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How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email progra

How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email program.[1] Bloat and bullshit features to you are minimum requirements to someone else. [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/ https://vivaldi.com/team/

prepend 10mo ago
Brave has about 300 employees and don’t break out engineers [0]. One of them is Brandon Eich so that counts for a bunch. Their revenue is only $52M so kinda what Mozilla would earn off their endowment. [0] https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com
- FooBarWidget 10mo ago
  Brave doesn't make their own browser engine.
- pseudalopex 10mo ago
  Latka are not reliable. And you assumed Brave were profitable? Brave make a Chromium fork and a search engine. Does a search engine or a web browser engine require more people?
- BrendanEich 10mo ago
  That's all b.s. of the ripest kind.
shevy-java 10mo ago
Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number.
- pseudalopex 10mo ago
  > Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? The Ladybird developers have not produced a browser comparable to Firefox or Vivaldi. Vivaldi have not produced a browser engine comparable to Ladybird of course. > I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number. 28 is a magic number was not a reasonable interpretation of my comment.
  - gsich 10mo ago
    Yet.
    - pseudalopex 10mo ago
      Yes. This discussion is now. Not in a future which may not arrive.
rdiddly 10mo ago
There are about 800 unique weekly committers to the Chromium project, so that's a start at gauging the number for that project. A little harder to find that same figure for Firefox, but Wikipedia says Mozilla Corp had about 750 employees as of 2020. Anyway, if you have $50M, you can afford 500 people at $100k, or 250 people at $200k. So you simply declare, this is how many people it takes to make a browser, and set your goals and timetables accordingly. I feel like the goals and direction might be more important than the number of bodies you throw at it, but maybe that's naïve. But when the product is mature like Firefox (or Chrome for that matter) you do have some flexibility on the headcount.
- tikhonj 10mo ago
  You're significantly underestimating fully-loaded cost per person + other expenses. An engineer making a $200k salary is going to cost the company something like $300k, and there are some additional fixed overheads. And $200k is quite a bit less than your competitors are paying. So you're looking at something more like 150 employees total of which <100 are going to be pure engineers, and that's stretching your budget and operations pretty aggressively while also fighting an uphill battle for recruiting skilled and experienced engineers. (And browser development definitely needs a core of experienced engineers with a relatively niche set of skills!)
  - tigroferoce 10mo ago
    Working at Mozilla should be more than money. $200k/year is more than enough to be happy in most of the world. You don't need to compete on rock stars that must live in San Francisco, and focus on people that are happy with a high paying job and have enough idealism to accept "only" $200k/year.
    - account42 10mo ago
      Exactly. One of the biggest problems with Mozilla is that they see themselves as akin to Google et al.
  - rdiddly 10mo ago

prepend 10mo ago

Brave has about 300 employees and don’t break out engineers [0]. One of them is Brandon Eich so that counts for a bunch. Their revenue is only $52M so kinda what Mozilla would earn off their endowment. [0] https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com

FooBarWidget 10mo ago
Brave doesn't make their own browser engine.
pseudalopex 10mo ago
Latka are not reliable. And you assumed Brave were profitable? Brave make a Chromium fork and a search engine. Does a search engine or a web browser engine require more people?
BrendanEich 10mo ago
That's all b.s. of the ripest kind.

shevy-java 10mo ago

Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number.

pseudalopex 10mo ago
> Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? The Ladybird developers have not produced a browser comparable to Firefox or Vivaldi. Vivaldi have not produced a browser engine comparable to Ladybird of course. > I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number. 28 is a magic number was not a reasonable interpretation of my comment.
- gsich 10mo ago
  Yet.
  - pseudalopex 10mo ago
    Yes. This discussion is now. Not in a future which may not arrive.

rdiddly 10mo ago

There are about 800 unique weekly committers to the Chromium project, so that's a start at gauging the number for that project. A little harder to find that same figure for Firefox, but Wikipedia says Mozilla Corp had about 750 employees as of 2020. Anyway, if you have $50M, you can afford 500 people at $100k, or 250 people at $200k. So you simply declare, this is how many people it takes to make a browser, and set your goals and timetables accordingly. I feel like the goals and direction might be more important than the number of bodies you throw at it, but maybe that's naïve. But when the product is mature like Firefox (or Chrome for that matter) you do have some flexibility on the headcount.

tikhonj 10mo ago
You're significantly underestimating fully-loaded cost per person + other expenses. An engineer making a $200k salary is going to cost the company something like $300k, and there are some additional fixed overheads. And $200k is quite a bit less than your competitors are paying. So you're looking at something more like 150 employees total of which <100 are going to be pure engineers, and that's stretching your budget and operations pretty aggressively while also fighting an uphill battle for recruiting skilled and experienced engineers. (And browser development definitely needs a core of experienced engineers with a relatively niche set of skills!)
- tigroferoce 10mo ago
  Working at Mozilla should be more than money. $200k/year is more than enough to be happy in most of the world. You don't need to compete on rock stars that must live in San Francisco, and focus on people that are happy with a high paying job and have enough idealism to accept "only" $200k/year.
  - account42 10mo ago
    Exactly. One of the biggest problems with Mozilla is that they see themselves as akin to Google et al.
- rdiddly 10mo ago