3 ms·

> 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 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.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > Very likely you’ll end up with someone whose heart is in the right place but can’t execute. There's no reason to believe that. But it's still better than someone whose heart isn't in the right place and can't execute.
    - rafabulsing 1y ago
      Or, arguably even worse, someone whose heart isn't in the right place and can execute.
wkat4242 1y ago
But they're not. Firefox market share has tumbled and I'm getting more and more captchas because my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". It's not a flaw in the product itself but it does affect its usability. Marketshare of at least 5-10% is crucial to be on the radar of web devs. Especially because the competition besides Safari is basically all one single browser because they share the engine.
- afavour 1y ago
  There’s a difference in arguing that Mozilla should pay market rate for a CEO and arguing that the current CEO is worth market rate. I’m arguing the former, not the latter.
- dimmke 1y ago
  Idk I switched to Firefox earlier this year and it's honestly been really painless. Not sure why a CAPTCHA would trigger based on browser ID when those are so easily spoofed. Why would someone be running a bot on a less popular browser? I have not noticed any change. The one thing I do notice is that on some very poorly built websites there will be a bug and it's because they haven't checked in Firefox or because I am blocking things that are no longer blockable on Chrome, but this is rare.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    For me it's those horrible cloudflare and recaptcha things. I get them soooo much. And also that stupid cloudflare "We're checking if you're human" page. I am on Linux though. Perhaps Firefox on Windows or Mac fares better. But these problems are from the last year or two and don't happen in chromium also on Linux.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  > my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". thanks to AI crawlers, every browser is now considered suspicious
- _zagj 1y ago
  > my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". I've noticed this as well. Also some banking sites don't even work with it anymore.
sealeck 1y ago
I think there is a small set of people who would do a good job running Mozilla. Of these people, a very large chunk would do this for $500k annually (this is still enough money for almost anyone to lead a very comfortable life). Being money-driven might make you _worse_ as Mozilla CEO.
- bobbob27 1y ago
  Great point. A company that needs to be steered by morality needs leadership that is willing to take the helm because their values align.

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.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > Very likely you’ll end up with someone whose heart is in the right place but can’t execute. There's no reason to believe that. But it's still better than someone whose heart isn't in the right place and can't execute.
  - rafabulsing 1y ago
    Or, arguably even worse, someone whose heart isn't in the right place and can execute.

wkat4242 1y ago

But they're not. Firefox market share has tumbled and I'm getting more and more captchas because my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". It's not a flaw in the product itself but it does affect its usability. Marketshare of at least 5-10% is crucial to be on the radar of web devs. Especially because the competition besides Safari is basically all one single browser because they share the engine.

afavour 1y ago
There’s a difference in arguing that Mozilla should pay market rate for a CEO and arguing that the current CEO is worth market rate. I’m arguing the former, not the latter.
dimmke 1y ago
Idk I switched to Firefox earlier this year and it's honestly been really painless. Not sure why a CAPTCHA would trigger based on browser ID when those are so easily spoofed. Why would someone be running a bot on a less popular browser? I have not noticed any change. The one thing I do notice is that on some very poorly built websites there will be a bug and it's because they haven't checked in Firefox or because I am blocking things that are no longer blockable on Chrome, but this is rare.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  For me it's those horrible cloudflare and recaptcha things. I get them soooo much. And also that stupid cloudflare "We're checking if you're human" page. I am on Linux though. Perhaps Firefox on Windows or Mac fares better. But these problems are from the last year or two and don't happen in chromium also on Linux.
LtWorf 1y ago
> my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". thanks to AI crawlers, every browser is now considered suspicious
_zagj 1y ago
> my browser is now so rare it's considered "suspicious". I've noticed this as well. Also some banking sites don't even work with it anymore.

sealeck 1y ago

I think there is a small set of people who would do a good job running Mozilla. Of these people, a very large chunk would do this for $500k annually (this is still enough money for almost anyone to lead a very comfortable life). Being money-driven might make you _worse_ as Mozilla CEO.

bobbob27 1y ago
Great point. A company that needs to be steered by morality needs leadership that is willing to take the helm because their values align.