4 ms·

Firefox works, but it’s got thousands of annoying issues (many of them just paper cuts, but still). The CEO’s salary is enough to fund >30 extra devs. Imagine

Firefox works, but it’s got thousands of annoying issues (many of them just paper cuts, but still). The CEO’s salary is enough to fund >30 extra devs. Imagine how many of those issues could have been ironed out over the years.

sealeck 1y ago
The issue with the salary is not that it costs the same as 30 developers – good leadership can make a difference worth >30 developers over the same timespan (especially in an organisation with 1000s of staff). The problem is that the Mozilla leadership hasn't been great, which makes the high salary especially difficult to defend. It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  This. Unfortunately, in our current "Greed is God" late-stage capitalist world, it's virtually impossible to find a competent tech CEO who is willing to work for mere honest wages. And (evidently) too difficult to even find one who's willing to work for 30X.
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    I think if you are paying 30x engineer salary you are always going to find CEO’s that optimize for money.
    - shswkna 1y ago
      This should be the top comment.
    - bell-cot 1y ago
      Pretty much. But if you do need to have a CEO, and offering 2-3X gets you zero qualified applicants...then you are forced into strategies which have undesirable side-effects.
      - cogman10 1y ago
        What does it mean to be qualified? The issue I have is a lot of CEOs appear to be wholly unqualified for their positions and their salaries are completely unjustifiable. So many of them don't even have a glancing understanding of the product or company that they are in charge of. Their primary role is getting a higher stock valuation so the board can be happy. A good example of this is how many tech CEOs have dumped ungodly amounts of money on "AI" because that's what the market demands. Or how many CEOs hire and fire based on what other companies are doing, not what their company needs. The fact is, "qualified" is often at odds with "competent". Most of the 30x CEOs are only qualified in chasing stock prices, not competently running a company for the long term.
      - Aeolun 1y ago
        That’s a problem with your selection process, not the lack of qualified applicants. It’s funny that the qualification that people require often seems to be ‘has done this thing to no great success elsewhere’.
- afavour 1y ago
  > It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense. By objective measure I’d agree with you but you can’t deny the reality of the job market. If someone is a truly effective CEO they’d be able to get many, many times more than 2-3x staff engineer salary at pretty much any other company out there.
  - Groxx 1y ago
    If they're in it for the money, instead of the mission, then I say good riddance. That's how we get where we are now. 2-3x staff engineer pay is a LOT of money. More than enough.
    - afavour 1y ago
      I disagree, hiring a CEO for well below market pay because they believe in the mission is a recipe for disaster. Very likely you’ll end up with someone whose heart is in the right place but can’t execute. 2-3x staff engineer salary is a lot of money. But no matter how much I believed in a mission if I could make 10-20x that and set myself up for life financially I’d have a very hard time turning it down.
      - Groxx 1y ago
        As opposed to now, where you've got someone who is willing and able to tank the entire project, but it looks good on paper? Is that the kind of person you want to be competing for? I get what you're saying, but I really can't agree. The mission is important in a non-profit. It's part of what makes them work.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        It's not clear CEO pay is driven my market forces at all. Pay seems almost completely divorced from competency.
      - bobbob27 1y ago
        There's people in the FOSS realm running VERY competent operations for simple living wage, or less. Take KDE for example. It's easy to argue they've accomplished MORE than Mozilla has in the last decade. Their desktop ships with every Steam Deck (along with some niche laptop manufacturers) and they have a vast ecosystem of applications. Albeit some more rapidly developed than others. Their structure is entirely different than Mozilla so it's hardly a direct comparison. But the main point is that Mozilla's traditional corporate structure seems to be a millstone. They could have stashed most of their Google funding and kept a solid team of passionate maintainers paid in perpetuity. Goodwill could have volunteers contributing directly to Firefox, instead of forking it.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  > It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense. It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer. Yet many over here are getting paid double that. Salaries are rarely based on value created. They are based on what others pay.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. I was offered a job at a big tech but I'd have had to move to the US to their campus because they hate remote work. And they offered only 120k (they probably figured that sounded like a ton of money to a European). But I started looking at the cost of living there and it was insane. I'd have had to share a flat and it would have to be far away, not a few km from the office like I'm used to. No way. Of course then Trump started happening and I was so glad I didn't move there. I'm kinda LGBTQ too so I'd be royally screwed if I'd been there now
    - dmoy 1y ago
      > I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. Depends on the specific job, company (big tech vs not), and city. Seattle, NYC and a handful of others may pay on par with bay area. For a senior at random faang or equivalent, that might mean $300k-$500k / yr. More for some NYC positions in the finance industry.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        Wow that's almost 10 times as much as me :) Still wouldn't live there though, especially now.
    - eloisant 1y ago
      That's the other way around - life in SV is expensive because of all those high salary workers.
- Gentil 1y ago
  > Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers is just an interim CEO. I am not sure how Mozill Foundation/Corporation is exactly linked in the decision making. But the key people are still Mark Surman and Mitchell Baker who is the Chairwomen of Mozilla Corporation. If Laura is getting paid lots like Mitchell Baker, it is still an issue. But, wouldn't she be just a scapegoat? I am pretty sure as Chairwomen, Mitchell Baker still has more power than Laura the CEO when it comes to Mozilla Corporation. I have felt this is just to chill the uproar against Mitchell Baker. Now everyone will blame the next CEO. But I wonder how much power she has. I could be wrong of course.
  - atlasunshrugged 1y ago
    Baker left the board in early 2025 https://www.theverge.com/business/615977/m https://www.theverge.com/business/615977/m
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dmazzoni 1y ago
  Has it been good leadership, though? They invested BILLIONS of dollars on things like: * Firefox OS * Mozilla Persona * Mozilla VPN * Firefox for TV (e.g. Amazon Fire) * Lockwise * Mozilla Hubs Did anyone ask for those things? What a huge waste for all of that to be built and abandoned.
  - sealeck 1y ago
    Did you read my comment? > The problem is that the Mozilla leadership hasn't been great, which makes the high salary especially difficult to defend.
rs186 1y ago
> The CEO’s salary is enough to fund >30 extra devs I keep seeing this line as if people think CEOs shouldn't exist or aren't worth their compensation. That is incredibly incorrect thinking. Good CEOs and bad CEOs are two different creatures and lead companies to very different places. Just like you want to pay more for highly skilled developers, you want executive pay to be competitive to hire someone capable of the job. Put it this way, you could pay me $1m in annual compensation to be Mozilla's CEO (sounds like a good deal?), but I am sure I will be the most terrible CEO in the history of the company and cannot even run the company properly at a daily basis.
- thoroughburro 1y ago
  > I keep seeing this line as if people think CEOs shouldn't exist or aren't worth their compensation. That is incredibly incorrect thinking. Good CEOs and bad CEOs are two different creatures and lead companies to very different places. If the “bad” CEOs don’t take pay cuts or subsequently struggle to find work, then that thinking is obviously not as “incredibly” incorrect as you claim.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    Real talk: what are the issues with Mozilla's? I hate plenty of CEOs so I'm familiar but I've never heard... really anything, good or bad, about Mozilla's.
    - alternatex 1y ago
      Raking in 100s of millions and not improving Firefox is one thing. Another is spending those millions on acquiring companies that produce no revenue, aka setting money on fire. Zen Browser has been producing the features people have been asking for from Firefox with $0. I can't imagine what motivated devs like those could produce with just 1% of the money Mozilla burns. It's not that they haven't done great things for the web. It's just that we expect more from their most popular product considering the money that they're rolling in.
      - 1y ago
madeofpalk 1y ago
So like every other piece of software!
EdwardKrayer 1y ago
I've had this conversation at least three times on HN. I'm convinced anyone who says that Firefox has a thousand issues simply doesn't use Firefox. But, I'm always open to being wrong. Can you point out the specific issues Firefox has that make it a second rate experience?
- bmn__ 1y ago
  Fx user here since it was called Phoenix and cookies were called delicious delicacies in the options, and Mozilla browser before that. IMO as a power user, it is a second-rate browser. The bar is set by [Opera v12](https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/ https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/). * no spatial browsing, not even as an extension. This feature alone I would use literally thousands of times a week. * no fit to width * no cycle display images enable/disable/cached * cannot edit menus or icons as simple configuration file * no tab thumbnails * reader mode that actually always works every single time, not just when the browser feels like it * no editable key bindings * no shortcuts for highlighting next/prev URL, next/prev heading, next/prev element * no presentation mode * no panelise web page * no navigation bar
  - EdwardKrayer 1y ago
    My argument is primarily against commenters on HN who claim Firefox to be unusable, bug-filled, and then blame Mozilla for the current Blink-based browser apocalypse. You feel that Firefox doesn't have a bunch of features that you would use - but those are not bugs. I recognize this is HN - where there will definitely be a higher percentage of power users, but an open source project not having the features you want doesn't make it a second-rate browser, it just means it would take more work for you to customize. Listing cred of having used FF in the Mozilla days is the same as saying Linux is second rate because you installed Caldera back when people were still scared of Y2K. As a daily FF user - Firefox is great. And more users should give it a whirl, especially ones that haven't used it in a decade.
    - bmn__ 1y ago
      You cheated me out of a sincere and genuine conversation. I resent that behaviour.

sealeck 1y ago

The issue with the salary is not that it costs the same as 30 developers – good leadership can make a difference worth >30 developers over the same timespan (especially in an organisation with 1000s of staff). The problem is that the Mozilla leadership hasn't been great, which makes the high salary especially difficult to defend. It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense.

bell-cot 1y ago
This. Unfortunately, in our current "Greed is God" late-stage capitalist world, it's virtually impossible to find a competent tech CEO who is willing to work for mere honest wages. And (evidently) too difficult to even find one who's willing to work for 30X.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  I think if you are paying 30x engineer salary you are always going to find CEO’s that optimize for money.
  - shswkna 1y ago
    This should be the top comment.
  - bell-cot 1y ago
    Pretty much. But if you do need to have a CEO, and offering 2-3X gets you zero qualified applicants...then you are forced into strategies which have undesirable side-effects.
    - cogman10 1y ago
      What does it mean to be qualified? The issue I have is a lot of CEOs appear to be wholly unqualified for their positions and their salaries are completely unjustifiable. So many of them don't even have a glancing understanding of the product or company that they are in charge of. Their primary role is getting a higher stock valuation so the board can be happy. A good example of this is how many tech CEOs have dumped ungodly amounts of money on "AI" because that's what the market demands. Or how many CEOs hire and fire based on what other companies are doing, not what their company needs. The fact is, "qualified" is often at odds with "competent". Most of the 30x CEOs are only qualified in chasing stock prices, not competently running a company for the long term.
    - Aeolun 1y ago
      That’s a problem with your selection process, not the lack of qualified applicants. It’s funny that the qualification that people require often seems to be ‘has done this thing to no great success elsewhere’.
afavour 1y ago
> It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense. By objective measure I’d agree with you but you can’t deny the reality of the job market. If someone is a truly effective CEO they’d be able to get many, many times more than 2-3x staff engineer salary at pretty much any other company out there.
- Groxx 1y ago
  If they're in it for the money, instead of the mission, then I say good riddance. That's how we get where we are now. 2-3x staff engineer pay is a LOT of money. More than enough.
  - afavour 1y ago
    I disagree, hiring a CEO for well below market pay because they believe in the mission is a recipe for disaster. Very likely you’ll end up with someone whose heart is in the right place but can’t execute. 2-3x staff engineer salary is a lot of money. But no matter how much I believed in a mission if I could make 10-20x that and set myself up for life financially I’d have a very hard time turning it down.
    - Groxx 1y ago
      As opposed to now, where you've got someone who is willing and able to tank the entire project, but it looks good on paper? Is that the kind of person you want to be competing for? I get what you're saying, but I really can't agree. The mission is important in a non-profit. It's part of what makes them work.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      It's not clear CEO pay is driven my market forces at all. Pay seems almost completely divorced from competency.
    - bobbob27 1y ago
      There's people in the FOSS realm running VERY competent operations for simple living wage, or less. Take KDE for example. It's easy to argue they've accomplished MORE than Mozilla has in the last decade. Their desktop ships with every Steam Deck (along with some niche laptop manufacturers) and they have a vast ecosystem of applications. Albeit some more rapidly developed than others. Their structure is entirely different than Mozilla so it's hardly a direct comparison. But the main point is that Mozilla's traditional corporate structure seems to be a millstone. They could have stashed most of their Google funding and kept a solid team of passionate maintainers paid in perpetuity. Goodwill could have volunteers contributing directly to Firefox, instead of forking it.
BeetleB 1y ago
> It's unclear to me that you need to pay an extremely high salary to get a good Mozilla CEO - something like 2-3x the average staff engineer would make sense. It's unclear to me that you need to pay more than $150K total compensation for a good SW engineer. Yet many over here are getting paid double that. Salaries are rarely based on value created. They are based on what others pay.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. I was offered a job at a big tech but I'd have had to move to the US to their campus because they hate remote work. And they offered only 120k (they probably figured that sounded like a ton of money to a European). But I started looking at the cost of living there and it was insane. I'd have had to share a flat and it would have to be far away, not a few km from the office like I'm used to. No way. Of course then Trump started happening and I was so glad I didn't move there. I'm kinda LGBTQ too so I'd be royally screwed if I'd been there now
  - dmoy 1y ago
    > I think that factors in cost of living in silicon valley. I don't think devs even in other areas of the US make that much. Depends on the specific job, company (big tech vs not), and city. Seattle, NYC and a handful of others may pay on par with bay area. For a senior at random faang or equivalent, that might mean $300k-$500k / yr. More for some NYC positions in the finance industry.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Wow that's almost 10 times as much as me :) Still wouldn't live there though, especially now.
  - eloisant 1y ago
    That's the other way around - life in SV is expensive because of all those high salary workers.
Gentil 1y ago
> Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers is just an interim CEO. I am not sure how Mozill Foundation/Corporation is exactly linked in the decision making. But the key people are still Mark Surman and Mitchell Baker who is the Chairwomen of Mozilla Corporation. If Laura is getting paid lots like Mitchell Baker, it is still an issue. But, wouldn't she be just a scapegoat? I am pretty sure as Chairwomen, Mitchell Baker still has more power than Laura the CEO when it comes to Mozilla Corporation. I have felt this is just to chill the uproar against Mitchell Baker. Now everyone will blame the next CEO. But I wonder how much power she has. I could be wrong of course.
- atlasunshrugged 1y ago
  Baker left the board in early 2025 https://www.theverge.com/business/615977/m https://www.theverge.com/business/615977/m
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dmazzoni 1y ago
Has it been good leadership, though? They invested BILLIONS of dollars on things like: * Firefox OS * Mozilla Persona * Mozilla VPN * Firefox for TV (e.g. Amazon Fire) * Lockwise * Mozilla Hubs Did anyone ask for those things? What a huge waste for all of that to be built and abandoned.
- sealeck 1y ago
  Did you read my comment? > The problem is that the Mozilla leadership hasn't been great, which makes the high salary especially difficult to defend.

rs186 1y ago

> The CEO’s salary is enough to fund >30 extra devs I keep seeing this line as if people think CEOs shouldn't exist or aren't worth their compensation. That is incredibly incorrect thinking. Good CEOs and bad CEOs are two different creatures and lead companies to very different places. Just like you want to pay more for highly skilled developers, you want executive pay to be competitive to hire someone capable of the job. Put it this way, you could pay me $1m in annual compensation to be Mozilla's CEO (sounds like a good deal?), but I am sure I will be the most terrible CEO in the history of the company and cannot even run the company properly at a daily basis.

thoroughburro 1y ago
> I keep seeing this line as if people think CEOs shouldn't exist or aren't worth their compensation. That is incredibly incorrect thinking. Good CEOs and bad CEOs are two different creatures and lead companies to very different places. If the “bad” CEOs don’t take pay cuts or subsequently struggle to find work, then that thinking is obviously not as “incredibly” incorrect as you claim.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Real talk: what are the issues with Mozilla's? I hate plenty of CEOs so I'm familiar but I've never heard... really anything, good or bad, about Mozilla's.
  - alternatex 1y ago
    Raking in 100s of millions and not improving Firefox is one thing. Another is spending those millions on acquiring companies that produce no revenue, aka setting money on fire. Zen Browser has been producing the features people have been asking for from Firefox with $0. I can't imagine what motivated devs like those could produce with just 1% of the money Mozilla burns. It's not that they haven't done great things for the web. It's just that we expect more from their most popular product considering the money that they're rolling in.
    - 1y ago

madeofpalk 1y ago

So like every other piece of software!

EdwardKrayer 1y ago

I've had this conversation at least three times on HN. I'm convinced anyone who says that Firefox has a thousand issues simply doesn't use Firefox. But, I'm always open to being wrong. Can you point out the specific issues Firefox has that make it a second rate experience?

bmn__ 1y ago
Fx user here since it was called Phoenix and cookies were called delicious delicacies in the options, and Mozilla browser before that. IMO as a power user, it is a second-rate browser. The bar is set by [Opera v12](https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/ https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/1216/). * no spatial browsing, not even as an extension. This feature alone I would use literally thousands of times a week. * no fit to width * no cycle display images enable/disable/cached * cannot edit menus or icons as simple configuration file * no tab thumbnails * reader mode that actually always works every single time, not just when the browser feels like it * no editable key bindings * no shortcuts for highlighting next/prev URL, next/prev heading, next/prev element * no presentation mode * no panelise web page * no navigation bar
- EdwardKrayer 1y ago
  My argument is primarily against commenters on HN who claim Firefox to be unusable, bug-filled, and then blame Mozilla for the current Blink-based browser apocalypse. You feel that Firefox doesn't have a bunch of features that you would use - but those are not bugs. I recognize this is HN - where there will definitely be a higher percentage of power users, but an open source project not having the features you want doesn't make it a second-rate browser, it just means it would take more work for you to customize. Listing cred of having used FF in the Mozilla days is the same as saying Linux is second rate because you installed Caldera back when people were still scared of Y2K. As a daily FF user - Firefox is great. And more users should give it a whirl, especially ones that haven't used it in a decade.
  - bmn__ 1y ago
    You cheated me out of a sincere and genuine conversation. I resent that behaviour.