the smartphone revolution. We all trusted the upper management, but upper management was slowly becoming non-mozillians. And an absurd mechanic started: original engineer were busy writing difficult code. upper-management was morphing into some BS silicon valley gang. New young engineers were hired, and they thought the core of Mozilla values lied in these upper-management people. And slowly the original engineers started leaving, leaving behind this BS people with these young engineers. Marketing became "how to show we're good people". LGBT, women right, etc etc. Who gives a shit about Mozilla standing for these values? It's all marketing. The real only value, the manifesto, burnt a long time ago. Don't get me wrong, LGBT and such are important, but that's not the job of Mozilla. The last blow: getting rid of Brendan. Maybe he didn't have the same values employees had about LGBT, but fuck this. People in the silicon valley *love* being offended. And that thing was just too good of a fight for them. Brendan was the last bastion standing. I'm so so so mad. Mitchell trusted the wrong people. We were seeing all these ambitious silicon-valley-puppets taking the position of PM, director, etc etc… Got damn, all we wanted is to make Gecko amazing, light, in a lightweight simple browser. But all these stupid features that were landing on our head… I'm so mad… Rant over.

fabrice_d 5y ago
Don't you think Mitchell is a big part of the problem? She controls both MoCo and MoFo. She is a good motivational speaker but a terrible operational exec.
- ex_mozilla 5y ago
  Hi Fabrice :) Yeah… of course. The whole thing was a mess…
Dylan16807 5y ago
Why the "maybe"?
krmboya 5y ago
Thanks for the insider viewpoint. Something felt really wrong about how Brendan Eich was ousted. I now understand it was the first instance of the cancel culture I witnessed.
- wyclif 5y ago
  Brendan getting ousted was the beginning of the end. A brilliant engineer cancelled for politically correct reasons that had nothing to do with engineering or technology. Mozilla destroyed the company through HR.
rlv-dan 5y ago
> After the Firefox 4 nightmare I would love to hear more about this
- ex_mozilla 5y ago
  Firefox 4 was supposed to be our response to Google Chrome. We were feature driven. "Firefox 4 will be released with features A, B and C". And it took us a stupid amount of time to get there. Firefox 4 was supposed to be great. But no devtools, no multiprocess … compared to Chrome it was bad. So much work and stress went into this release, it took us a loooong time, people were exhausted, and the result was mediocre. Electrolysis was hard. Hardware acceleration challenging. And all these new HTML5 features… gosh. But we had to get much much better, because the Google's engineer were killing it. The race was hard. And we also needed a Firefox-on-mobile plan. With less engineers, and a much smaller budget. Important people left after Firefox 4. John Lilly left. And Mozilla hired product managers and such. More marketing etc etc. Things changed. We moved to a new version of Firefox every 6 weeks (that was a good move though). We basically went from the "savior of the internet" to "google chrome followers".
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
A good time to remind everyone that when you donate to "Mozilla", you're donating to the Mozilla Foundation, which is the social justice part, not the Mozilla Corporation, which is the browser part.
- ex_mozilla 5y ago
  Mozilla Foundation is just a department of Mozilla Corp. It's bs. Donating does nothing.
  - elkos 5y ago
    Isn't it the other way around (at least in paper)? Ex-volunteer here BTW.
    - WhyNotHugo 5y ago
      Does it make any difference in practice?
grey_earthling 5y ago
> Maybe he didn't have the same values employees had about LGBT, but fuck this This tactic will only work if Mozilla doesn't want to bring queer people along with them — an open web for _most_ people, but some people aren't welcome to join in. Making tools and services for public use is always political, and by tacitly endorsing discrimination against queer people, Mozilla would have been taking a stance that would have tarnished their reputation with a lot of potential contributors — just look at what's happening with Disney right now. On the other hand, it might have been possible for Mozilla to retain Brendan's services without alienating a good fraction of their user base, with a suitably well-thought-through response: - acknowledge Brendan's personal political donations - affirm that Mozilla's position is on the side of diversity and inclusivity - publicly describe the robust grievance/disciplinary/safeguarding procedure that any contributor would face if they did discriminate unfairly against other contributors (while stating clearly that this procedure has never been needed for Brendan, so any concerns at this stage are hypothetical) - reiterate Brendan's technical credentials I think the mistake Mozilla made was assuming that a high-profile leader's personal political position would always reflect on Mozilla; whereas I think it may have been possible to separate the two — as long as everyone's able to behave as though they respect each other.
- danillonunes 5y ago
  Is there any case of a company that went through those steps and it was well received by the public? Because I'm under the impression the people who were asking for Brendan's head are the ones who believe a CEO's personal political position would always reflect on his company. Mozilla just trying to say it does not wouldn't be enough.
  - grey_earthling 5y ago
    Consider why some people were “asking for Brendan's head”. Yeah, some of them will have thought “he's one of the bad ones; good riddance and I hope he loses”, and they're not likely to be persuaded. But some people will have been scared. Civil rights are not a done deal; this was the prospect of someone who's campaigning against civil rights, in a position of authority for a project you care deeply about and believe to be important… They may have _said_ they wanted rid of Brendan, when what they really wanted was an assurance of safety. That sort of empathetic approach from Mozilla might have persuaded some of this group, and fostered greater understanding between the people who ended up on opposite sides of the argument. Treading more carefully would have pissed off the “other side” less too; and Mozilla would have benefited from Brendan's technical expertise for longer. Looking back, I think Mozilla reacted too hurriedly. They could hypothetically have done a better job of defusing the situation more gently.
pull_my_finger 5y ago
Let's not act like Eich was some kind of last bastion of honest software. At the helm of Brave, I've witnessed a lot of very scummy ideas be presented (sure most of them were backpedaled when people were appalled as expected, but they're still pushing the line of what is _just_ not shady enough to be tolerated), and even defended online (even here on HN) personally. Ad replacement, shadow accounts in their BAT "donation" system, the system that collects on peoples behalf without their knowing and will never tell them if under a certain threshold. etc etc. Maybe he didn't try that stuff at Mozilla but let's not make him out as a saint.
pictur 5y ago
what exactly was the motivation of the managers here? more money?
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
I'm sorry about the shit that went down. It makes me mad and I'm just a user, I can't image what it feels like for someone who put years of hard work into it. Do you or any or your former colleagues still have the energy or will to work on a real user-centric, stable, privacy-first browser for the masses? Do you think there's hope of developers potentially wanting to work on an organised fork or something along those lines? Or have you mostly had enough and mostly want to move onto something else?
- ex_mozilla 5y ago
  I actually think that, a few of us would be totally willing to build a new strong, fast and privacy centric browser. Some absolutely incredible ideas have been discussed about a potential new engine (Servo based) that could be privacy-first / lightweight / fast / bloat-free. This would require rethinking the web in a retro-compatible way, and here again I've heard of some very smart ideas. … but who's gonna lead that? And where will the money come from?
  - igorfortyfour 5y ago
    Personally, I'd be willing to pay a per-user licensing fee for such a browser if it was the real deal.
    - WhyNotHugo 5y ago
      See my reply to gp: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30776943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30776943
  - WhyNotHugo 5y ago
    > And where will the money come from? There are organizations that give grants for open source development that impact people, and a browser seems like an extraordinary good fit, e.g.: https://nlnet.nl/ https://nlnet.nl/ Additional, asking individual users for funding is very wise (like what Signal is doing[1]). Sending a clear message of why funding is needed is also important. I'd personally be willing to put some recurring funds into this, and I'm sure many other people in tech would care about this too -- pretty much the same of us that are pissed at where Firefox is heading. I care about this subject a lot, I'd be interested in corresponding with people with the actual expertise to work on it, want to shoot me an email? hugo at whynothugo.nl [1]: https://signal.org/blog/become-a-signal-sustainer/ https://signal.org/blog/become-a-signal-sustainer/
geraldyo 5y ago
It's absurd to me how OK everyone is with the fact that you're heavily implying that "the LGBT" or "women right" (sic) is in some way responsible. Greed, lack of sight and poor management are all at fault, as you said. There's literally no point in singling out those groups, beyond validating your biases.
stiltzkin 5y ago
'Don't get me wrong, LGBT and such are important, but that's not the job of Mozilla.' ESG Funds my friend, it is all about the money.

fabrice_d 5y ago

Don't you think Mitchell is a big part of the problem? She controls both MoCo and MoFo. She is a good motivational speaker but a terrible operational exec.

ex_mozilla 5y ago
Hi Fabrice :) Yeah… of course. The whole thing was a mess…

Dylan16807 5y ago

Why the "maybe"?

krmboya 5y ago

Thanks for the insider viewpoint. Something felt really wrong about how Brendan Eich was ousted. I now understand it was the first instance of the cancel culture I witnessed.

wyclif 5y ago
Brendan getting ousted was the beginning of the end. A brilliant engineer cancelled for politically correct reasons that had nothing to do with engineering or technology. Mozilla destroyed the company through HR.

rlv-dan 5y ago

> After the Firefox 4 nightmare I would love to hear more about this

ex_mozilla 5y ago
Firefox 4 was supposed to be our response to Google Chrome. We were feature driven. "Firefox 4 will be released with features A, B and C". And it took us a stupid amount of time to get there. Firefox 4 was supposed to be great. But no devtools, no multiprocess … compared to Chrome it was bad. So much work and stress went into this release, it took us a loooong time, people were exhausted, and the result was mediocre. Electrolysis was hard. Hardware acceleration challenging. And all these new HTML5 features… gosh. But we had to get much much better, because the Google's engineer were killing it. The race was hard. And we also needed a Firefox-on-mobile plan. With less engineers, and a much smaller budget. Important people left after Firefox 4. John Lilly left. And Mozilla hired product managers and such. More marketing etc etc. Things changed. We moved to a new version of Firefox every 6 weeks (that was a good move though). We basically went from the "savior of the internet" to "google chrome followers".

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

A good time to remind everyone that when you donate to "Mozilla", you're donating to the Mozilla Foundation, which is the social justice part, not the Mozilla Corporation, which is the browser part.

ex_mozilla 5y ago
Mozilla Foundation is just a department of Mozilla Corp. It's bs. Donating does nothing.
- elkos 5y ago
  Isn't it the other way around (at least in paper)? Ex-volunteer here BTW.
  - WhyNotHugo 5y ago
    Does it make any difference in practice?

grey_earthling 5y ago

> Maybe he didn't have the same values employees had about LGBT, but fuck this This tactic will only work if Mozilla doesn't want to bring queer people along with them — an open web for _most_ people, but some people aren't welcome to join in. Making tools and services for public use is always political, and by tacitly endorsing discrimination against queer people, Mozilla would have been taking a stance that would have tarnished their reputation with a lot of potential contributors — just look at what's happening with Disney right now. On the other hand, it might have been possible for Mozilla to retain Brendan's services without alienating a good fraction of their user base, with a suitably well-thought-through response: - acknowledge Brendan's personal political donations - affirm that Mozilla's position is on the side of diversity and inclusivity - publicly describe the robust grievance/disciplinary/safeguarding procedure that any contributor would face if they did discriminate unfairly against other contributors (while stating clearly that this procedure has never been needed for Brendan, so any concerns at this stage are hypothetical) - reiterate Brendan's technical credentials I think the mistake Mozilla made was assuming that a high-profile leader's personal political position would always reflect on Mozilla; whereas I think it may have been possible to separate the two — as long as everyone's able to behave as though they respect each other.

danillonunes 5y ago
Is there any case of a company that went through those steps and it was well received by the public? Because I'm under the impression the people who were asking for Brendan's head are the ones who believe a CEO's personal political position would always reflect on his company. Mozilla just trying to say it does not wouldn't be enough.
- grey_earthling 5y ago
  Consider why some people were “asking for Brendan's head”. Yeah, some of them will have thought “he's one of the bad ones; good riddance and I hope he loses”, and they're not likely to be persuaded. But some people will have been scared. Civil rights are not a done deal; this was the prospect of someone who's campaigning against civil rights, in a position of authority for a project you care deeply about and believe to be important… They may have _said_ they wanted rid of Brendan, when what they really wanted was an assurance of safety. That sort of empathetic approach from Mozilla might have persuaded some of this group, and fostered greater understanding between the people who ended up on opposite sides of the argument. Treading more carefully would have pissed off the “other side” less too; and Mozilla would have benefited from Brendan's technical expertise for longer. Looking back, I think Mozilla reacted too hurriedly. They could hypothetically have done a better job of defusing the situation more gently.

pull_my_finger 5y ago

Let's not act like Eich was some kind of last bastion of honest software. At the helm of Brave, I've witnessed a lot of very scummy ideas be presented (sure most of them were backpedaled when people were appalled as expected, but they're still pushing the line of what is _just_ not shady enough to be tolerated), and even defended online (even here on HN) personally. Ad replacement, shadow accounts in their BAT "donation" system, the system that collects on peoples behalf without their knowing and will never tell them if under a certain threshold. etc etc. Maybe he didn't try that stuff at Mozilla but let's not make him out as a saint.

pictur 5y ago

what exactly was the motivation of the managers here? more money?

WhyNotHugo 5y ago

I'm sorry about the shit that went down. It makes me mad and I'm just a user, I can't image what it feels like for someone who put years of hard work into it. Do you or any or your former colleagues still have the energy or will to work on a real user-centric, stable, privacy-first browser for the masses? Do you think there's hope of developers potentially wanting to work on an organised fork or something along those lines? Or have you mostly had enough and mostly want to move onto something else?

ex_mozilla 5y ago
I actually think that, a few of us would be totally willing to build a new strong, fast and privacy centric browser. Some absolutely incredible ideas have been discussed about a potential new engine (Servo based) that could be privacy-first / lightweight / fast / bloat-free. This would require rethinking the web in a retro-compatible way, and here again I've heard of some very smart ideas. … but who's gonna lead that? And where will the money come from?
- igorfortyfour 5y ago
  Personally, I'd be willing to pay a per-user licensing fee for such a browser if it was the real deal.
  - WhyNotHugo 5y ago
    See my reply to gp: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30776943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30776943
- WhyNotHugo 5y ago
  > And where will the money come from? There are organizations that give grants for open source development that impact people, and a browser seems like an extraordinary good fit, e.g.: https://nlnet.nl/ https://nlnet.nl/ Additional, asking individual users for funding is very wise (like what Signal is doing[1]). Sending a clear message of why funding is needed is also important. I'd personally be willing to put some recurring funds into this, and I'm sure many other people in tech would care about this too -- pretty much the same of us that are pissed at where Firefox is heading. I care about this subject a lot, I'd be interested in corresponding with people with the actual expertise to work on it, want to shoot me an email? hugo at whynothugo.nl [1]: https://signal.org/blog/become-a-signal-sustainer/ https://signal.org/blog/become-a-signal-sustainer/

geraldyo 5y ago

It's absurd to me how OK everyone is with the fact that you're heavily implying that "the LGBT" or "women right" (sic) is in some way responsible. Greed, lack of sight and poor management are all at fault, as you said. There's literally no point in singling out those groups, beyond validating your biases.

stiltzkin 5y ago

'Don't get me wrong, LGBT and such are important, but that's not the job of Mozilla.' ESG Funds my friend, it is all about the money.