5 ms·

Am I out of line thinking Mozilla should be far more conservative? It seems vaguely irresponsible for a non-profit to be so lavish in the number of employees th

by staunch 13y ago

Am I out of line thinking Mozilla should be far more conservative? It seems vaguely irresponsible for a non-profit to be so lavish in the number of employees they have, their office, their perks. I'm not suggesting they need to be extreme in the other direction, just somewhat conservative. That Google money can't last forever and it seems like they should be stockpiling a large portion of it for the long term, not blowing every dollar -- living, effectively, paycheck to paycheck. I wonder if the employees/interns there have a sense that it's all eventually going to come crumbling down. Because I get that sense every time I hear about how they operate, and I really hope it never happens because I think they're a good thing in the world.

gkoberger 13y ago
No comment on most of that, but to clarify: he worked for Mozilla Corporation (for-profit), not the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit).
- staunch 13y ago
  Which is kind of a meaningless distinction since the Mozilla Foundation wholly owns the Mozilla Corporation.
simanyay 13y ago
Mozilla is more conservative with money than other companies. No corporate credit cards, no daily travel allowances, no daily breakfast, lunch and dinner (only lunch and only once a week, after all-hands). However, being too conservative doesn't work in Silicon Valley because you have to compete with companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. for talent with their perks and benefits. Whether it's good or bad in the long term I do not know but it is a fact.
- sambeau 13y ago
  No shareholders to pay.
sambeau 13y ago
Surely a non-profit, who have no shareholders to pay, should be more able to behave in this way?
yeukhon 13y ago
(disclaimer: summer intern here) It doesn't matter how MOCO spends money. If no one want to bid the search engine list on Firefox, then most of the revenue will be gone and MOCO cannot operate anymore. FxOS market is not going to generate a lot of revenue at the moment. If we talk about investment, it will take at least a few years to make good revenue. And that revenue will still be really low compare to what Google, Bing, Yahoo and Amazon are paying combined. If Google thinks they have 95% they probably can give up on us, but I don't think that day will ever come in the next 10 years. Also, while MOCO is a corporation, its mission is not to make money. MoFo came up with MOCO because MoFo members wanted to be good citizens. They wanted to pay taxes to avoid stupid tax allegation. Read Mozilla history and you will have a good laugh. If we fail, we will restructure ourselves. You can't guarantee Google will be around forever. We just have to do what we have to do today. If we are always worrying about money, we would not be building anything. There wouldn't be any startup because half of their customers will either move on or use another service.
callahad 13y ago
You're probably over-weighting the trip to Paris, which sounds ridiculously extravagant. Fortunately, we were able to do it on the cheap since the majority of attendees were already living in or traveling through the region. The local Mozilla office which was able to host us during the workday. Opportunistic hack weeks ftw.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  It's important to note that his team happened to have a workweek when he was still an intern. For me, our team will be in Paris in a week or two but I am already out so it's something not every intern can get. But I think it's fun to go to Paris or Toronto or Taiwan.
lmartel 13y ago
There was a great TED talk a while back about this. [1] People talk about nonprofits being "irresponsible" when they behave like for-profit corporations: advertising, perks for engineers, whatever. And yet the for-profits do these things because they work; advertising gets sales, perks get you better engineers (and it's usually cheaper than just bumping up salaries, because macbooks are shiny). If these things don't work successful corporations will stop doing them, and if they DO work we should stop giving nonprofits shit for doing them too. That said, your point about Mozilla in particular coming crumbling down is interesting--I'm not sure I disagree. However, if they need smart people to pull them out of the hole, offering free macbooks isn't a bad way to do it. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...

by staunch 13y ago

gkoberger 13y ago

No comment on most of that, but to clarify: he worked for Mozilla Corporation (for-profit), not the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit).

staunch 13y ago
Which is kind of a meaningless distinction since the Mozilla Foundation wholly owns the Mozilla Corporation.

simanyay 13y ago

Mozilla is more conservative with money than other companies. No corporate credit cards, no daily travel allowances, no daily breakfast, lunch and dinner (only lunch and only once a week, after all-hands). However, being too conservative doesn't work in Silicon Valley because you have to compete with companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. for talent with their perks and benefits. Whether it's good or bad in the long term I do not know but it is a fact.

sambeau 13y ago
No shareholders to pay.

sambeau 13y ago

Surely a non-profit, who have no shareholders to pay, should be more able to behave in this way?

yeukhon 13y ago

(disclaimer: summer intern here) It doesn't matter how MOCO spends money. If no one want to bid the search engine list on Firefox, then most of the revenue will be gone and MOCO cannot operate anymore. FxOS market is not going to generate a lot of revenue at the moment. If we talk about investment, it will take at least a few years to make good revenue. And that revenue will still be really low compare to what Google, Bing, Yahoo and Amazon are paying combined. If Google thinks they have 95% they probably can give up on us, but I don't think that day will ever come in the next 10 years. Also, while MOCO is a corporation, its mission is not to make money. MoFo came up with MOCO because MoFo members wanted to be good citizens. They wanted to pay taxes to avoid stupid tax allegation. Read Mozilla history and you will have a good laugh. If we fail, we will restructure ourselves. You can't guarantee Google will be around forever. We just have to do what we have to do today. If we are always worrying about money, we would not be building anything. There wouldn't be any startup because half of their customers will either move on or use another service.

callahad 13y ago

You're probably over-weighting the trip to Paris, which sounds ridiculously extravagant. Fortunately, we were able to do it on the cheap since the majority of attendees were already living in or traveling through the region. The local Mozilla office which was able to host us during the workday. Opportunistic hack weeks ftw.

yeukhon 13y ago
It's important to note that his team happened to have a workweek when he was still an intern. For me, our team will be in Paris in a week or two but I am already out so it's something not every intern can get. But I think it's fun to go to Paris or Toronto or Taiwan.

lmartel 13y ago

There was a great TED talk a while back about this. [1] People talk about nonprofits being "irresponsible" when they behave like for-profit corporations: advertising, perks for engineers, whatever. And yet the for-profits do these things because they work; advertising gets sales, perks get you better engineers (and it's usually cheaper than just bumping up salaries, because macbooks are shiny). If these things don't work successful corporations will stop doing them, and if they DO work we should stop giving nonprofits shit for doing them too. That said, your point about Mozilla in particular coming crumbling down is interesting--I'm not sure I disagree. However, if they need smart people to pull them out of the hole, offering free macbooks isn't a bad way to do it. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...