4 ms·

Can someone tell me how much Chrome has in terms of resources? Firefox, a company with one main product, has hundreds of millions of dollars coming in + million

Can someone tell me how much Chrome has in terms of resources? Firefox, a company with one main product, has hundreds of millions of dollars coming in + millions in donations. That should pay for a sizeable engineering team. Is the Chrome engineering team much larger? Is the V8 team larger than the SpiderMonkey team, significantly so?

tristan957 3y ago
Donations don't pay for Firefox development. Chromium is a bit more than Google these days. Mozilla's largest failure to date has been their inability to attract other significant corporate interest, which Google has done with Chromium
londons_explore 3y ago
Drawing a precise boundary around "Chrome" is hard, since many people work on it part time, or are associated with tangentially related projects, like the skia graphics engine, v8 javascript engine, etc. However, there were 767 unique authors who committed code direct to chromium in the last week: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/pulse https://github.com/chromium/chromium/pulse And I would guess the Chrome team is probably 3-5x that, since many people may not be working on code, may not commit directly, or might be working on big things on branches and didn't commit anything this week. Also, that doesn't count work on external dependencies, which are counted as "autoroll bots".
- londons_explore 3y ago
  3000 engineers * $200k average total comp = $600M. It's in the same ballpark as mozilla's total revenues.
  - smarnach 3y ago
    Average total comp for an FAANG engineer in the US is more like $450k, and last time I heard numbers, Chrome and adjacent teams were more like 4,000 people.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      I guess Mozilla engineers are paid quite a bit less. They hire the people with a conscience, so don't need to pay the 'do evil' salary premium...
    - astrange 3y ago
      Which average is that? Don't think it's median W2 income.
      - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
        Yeah it seems a touch low. I'm not at one of the big boys and $200k is more like base salary then total comp. RSUs show up on a W2.
- lossolo 3y ago
  > However, there were 767 unique authors who committed code direct to chromium in the last week: This also includes all people from outside the org (Google), right? I found this but I think it's for Chrome? There are also things like v8 engine. > The team consists of around 40 engineers, in addition to a number of PMs, test engineers, UX designers, researchers, and others. We built a lot of features in Chrome that are used by more than a billion people.) Feb 22, 2019
- insanitybit 3y ago
  I don't really think it's fair to extrapolate github contributors into FTE employees paid by Google, let alone to throw out a '3-5x' number on top.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Manual inspection of todays commits shows that nearly all of them are @chromium.org email addresses, which usually means a google full time engineer. There are some from other companies (microsoft, intel, nvidia). None from random hobbyists that I saw.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      OK and that makes perfect sense. But then saying "therefor other days I expect those other engineers were @chromium", not so much. I expect that the vast majority of contributors are making ~1 commit and then never again. It also doesn't take into account that the project is over a decade old and many people who have committed to it as FTEs are no longer doing so.
tomashubelbauer 3y ago
Unfortunately the money for within Mozilla is not that straightforward in favor of Firefox and I imagine I am not the only Firefox user who is incredibly annoyed with that. I'd rather send money to individual devs' Github Sponsors sounds than give Mozilla a donation the devs will never see a cent of.

tristan957 3y ago

Donations don't pay for Firefox development. Chromium is a bit more than Google these days. Mozilla's largest failure to date has been their inability to attract other significant corporate interest, which Google has done with Chromium

londons_explore 3y ago

Drawing a precise boundary around "Chrome" is hard, since many people work on it part time, or are associated with tangentially related projects, like the skia graphics engine, v8 javascript engine, etc. However, there were 767 unique authors who committed code direct to chromium in the last week: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/pulse https://github.com/chromium/chromium/pulse And I would guess the Chrome team is probably 3-5x that, since many people may not be working on code, may not commit directly, or might be working on big things on branches and didn't commit anything this week. Also, that doesn't count work on external dependencies, which are counted as "autoroll bots".

londons_explore 3y ago
3000 engineers * $200k average total comp = $600M. It's in the same ballpark as mozilla's total revenues.
- smarnach 3y ago
  Average total comp for an FAANG engineer in the US is more like $450k, and last time I heard numbers, Chrome and adjacent teams were more like 4,000 people.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    I guess Mozilla engineers are paid quite a bit less. They hire the people with a conscience, so don't need to pay the 'do evil' salary premium...
  - astrange 3y ago
    Which average is that? Don't think it's median W2 income.
    - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
      Yeah it seems a touch low. I'm not at one of the big boys and $200k is more like base salary then total comp. RSUs show up on a W2.
lossolo 3y ago
> However, there were 767 unique authors who committed code direct to chromium in the last week: This also includes all people from outside the org (Google), right? I found this but I think it's for Chrome? There are also things like v8 engine. > The team consists of around 40 engineers, in addition to a number of PMs, test engineers, UX designers, researchers, and others. We built a lot of features in Chrome that are used by more than a billion people.) Feb 22, 2019
insanitybit 3y ago
I don't really think it's fair to extrapolate github contributors into FTE employees paid by Google, let alone to throw out a '3-5x' number on top.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Manual inspection of todays commits shows that nearly all of them are @chromium.org email addresses, which usually means a google full time engineer. There are some from other companies (microsoft, intel, nvidia). None from random hobbyists that I saw.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    OK and that makes perfect sense. But then saying "therefor other days I expect those other engineers were @chromium", not so much. I expect that the vast majority of contributors are making ~1 commit and then never again. It also doesn't take into account that the project is over a decade old and many people who have committed to it as FTEs are no longer doing so.

tomashubelbauer 3y ago

Unfortunately the money for within Mozilla is not that straightforward in favor of Firefox and I imagine I am not the only Firefox user who is incredibly annoyed with that. I'd rather send money to individual devs' Github Sponsors sounds than give Mozilla a donation the devs will never see a cent of.