Layoffs strike as Firefox's Mozilla reworks Asian operations | Hacker News Reader

Layoffs strike as Firefox's Mozilla reworks Asian operations

cnet.com

45 pointsespadrine11 comments

About ~70 people are impacted, mostly platform engineers. That means that they are getting rid of ~10% of their engineering, including Gecko module owners and people with very hard to find skills. But they keep failed VPs on the payroll.

Of course they give no explanation, because MoCo leadership is one of the worse you can think of, with their actions in total contradiction with their PR. They are betraying their own employees, and the Mozilla community at large.

After spending a year claiming that they were back with a rebuilt web runtime, they do that...

RIP Gecko

Looking who was fixing bugs in the "Core" of Firefox, there were a lot of Chinese names. It seems that's "the Taiwan office" mentioned, and it also seems Mozilla executives killed exactly those who improved the browser day to day.

Nobody should believe the PR -- even with the latest "new" stuff added it's still the "old" stuff that has to be improved as the "new" stuff is still just the "leaves" of the whole "tree." Firefox still eats significantly more battery than any other browser during typical browsing sessions.

> Nobody should believe the PR -- even with the latest "new" stuff added it's still the "old" stuff that has to be improved as the "new" stuff is still just the "leaves" of the whole "tree."

The Servo CSS style system, which was practically the headline feature of Quantum, is about as far from the "leaves of the tree" as you can get. Claims like yours are kind of insulting to those of us who worked really hard on it, to be honest.

The old infrastructure is still big and it dominates that what eventually makes the browser. Don't react with "being insulted" when there are techical claims that are either true or not. When Firefox takes twice as much power than other browsers all the time while displaying the whole page, it's because Gecko works as it works. The new code is excuted on some occasions in the "leaves" posituon of the code trace "trees" and still hasn't made Firefox less power hungry. Any other browser is better in that regard, and that is an actual sad state of Firefox. Sacking those who were supposed to work on such issues is a crazy management decision.

The ladt time I've checked, Servo is a project that is not inside if the Firefox/Gecko but only contributes some pieces to it. So what's your problem again?

I would probably really enjoy working for a company like Mozilla where the motive/mission is Generally Good. I'm not easily motivated to go build some silly App or Website to make money for Investors....

But seeing that they're willing to just ditch a bunch of employees scares me away quite effectively. I'd have expected the company to have hired bright, talented employees who could be repurposed and moved to other teams.

I guess even if you're off doing Good Stuff that isn't really a guarantee that you will be treated as a long term investment rather than a gap plugger.

Contrary to their PR, my guess is Mozilla has trouble attracting real talent from being non-profit and borderline irrelevant.

Not cool Mozilla. You have more work than employees, and typically, your employees are of high standard. You aren't even driven by profits, or so you claim.

Whatever new direction you're aiming for, not being able to redeploy existing employees and letting them go is a failure on your part!

The Mozilla board of directors should be entirely replaced as either corrupt or incompetent.

What they have done is squandered billions and personally pocketed millions. What they haven't done is build a functional organization or compete effectively in the marketplace. It's a slow moving train wreck.

Mozilla is losing the war for internet freedom through gross mismanagement.

It's sad that nothing will likely change until there's a big story or book written. Pre-order "The Mozilla Scandal" today.

What makes me worry is that through a combination of Chrome dominance and bizarre managerial decisions Firefox will eventually be driven to obscurity no matter the technical prowess of its developers; and then we will be stuck with a Webkit monoculture. Back in the days Firefox managed to make a significant dent to the IE dominance, but this time is much more difficult to develop an engine from scratch as the Web is ridiculously more complex than back in 2002 when Firefox initially appeared. And even then Gecko was already in development for a longer time. However I believe that, eventually, a superior engine will appear, maybe even Servo will be the one. But it won't matter any more because even if that engine is better, more secure, etc., Chrome/Webkit will still be good enough for the 99% (if not more) of users.

Relevant videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPgyTzqDJhM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY

People talk as if Mozilla was a true independent alternative to Google Chrome. I often view things through the Golden Rule - " Whoever has the gold, makes the rules." The vast majority of funding for Mozilla comes from Google. They are already financially strapped. The chance of them doing anything significant to upset the web that Google built as free content monetized by tracking advertisements is practically nill.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com