Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulirish | Hacker News Reader

MDN statement a few hours ago: "MDN as a website isn't going anywhere right now. The team is smaller, but the site exists and isn't going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla." [0]

There are tech writers from Google and Microsoft that contribute full-time to MDN. (And it's a wiki, after all, anyone can edit it!)

But yes, very sadly, the Mozilla tech writers that maintain the docs, maintain them, and keep those browser compat tables running so smooth... were part of the layoffs.

You can be sure that the site will find a new home if Mozilla defunds it further. It certainly won't drop off the web.

https://twitter.com/MozDevNet/status/1293647529268006912

View on HN

This is mind blowing. Those docs are the gold standard for creating so much of the web. Does their management understand the gravitas (that word is warranted here) of what it means to lay-off parts of the team in charge of setting, keeping, and raising the bar for creating so much of the internet? This is truly alarming and saddening that some MBA exec who’s in the role because they’re “a people person” and “get tech” is deciding the fate of creating for the internet.

At the same time it isn't Mozilla Corporations obligation to pay people to write a free and open source wiki that doesn't make them any money back.

Even if they were a legitimate software charity the money for those developers has to come from somewhere.

How much money would Microsoft save by cancelling MSDN?

MDN makes the web work better with Firefox. Firefox makes the money.

Of course. It's a necessary sacrifice. That money will go on to support the livelihoods of the most vulrenable and needy of the Mozilla team, namely the C-suite.

"She actually responded to my question about her salary in a q&a and said it was too much of a financial burden to ask of the c-suite to cut their salaries down to $500k“

https://mobile.twitter.com/lizardlucas42/status/129323209098...

Could you imagine a chief something officer only making 500k? They'd be laughed out of the country club, which is against the Geneva convention.

You should start a business and when you need execs you could just pay them what you think is fair, and with the money you save you’ll dominate the competition. Maybe everyone in the world will notice the key to your success and exec pay will be reduced.

Once it became successful the people at the top would organize together to raise their own salaries then maintain that even when economic times change, against the interests of the rest of the company.

That's how it works now. C-suite compensation is set by compensation committees composed of—you guessed it—C-suite executives.

You think you're making a point here, but there's a mistake in your reasoning. You're thinking that "fair" pay is whatever allows you to beat the market, and since if Mozilla only paid its c-suite $300k-$500k, it would not (you think) be able to compete with other companies with high paid execs, this proves that whatever they're paying the execs now must be fair.

But ... "fair" pay does not mean the same thing as "whatever is financially best for the company to pay its employees". Take the other end of that bargain: is it fair for Mozilla to pay their janitors a reproduction level wage? Most of us (except the hard core right-wing libertarians) say no, that's why we have a minimum wage (which many of us also think is too low).

The elision of the distinction between "fair" and "whatever the market rewards you for doing" isn't an argument, it's just crass market-worship.

Edit: this post is pretty clearly argued, and downvoting without even a comment is exactly the kind of ideological nonsense that this site simultaneously prides itself on not doing (contra Reddit), and yet hilariously symbolizes.

Have my upvote. But be aware that the edit at the end will probably trigger the downvote reflex for a number of people here (it did on me too, I just consciously overruled it ;-)

I wish the site would just get rid of downvotes. Your post is constructive and well-written, doesn't say anything egregiously offensive and isn't trolling and doesn't lack effort. The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level. Which is bullshit. You can still respect people who don't share your views, and I wish the site cared to foster that kind of community, instead of promoting another echo chamber.

> The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level.

That's not true, I downvoted the past because it complained at being downvoted.

And you're just as much a part of the problem. You're blindly punishing him for pointing out that the system is unfair und his post is not and was not deserving of downvotes. It has nothing to do with the content of his actual comment. You're not contributing positively in any way. You're just reinforcing that anybody who speaks out or has a different point of view isn't welcome here.

Downvoting complaints about downvotes is an attempt not to have to read complaints about downvotes. But here's another: please don't complain about downvotes!

> The only reason why you're being downvoted is because some people don't agree on an ideological level.

It's a very frustrating thing about this site, because, ironically, most people here think of themselves as nearly perfectly rational and open to new ideas, but in fact the opposite is almost always the case. If I think of myself as perfectly rational, that ironically gives me a way to think that anyone who disagrees with me must be trolling or must be saying something obviously wrong, even if I don't take the time to work out what that might be.

I admittedly added that just to complain, expecting it to trigger another wave of downvotes - because frankly, I don't care about getting downvoted. What I care about is how often this site turns into an ideological echo chamber for one of two popular worldviews, and on some level I wanted to try to call attention to that.

Yes, indeed. If you refresh often enough, you will notice the downvotes for a reasonable post come closest to when it is posted, which makes the post fade and gives the impression that something must be wrong with it. I think there is a very good chance this comes from people wanting to suppress information that does not support their position.

On an individual level the thing to do would be to upvote downvoted posts if they make some sense, they don't have to be great to be upvoted.

If we have a minimum wage, couldn't a maximum wage be constructed within the same realm of arguments?

Many non-C-level job positions already have a maximum wage, in the form of salary scales. Although not government-mandated, they are all calibrated to the same market, so these scales are comparable between competing companies.

Minimum wage actually came out of maximum wage laws in England. After a plague there was a shortage of laborers, which increased the costs of hiring them. A law was instituted to discourage people paying too much for laborers.

Fair pay is whatever allows you to hire a competent c-suite that will allow the company to fulfill its mission. However, this comes with a whole host of problems. How do you identify those that are likely to be able to do the job? How do you keep them at your company? How do you maximize their effectiveness in their role?

This usually comes down to pay. People who get high compensation offers elsewhere are likely to be good at it, but that means you have to compete with other companies for them. Even if you somehow did manage to find somebody that accepts your below market compensation, what do you do if another company just offers them more? If you pay them near market rate then there's much less incentive for another company to poach them. You're also less likely to end up with somebody that can't do the job.

>Airbnb has suspended all of its marketing in an attempt to save $800 million this year. Its founders will also not take any salary for the next six months, and top executives will take a 50 percent pay cut, according to Reuters.

It's one thing to pay market rate for execs who do an excellent job on a rising company for a for-profit, another for a non-profit in decline.

And it's a different thing entirely when it's in a global pandemic and recession. CEOs of FOR PROFIT companies with far more financial success have cut their pay if nothing else as good symbol for the rest of the company.

Mozilla Corporation is not a typical business and is wholly owned by a Non Profit, it should not be competitive with businesses .

Most non profits ( and investment funds) keep an eye on administrative and management overhead. A well run fund or NGO will keep their administrative overhead as low as possible, most donors/ investors look at this metric.

Legal Aid lawyers / social workers or any number of other professions do not / cannot expect a market competitive salary. why is open source development any different ?

if C-suite is only working at Mozilla because they are getting market competitive salary, perhaps they the wrong hire.

90% of Mozilla Corporation revenue comes from one deal, and this has been the case for 10+ years. All the fancy salaries has not prevented Firefox from losing market share, nothing management has been able to do change this, why should they be paid this much ?

If the management has failed to achieve success as is the case , should not also bear the cost ? or also get laid off/ replaced ?

There are examples of this. Satoru Iwata comes to mind as a famous one.

Another one would be an ex exec I know personally (who was also a founder). Worked two years straight w/o pay to keep the company afloat.

Oh and there are also worker cooperatives. They are usually very stable and have a much smaller income gap.

> dominate the competition

The people/companies who operate like this usually don't have this as a goal. Quite the opposite. They are typically collaborative and opt for stability and sustainability over everything else.

ah yes, a foolproof path to change

Usually when you start a business you don’t pay your CEO 2.5 million.

I’d net for most medium sized companies it’s not anywhere near that.

I wonder how things may have played out had Brendan Eich still been at the reins

(Serious comment, not some challenge to test how quickly Godwin's law can be invoked)

If the result of Eich being in charge would have been Firefox being bundled with a cryptocurrency, as Brave is, then I think we dodged a fucking bullet there.

I suspect brave could do things firefox couldn't.. it rather wasn't willing to risk doing.

I suspect adblocking and anti tracking features might have been higher on the list.

Brendan Eich was a decent CTO, as far as I could tell from the outside; while I disagreed with him on some technical details (e.g. single threaded everything didn't seem that great), at least he seemed to be able to justify his decisions. As a CEO of a very public company, though, I feel like he wasn't quite up for the job — mostly in that he couldn't respond to public criticism fast enough and let it build up instead.

I think things would worked out better for everybody if he had stayed as the CTO, but that's the power of hindsight. That and it was under his watch that they didn't invest into mobile early enough (I'm thinking of Minimo here, which would have been for Windows CE — not helpful in itself, but it would have helped slim down Gecko, probably).

Wow--read what she wrote here. As far as I know, before she worked at Mozilla, she reported to Netscape's General Counsel. That is not a super competitive position level.

https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z

"Executive compensation is a general topic -- are execs, esp CEOs paid too much? I'm of the camp that thinks the different between exec comp and other comp is high. So then i think, OK what should mozilla do about it? My answer is that we try to mitigate this, but we won't solve this general social problem on our own.

Here's what I mean by mitigate: we ask our executives to accept a discount from the market-based pay they could get elsewhere. But we don't ask for an 75-80% discount. I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

> That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

s/people and their/me and my

Which is a perfectly reasonable opinion, but in that case maybe it's time to move on to one of the other opportunities, and find someone else for this job.

There are lots of ceos of nonprofits or small companies being paid significantly less. I think the problem is who mozilla is comparing itself with.

Yeah, I feel like the phrasing is just completely wack. It's one thing if the argument is that execs do bring value, and you need to pay that much to have good execs, but

>That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

80% discount sounds like a lot... until you realize her salary is 2.5 million/year. I'm preeetttty sure most families will do just fine on 500k a year.

In a world with 8 billion people nobody can claim to be worth that much money to a company, I would be surprised if there aren't at least 10.000 people in the US alone who would do her job just as well or maybe better and for less than 500K, those kind of salaries always seem result of people being able to set their own salaries or some other kind of poor management.

Ok, so find one.

Pay me to do it and I would (don't worry, I charge much less than 500K to find them)

Wouldn't the market pay you?

On a second read, I see you wrote, "I would be surprised if ...". I don't remember seeing that the first time, but maybe I read too quickly. In that case, I'll turn it around: I'd be surprised if you could find anyone who can supply comparable evidence of competence who'd accept substantially less compensation.

I agree that this statement could be true. But is it provable?

Not quite the same thing, but there was a study a few years ago that should that CEO compensation was inversely correlated with company success.

On the contrary - in a world with 8 billion people it's pretty much guaranteed there's someone worth that much money to a company!

But it's ~hard to know if~ unlikely your CEO is this single person out of 8 billion, especially because you only considered searching in a pool of optimistically maybe 1 thousand candidates.

The graph for skilled people available for any given position with "skill" on the Y axis and "people" in the X axis is not shaped like a triangle like you are imaging, is shaped like a plateau. The only exception are extremely niche skills.

And how would you find one of those 10,000 out of a population of 330,000,000 that will accept less money than her? And how would you then know that they're better than she is? Surely if they're just as good as she is then the opportunities open to her would also be open to the 10,000 people.

> Surely if they're just as good as she is then the opportunities open to her would also be open to the 10,000 people.

No, and to be honest I find it hard to believe anyone believes so; a lot of those positions are picked due being friends with the right people, or coming from the same universities as the people already in executive positions, and other hundreds subjective factors that have little to nothing to do with the actual capabilities needed for the role.

It is a lot of money in absolute terms, for sure. But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much? All this moralizing doesn’t help. You can call people greedy as much as you want, but you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all. People have no obligation to accept a lower than market rate salary, they have hard power leverage in negotiations in the sense that they can easily walk away from deals where you offer such a “low” salary.

It's not moral grandstanding. I don't think the exec team earns their keep. It would be one thing if they were leading a growing non profit (that owns a for profit), but rather they're leading a quickly declining ship, all while their own salaries increase over time while they do a shitty job.

The ceo of MSF, who imo does a great job, is paid 120k a year.

Brian Chesky, AirBNB ceo, is paid $0 right now, because at least he can recognize how tone deaf talking about your companies financial struggles is whole you're still taking full comp.

AirBNB isn't even a public company yet.

Brian Chesky is not merely the CEO of AirBnB, he is also the cofounder with a networth of 4.1 billion dollars.

It is one thing for a literal billionaire, who owns the company to undergo 'hardship' in order to save the company they built over the past 10+ years.

It is a whole other thing for a mere employee to sacrifice their salary during a company downturn. To do so is an act of pure charity---which while it may be inline with ethos of a non-profit worker, isn't something that we as total 3rd parties should expect.

Mitchell Baker is just an "employee", despite her long years of service. She was even fired from Netscape during a round of layoffs, and served as a mere volunteer for years.

This is true, but on the other hand the justification for this compensation is that she is able to get much more elsewhere, so asking her to take less is a sacrifice. If that is true, then maybe she should go elsewhere rather than make the sacrifice. If it isn't true then maybe she is overpaid at present.

Just because accepting the sacrifice might not make sense for the current ceo and family doesn't mean that asking for it doesn't make sense for mozilla.

That’s just asking for Mozilla to fire her because the company did so poorly that other employees were laid off.

I don’t really understand why we should do that... we aren’t stockholders in Mozilla, nor are we customers of them, or even employees. Why should we demand that anyone is fired?

Are we forgetting that Mozilla was a non-profit and that the Corporation was spun off relatively recently to allegedly better support the non-profit's Foundation's mission? In the sense of that mission, all those interested in a decentralized, open web are stakeholders.

If Mozilla is turning around to be a simple, ordinary business, that is quite the shark jump and will in turn lead to a large loss in advocacy. I have no interest in supporting a company just looking to make a quick buck if I'm not compensated.

This is a rather typical structure of the non-profit world.

Mozilla Corporation is a sub of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Foundation controls Mozilla Corporation shares. Mozilla Foundation should based on the bylaws of Mozilla Corporation either have the board fire the C suite or replace the board of the Mozilla Corporation with those that will fire the C suite.

Mozilla Foundation is not doing that because it is not interested in changes. Running a large non-profit is a low effort, low risk, super lucrative job. The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues.

>The only way to affect Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation is for donors refuse to donate for Mozilla Foundation until it addresses the governance issues.

Un(?)fortunately, donations to the Mozilla Foundation are only a few million dollars a year--mostly because they don't do anything particularly interesting. (Seriously--look at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ )

Replacing the leadership of a failing company instead of firing the normal employees who had and have no influence on the decisions driving the companies would actually be a really good idea.

Instead they fired a whole bunch of people to better their finances in the short-term while damning the company in the long-term.

CEO what's-her-face and the other C-level parasites most likely are only trying to press as much money as they can from the company before either the company is completely run into the ground or they're fired.

And fired they should be.

WITHOUT golden parachutes.

Even though I (from my position of very little knowledge) have doubts that the current executive team are providing the right kind of value for a company in Mozilla's position, 'parasites' is strong language for a bunch of people who I'm sure are genuinely just trying to do a good job in a difficult suituation.

If they were capable of doing a good job, would the situation be difficult?

Possibly? Doing the best you can doesn't necessarily mean you'll have an easy time as money rolls in.

Ah.. I don't know how much of a demand it is, but Mozilla being a non-profit and such a big presence in the Open source browser space, I think we all have the right to criticize and even start forks of it if we can afford the time.

> we aren’t stockholders in Mozilla, nor are we customers of them, or even employees. Why should we demand that anyone is fired?

We are their revenue stream.

We are the users, and we are the ones that continue to evangelize Mozilla and Firefox, and we provide support to people looking to make the switch. without us as users of their software and services, where would they be?

What I would like to know is how much of Mozilla's executive pay is linked to performance and how that performance is measured.

I don't think many would complain about their salaries if what they did actually worked. But Mozilla is being run into the ground before our eyes.

If the availability of people with a non-profit ethos affects competitive pay for non-profits, then that should be taken into a account.

Maybe such a person exists to lead Mozilla. But the primary goal should be to find someone who can turn the organisation around. I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that current management can do it.

I really think Brendan Eich would have done an excellent job had he been given a chance.

After all, as much as there are complaints about Brave, he managed to make a legitimately well known contender from scratch in a world that already has seen many other browser attempts go nowhere (and of course, he in some form created and grew Firefox).

Of course, "cancel culture" means you have to throw out someone from being CEO, even if that means the whole internet will suffer greatly, because he had a different opinion than whatever was woke.

Which is a shame, because the net loss to everyone is much much much greater than the $1000 dollars he gave as a donation, even if it is acceptable to destroy someone's life because they have a opinion that disagrees with yours.

What, Brendan Eich, did was comparable to opposing the fair housing act in 1966. At the time, he was a member of the majority vote, fighting to continue oppressing a minority group. While, he no doubt would find support, since he is part of the status quo, it’s still reasonable to protest his actions.

I don’t think his life was destroyed. He remained a multimillionaire, and immediately founded another competing company. The people whose lives were destroyed were the millions who didn’t have basic marriage rights for decades, and who were systematically humiliated merely for openly being in love.

Voting for and supporting the wrong side is part of the democratic process.

As far as we know Eich was never biased or prejudiced on on that topic as work, his co-workers in that minority never even realized that he held such political opinions, and there is no reason to think he thought lesser of them. He simply wished for the laws not to change.

Hate, prejudice, and discrimination are not valid political views. Slavery was once a political issue, and your comment would fit right in with that era also.

> Hate, prejudice, and discrimination are not valid political views.

My point is that there is no indication that hate and prejudice where ever part of Eich's views.

> your comment would fit right in with that era also.

I agree, in that era my comment would have supported people campaigning against slavery in racist states.

> My point is that there is no indication that hate and prejudice where ever part of Eich's views.

Can you explain to me how donating in support of Prop 8 (which would have banned gay marriage) isn't homophobic (and thus hateful, prejudicial, and discriminatory)? Can you explain it in such a way as it would make sense for LGBTQ people but not, say, people of color?

> I agree, in that era my comment would have supported people campaigning against slavery in racist states.

This isn't a good faith response. Being pro-slavery was never a valid political position. It was simply hateful and cruel. We cannot accept stances like this as civil discourse. Any debate over "well, does group of humans X get the same rights as group of humans Y" is done. The answer is always yes.

I am saying that we are conflating some terms. I agree with you that it is discriminatory to bar non-hetero couples from marriage. Given that there is no basis to conflate the intent to be hateful and prejudicial.

Based on the very little information we have this is a case of someone having wrong opinions but not being an actual danger to anyone.

> Can you explain it in such a way as it would make sense for LGBTQ people but not, say, people of color?

no, because I disagree with him and I don't really know of a good reasoning for it. (The only non-contradictory one (a low bar) being that the federal government should not be allowed to decide who can and cannot marry)

Regarding slavery it was a good faith response, also it was tongue-in-cheek response.

> Being pro-slavery was never a valid political position.

It was, it also no longer is, with progress we improve what is a valid position and what is not. Once upon a time in many places abolishing slavery was not a valid political position.

Ultimately these are moral decision that each of us needs to take responsibility for.

Cancel culture is a kind of discrimination, too.

It does seem that way at first, but (stipulating that it's a thing) cancel culture is based on someone's actions. Discrimination is based on someone's attributes that they cannot change, that are fundamental to who they are. This is why deplatforming someone who's being a racist (or a cop, or a Democrat) is not the same as deplatforming someone because they're LGBTQ.

You can go a little further with this into ascribed vs. achieved status [1][2]. I'm not saying achieved status discrimination is good or OK, nor am I saying it isn't. But it's not the same as ascribed status discrimination.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascribed_status

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achieved_status

So you argument "cancel culture is based on someone's actions" and give not some action examples but unrelated achieved status - being a cop or a Democrat?

This stinks and the result is the Brandon Eich and Leni Riefenstahl who did not actually discriminate anyone are given same treatment as other people who were directly responsible for discrimination or genocide.

Do you mean they are not nice political views or tjat they don't fit in the category? Political thought generally has top level values and then more detailed plans drawing from the top level ideas. Discrimination and hate are examples of these high level political values.

Well sure, he owns a 15% share of a company whose current market cap is somewhere around $50 billion. IF, as CEO, he can raise the value of AirBNB by 1%, that's equivalent to a $75 million per year salary.

> The ceo of MSF, who imo does a great job, is paid 120k a year.

I know a few organizations that might fall under that abbreviation. Can you be more specific?

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7.

$63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.

By MSF do you mean medicine sans frontiers(https://www.msf.org/) ??

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/20... page 7.

$63,504 a year for a $400 million organization.

Why don't you ask Brendan Eich how much he was willing to be paid to be CEO?

Being CEO of Mozilla could attract highly qualified, passionate people, who are not primarily driven by "competitive compensation". You know; the same impulse that underlies the whole open source movement.

Brendan Eich was a technie.

These are non-profit execs. They exist to fleece the donors and live off the spoils. It just happened that the non-profit in question has a mission appealing to the technologists.

You will always find a person willing to be called CEO for $500,000. The question is: which skills do you get for that money? Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?

> Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?

With a greater probability than the current management, yes.

> Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?

That question is impossible to answer, but my instinct leans towards ‘yes, potentially’. Even if they do not, they’re still 2M/year better off.

I doubt you would get worse than the current management team.

I find it weird that people so often think that only those who want lots of money can do a good job

> Would you find a person who doesn't fire the MDN team and still keeps Mozilla profitable?

I think there's such people among the engineers at Mozilla, but maybe not among the current execs

If you slightly expand your requirements for recruiting, instead of fighting over existing CEOs, you'll hit tons of qualified people that are not making millions and are not getting offers to make millions. And there's enough of them that if all companies did this the glut of supply would drop median CEO pay like a rock.

There are many CEO that earn a lot less, especially in the non-profit sector. Market rate can be quite misleading when you are including widely different markets with very different goals.

If mozilla want to be more like EFF and focus on the advocacy aspect then maybe they should be similar paid. Even better, merge the two organizations and replace the leadership with the one in EFF. No need to go and look for a CEO willing to be paid 1/10th of current wages as there is already one available doing that now.

> you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all

I can guarantee that you’d find a perfectly willing CEO somewhere in the people laid off now if you told them you’d only pay them 500k.

Apparently [0] the EFF pay their CEO $257,500.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195

The EFF is also about 1/50th the size of Mozilla.

Is CEO pay a function of the number of employees? Then a 25% cut would be justified.

I don't get why we decided at some point you need someone anointed with CEO Fairy Dust to be CEO. I 100% guarantee the job is not so damn hard, subtle, or complex that practically no-one on Earth can do it. There are probably 20 people at Mozilla right now (haha, OK, maybe not anymore) who could step into the role and would gladly do so at $500,000/yr. Unless the responsibilities, procedures, and state of things at that level is so poorly understood and documented that someone else coming in would have to start from scratch, which seems like a massive organizational failure if that's the case.

It's. Just. A. Job.

I suspect this is yet another manifestation of the crippling, organizationally-irrational-but-individually-rational levels of risk avoidance we're operating under now.

The elevation of CSuite as magical makers of wealth, when most of that value is created by the organization, needs to stop. Good leadership is important, but CEO comp is completely atrocious and unsustainable. Especially if the alternative is to lay off a ton of employees just to maintain operations.

We can see it right here how it’s killing a value generation vehicle. The CEO won’t accept a pay cut, but is willing to shut down entire product lines. A similar story has played out across America.

The market rate for CE* jobs is set by ... other people who have CE* jobs.

I have a suspicion the supply side of this market equation is artificially constrained by people who have an interest (social and financial) in keeping it so, and that is part of why we've seen CEO pay go up so much in the last few decades.

There are plenty of people who could do well in the CEO job at most companies—no worse than the average we're getting now, anyway. There are far fewer "CEO types".

Developer here. I'd be very happy to take a paycut to work at Mozilla - until yesterday's announcement, that was actually my explicit medium-term career goal. I'd be there for the mission, and I would expect the same for the C-level.

I feel like the CEO is absolutely in the wrong here. If they're making 20x what a technical writer or tester is making, it absolute is a bad look not to take a paycut when you're sending 250 people into the street.

You can call people greedy as much as you want, but you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all.

There would be a very long queue of people willing to do any of the C-suite jobs for $500k.

I wonder how the 'market' rate was estimated. Was it compared to other non-profit org, or just picked some random SV ones?

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-execu...

Or $800k. Or $1m. Or $1.2m.

The $2.5m -> $500k is an easy soundbite, but it doesn't have to even be that drastic.

Granted, shaving 'only' $1m off might only allow you to 'save', say 8-12(?) jobs, but... that's 8-12 people, some with families

Yes but would they be the right people? You know. The right ones. Who are friends with members of the board, and are therefore already rich enough and socialized such that they can be friends with members of the board.

> But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much?

Why should their CEO get any money and not a pink slip? Their mismanagement and financial games caused the company to have to lay off 250 people.

The situation seems to create a paradox where any new CEO will expect that much or more to risk the career/reputation damage of not being able to save it if they take over.

> It is a lot of money in absolute terms, for sure. But why should a CEO accept “a lot of money”, if elsewhere they can get 5x as much? All this moralizing doesn’t help. You can call people greedy as much as you want, but you have to pay market rate or you can’t find a CEO at all. People have no obligation to accept a lower than market rate salary, they have hard power leverage in negotiations in the sense that they can easily walk away from deals where you offer such a “low” salary.

This is not about an abstract CEO. This is about a CEO who is a total utter failure that could only get this job in a non-profit/corp hybrid.

"...you can’t find a CEO at all..."

Would that be a bad thing? How? I'm sure somebody would step up to make decisions, and you never know, they might actually be competent. The odds don't seem markedly worse.

You seriously underestimate how important it is to have a good leader in a large organization. No, making everything flat won't magically make things work.

Github was leaderless for a long time. And during that period it was chaos. The company had no direction, employees were doing random, incoherent things. And multiple factions fought for power.

Sure, but it does mean due to her following her personal convictions her family has 2 million less to spend.

For every job, market rates are a thing. Yes, of course you will be able to fill just about any c-role at just about any rate. But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.

And yes, there are other factors at play. Mitchell Baker brings it up: The kind of work you do matters not only to you but also to c-level people and will be priced into the pay.

Who around here (who is also actually qualified enough, that mozilla would want them) would switch over, taking a 50% pay cut over their current pay, right now? Don't tell me you couldn't. Of course you could. Would it mean changing your life style? I am sure it would. But then again, that's a apparently cool to randomly ask of people who (I am assuming) earn a lot more than you do.

There are two reasonable options: You either come to terms with reality, or you change reality. The later means, in this particular case, enticing someone qualified (which includes a) being capable b) willing and c) in a social position to actually "apply" for the job) and to do it for less. Good luck.

> Yes, of course you will be able to fill just about any c-role at just about any rate. But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.

How do you measure how good a CEO is? Is having to let go 25% of your staff, axing the security team and stopping new developments indicative of good performance?

In isolation, no.

In context of mozillas goals, challenges that arise when leading a company, and limited influence on the movement of the world, maybe. I doubt that either of us is close enough to the ground to realistically be a judge of that.

Maybe that’s why c level employees should be compensated on reaching certain targets, rather than getting at least a million a year. Because, if you are the captain of a schip, you should drown with it if it capsized.

No, they should not. Nobody should ever drown.

It's all bullshit. There's almost no measure by which particular CEOs are better than the average/random. Much like investors: almost no investors can be said to be consistently better than the average, i.e. the distribution follows what you would expect if everyone is doing decisions at random. Despite that, we still believe there are objectively good CEOs or investors (apart from a very small minority) who therefore deserve their outrageous compensation for their leadership and decision skills.

Just look at the amount of CEOs who got international industry awards or recognition, who some years later tanked their companies or were found to be engaged in criminal practices.

> But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.

I would say that's a very naive view that idealizes the process (and I say that as someone who is very pro market), especially as you rise up in ranks and especially in this instance where a non-profit is failing to execute on their core mission.

I've seen people go from board advisors in relatively large companies to IKEA store workers or long term unemployment. It's more about who you know and how you play politics than your ability to provide value to the entity, a lot of politics gets played the higher you climb. The market value for these people could very well be higher this still has nothing to do with the value they provide in their current role - it could very well be that a less qualified (in general market terms) person could be a better fit for this unique organisation.

> very naive view

Yes, I think so too.

The more money that gets involved, the more this'll attract people who care about money, not the mission.

I'd expect execs at bigger companies to be less good execs, but better at office politics and impressions.

Or take worker control of a business run by vampires.

Your vision of a better world is miopic.

> Who around here (who is also actually qualified enough, that mozilla would want them) would switch over, taking a 50% pay cut over their current pay, right now?

I think among the engineers you'll find a bunch of qualified people for that job.

Speaking from some personal experience at another company (a small one, 20-30 people).

Execs good at giving a good impression, and making money for themselves.

Presidents good at winning the elections.

But that's a bit unrelated to being good for the company. Or the people in the country.

I think/guess that some altruistically motivated engineers could save Mozilla and Firefox if they got to replace the current execs.

The thing is, mozillas market share is in steady decline, while Bakers salary goes steadily up.

And the tech people who are the ones who actually do the tech work, people expect of mozilla have to go.

I don't know any universe, where this sounds right.

"I think CEO pay is too high. See, I'm one of the good ones! What will I do about it? Well, a couple years back I learned I'm actually being being underpaid, so in a way I've already made a sacrifice. You're welcome!"

If they would bring results it could be another story...

I'm certainly not getting paid what she is, but she isn't getting paid what she could get elsewhere.

If someone came along and offered me significantly more money than I make now I would take it, despite liking my current position well enough. My family would also want me to take it. And I believe that basically most of the people here complaining about her would do the same - move to a new job if they got offered more, not want to get a pay cut to stay in the job they are at.

I certainly wouldn't work most places for 5 times less than I make now, and if I did it would be because I expected to recoup that loss somehow.

She stated what is the normal way for most people - to try to maximize their gains - at a time when it is somewhat gauche to state that.

I would agree up to perhaps £100k (or perhaps £150k in an expensive place like SF) but beyond that I think there are very diminishing returns to wealth and other things, like vision/purpose and relationships dominate decision-making. (Well obviously not for everyone, but for a lot of people.)

> I'm certainly not getting paid what she is, but she isn't getting paid what she could get elsewhere.

Sure, but then what happens if she leaves due to small compensation (or for any other reason)?

To me it looks like "not much". She doesn't exactly have some stellar track record in the past few years.

I think you're probably right about the "not much" but I'm not sure if the lack of success for Mozilla is not so much due to incompetence of the management as it is to the much stronger position of Google; some battles cannot be managed to win, only managed to decrease the loss.

> As far as I know, before she worked at Mozilla, she reported to Netscape's General Counsel. That is not a super competitive position level.

That's a bit of a harsh reading of her career. 26 years ago, she was one of the first legal hires at Netscape and reported to the Netscape CEO initially. Her reporting to the General Counsel was an artifact of scale after that - while reporting to the General Counsel, she also created and headed Netscape's tech-focused legal team. So it's not like she went from "mediocre legal position to Mozilla exec".

She's also been with Mozilla essentially since the beginning. When Netscape open sourced their software and formed Mozilla, she was put in charge as the general manager of it. After AOL bought Netscape and decided to stop their corporate stewardship of Mozilla, she's the one that formed the Foundation[1] to migrate all of the Mozilla assets to[2]. And she did that 17 years ago, when Firefox/Mozilla had very little market adoption and low single digit browser share.

A plausible alternate reality without her could have involved AOL cutting all support for Mozilla, the Mozilla projects going into a state of limbo (with no more corporate support and uncertainty of even legal usage of their existing names/logos), the dev community around those projects either fracturing or fizzling out as a result of the uncertainty, and Internet Explorer retaining 95+% of the browser market.

It's entirely possible someone else would have stepped up and performed the role she did. But in the end she's the one that did it, and her contributions in the early days of Mozilla certainly warrant her current executive position (and the associated salary that comes with it).

That's not to say she isn't overpaid - virtually all executives are overpaid. But she's at least contributed enough to Mozilla since the beginning to get to the point she's at now. That said, many companies are having their executives take pay haircuts to soften the blow of the current environment and mitigate the need or severity of layoffs. The fact that she chose not to do that for Mozilla is incredibly disappointing.

[1] The original Articles of Incorporation from 2003 lists her as the sole incorporator of the foundation: https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-articles-...

[2] This may not sound like much, but those assets were things like the legal rights to the branding of Mozilla and Mozilla projects. Without this, Firefox (et al) would have either had to completely rebrand and reset consumer mindshare, or keep using the Firefox name/logo and hope AOL (or a rando AOL exec) never decides to exert their power and kick up a fuss.

That wasn't my point--I know she has a long history with Mozilla. Rather, there is no evidence that should would otherwise be commanding "competitive" CEO pay commensurate with Mozilla's size otherwise. Her work history pre-Mozilla would not make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5 million dollar position, at least IMHO.

Just because she contributed significantly in some ways years ago does not make her a particularly plausible choice as CEO, much less such a highly paid one. I can say Blake Ross was just as important in making Firefox a success...doesn't mean he would be a good CEO candidate, nor that he should be paid a "market competitive" salary.

It's anecdotal I know--but she is not particularly popular within the ranks of Mozilla, nor has she shown any particular business acumen outside of striking search deals with Yahoo/Google which arguably are only a function of Firefox's market share...which has continued to decline. And speaking for myself, I'm not impressed with her work at the Foundation either....it comes off a very superficial, and "we don't know what we should spend the money we get on, so let's hand it out to "Fellows", put together conferences, and write reports" nobody reads.

> A plausible alternate reality without her could have involved AOL cutting all support for Mozilla, the Mozilla projects going into a state of limbo (with no more corporate support and uncertainty of even legal usage of their existing names/logos), the dev community around those projects either fracturing or fizzling out as a result of the uncertainty, and Internet Explorer retaining 95+% of the browser market.

Ummm...webkit? Also,it's somewhat ironic you point to the non-profit foundation as her success story, while she makes "market rate" pay by virtue of her being CEO of the "for-profit" side of things.

> That wasn't my point--I know she has a long history with Mozilla. Rather, there is no evidence that should would otherwise be commanding "competitive" CEO pay commensurate with Mozilla's size otherwise. Her work history pre-Mozilla would not make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5 million dollar position, at least IMHO.

Of course her work history prior to Mozilla wouldn't make her a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive position. But that's a bit of a false premise, as the Mitchell of today has nearly two decades of executive experience that she did not have prior to Mozilla. If you include the totality of her career (inclusive of Mozilla), she very much does have the work history to be a strong candidate for market rate executive positions.

That being said, it does seem like she's just coasting on her prior momentum and is no longer materially contributing anything of value to Mozilla. In which case, Mozilla would be better served with her stepping down and someone else taking the reins. But that'd be true irrespective of whether she was paid market rate or below.

> Ummm...webkit?

I said it was a plausible alternative, not that it was the only one. Both KHTML (itself spurred by Mozilla's release[1]) and Webkit after Apple forked KHTML, could have also destabilized Microsoft's browser dominance. But I'm not very confident either of them would have done so - KHTML may not have had the resources to achieve what Firefox did, while Apple had the resources but Webkit at the time was only targeting Apple's Mac platform.

> Also,it's somewhat ironic you point to the non-profit foundation as her success story, while she makes "market rate" pay by virtue of her being CEO of the "for-profit" side of things.

In the context of her success story, you can't look at each side in a vacuum. The for-profit side only exists because the non-profit side created it as a wholly owned subsidiary. And the non-profit would never have been able to grow Mozilla to where it's at today without having created the for-profit. The hybrid structure thus optimized Mozilla's potential and has generated billions more in income than Mozilla otherwise would have, while also protecting those billions from being syphoned off by private owners or public shareholders, allowing it to be re-invested into Mozilla's mission. Taken as a whole, it's a point of success that bolsters her case for being a strong recruiting choice for a $2.5m executive role.

[1] KHTML's development wasn't predicated on Mozilla, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tldf1rT0Rn0 gives the impression that Mozilla's existence nudged it out of a development lull

You assume that the c-suite care about the mission, etc more than money. They have "enough".

Imagine that c-suite types may just work for the salary, too, like many of the fellow engineers among the readership of this site. They care about the mission, but they also care about making enough money to support their other obligations (like family and kids) and tend to choose a well-paying place when they can. They try to sell their skills and knowledge not very much below the market rate.

Let's say: hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k? It's close to the US national average, it should be "enough". If you think $60k is too little, ask your colleagues from EU, from India, to say nothing of Africa.

I bet some very mission-driven engineers will remain. But a lot would eventually leave.

Same applies to a lot of values of x in CxO. And you do want highly qualified people there.

These are exceptional times. The original Mozilla posts mentioned the effects COVID19 had on their business.

CEOs of much larger companies, with much larger salaries, have cut or take no salary. Here's a short list of some

Lyft, Fiat Chrysler, GE, Delta, Alaska Airlines, United, Southwest, Jetblue, AirBnB, GE, NBA

How is it not incredibly tone deaf to cut 25% of the company and not at least in a token gesture temporarily eliminate your salary when you're literally a multimillionaire.

---

Also,

>And you do want highly qualified people there.

That would be one thing if Mozilla was in a period of great growth. But it's not; it's in steady decline. Yet c-suite salary has grown in inverse proportion. Highly qualified? Are they?

Those no salarie/$1 salarie CEOs sound oh so noble but they are usually compensated very well with stock options and so it's mostly just a facade of giving a

As long as the stocks have value and are not depreciating.

Given that capital gains are taxed at lower rates then income, its actually a tax-avoidance schema above everything else.

no it's not, unless you can point me at the CEOs receiving more options in lieu of their pay, otherwise it really is a pay cut, even if they're still getting rich, they're getting rich at a decreased rate and that is money they'll never see by taking $1 salary for the year.

It probably takes more skills to get the company from decline into growth. So as a company in decline you want great leadership.

So maybe until you prove your worth as great leader that gets company from decline into growth, your salary shouldn't keep growing by the millions?

Then they wouldn't take the job though. Why take the risk of getting less pay to do a more difficult job? It's not like companies are always fixable.

500K !== 60K

500k / 2.5M < 60k / 100k

This is completely out of touch with the reality of life. 500k is enough to live in luxury anywhere, 60k won't be enough to survive in most tech areas.

I was only suggesting that GP's argument cannot be dismissed (i.e. still holds) by merely emphasizing that 500k is not 60k, with no further judgment or opinion.

The marginal utility of a dollar decreases as the absolute number of dollars increases. The only way 2.5 million can provide significantly more utility than 500k (i.e not going towards a mansion in Atherton) is if the person making that much is giving it forward to a large network of friends, family and charities.

> Imagine that c-suite types may just work for the salary, too

That's fine, and if people decided that, I would respect that decision. In which case they could resign, and Mozilla get people willing to work for $500,000.

> hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k?

The problem is you might severely limit your talent pool, to a much greater extent than a cap of $500k would do.

> If you think $60k is too little, ask your colleagues from EU, from India, to say nothing of Africa.

Maybe Mozilla should hire more people in those places, if they need to do so to save money.

> Maybe Mozilla should hire more people in those places, if they need to do so to save money.

They did hire from places with cheaper labor cost, such as Taiwan. They still got axed.

> In which case they could resign, and Mozilla get people willing to work for $500,000.

Exactly. Firing so many people means it's time to reconsider the structure and ambition of the company,and that includes considering whether to compensate the ceo at the level of charity ceos or at the level of successful tech ceos.

> Let's say: hey engineers, how about cutting your salary to $60k?

You can't make this comparison, as $60k are not even enough to survive in many areas of the US, while $500k would still be enough to live in luxury no matter where you live.

"And you do want highly qualified people there."

Why, do you know any?

To be fair, she could bring her salary to 0, and that still would only afford to bring back ~8 out of the 250 developers.

Yes, as a regular developer I think 2.5 mil is pretty crazy for a salary. But even if the C-suite "tightened their belts", that wouldn't bring the company around.

Maybe the company _would_ fall apart, as they say, or close enough. I don't know. If you followed the news by Mozilla over the years, you could notice the trouble they had with finding the next CEO, multiple times.

In the meantime, if MDN is the "gold standard" and so on, where were all the donations to Mozilla from developers around the world to keep the site running?

It's extremely self-serving to ask the employees of an essentially public good company to reduce their salaries to be able to produce the said public good.

Personally, I worry about the death of Servo the most. But if a more niche concern, apparently.

I don't see how a non profit ends up paying so much for a CEO? People take huge pay cuts to work at a non profit. why should a CEO be different? Especially at a time like this?

In Russia it’s called budget sawing. They got money revenue, they’re doing absolute minimum to keep it and distribute rest of money among few wealthy people.

That's because Mozilla is run like any other Silicon Valley company. Not like a non-profit.

It's a for-profit company, that happens to be owned by a non-profit instead of shareholders, but that doesn't change the way they operate.

Even a for profit company will freeze / cut executive pay when there business is doing bad . Look at airbnb recently for example .

If it was like any other for profit company , investors would have fired the management for losing market share and failing to diversify the revenues they make .

Why is the leadership still being paid handsomely even though the org is in decline?

Isn't it time for new leadership or at least cut the leadership salaries and provide a bonus once the org is growing again?

The 2million / year salary - but no results and getting rid of people who add real value - is like an insult to those people who support / donate and root for Mozilla.

Mozilla is a mission driven org and for the CEO not to take a paycut to save some of those job losses - just looks very bad from an outsider's perspective.

>Does their management understand the gravitas (that word is warranted here)

What if management wants to move away from web development and concentrate on satellite technologies like email and VPN?

This may have been the straw that broke the camel's back for me. It's looking more and more like trying to restructure and return to their mission the powers that be at mozilla are killing most of the things that make it great in hopes of a few remaining things will keep it afloat a while longer while they stuff their bank accounts as the nonprofit whithers on the vine.

> MDN as a website isn't going anywhere right now. The team is s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶e̶r̶gone, but the site exists and isn't going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla.

Fixed it.

Edit: Dug up the tweet, the author of it posted an update, doesn't acknowledge the statement about the team being "smaller". I suspect it's not exactly a team anymore. https://twitter.com/jasnell/status/1293524408628203523

Tangentially, there's a similar post from the devtools team at https://twitter.com/FirefoxDevTools/status/12936787391175761...

"Hi friends, Firefox Developer Tools will not be going away. We will be a smaller team and will share more details later when we have them."

Oh man, does that meant he developer version of the browser is on the block? I JUST found out about that too :/

Isn't it just a build flavor with a few different defaults and produced from a different commit?

Firefox Developer Edition is built from the branch as Firefox Beta with some different settings. AFAIK it just has a different theme and extra debug assertions enabled.

It also lets you run extensions that are not from the Mozilla Addons site, there is no option for that in the standard edition.

That would be one of the different settings. For running unlisted extensions, iirc it's actually pretty trivial to get one signed; back when they abandoned Shumway it didn't take me more than a few minutes with the command line to get a signed xpi that I then installed on several computers. I might be remembering wrong, though.

If you read the internal PDF, it's very clear that they reduce money spent for developers and increase money to get end-users.

It's explicitly written as their "step 1".

I don't envy Firefox here... despite being fan-favorite of nerds, it is just about 9% on desktop and declining, while <1% on mobile.

In total, it is less than 1 percentage point more popular than Samsung Internet (the weird bundled Chrome thing on Samsung, with 3 percents).

As raganwald put it on Twitter: "MDN remaining while the team is let go is a little like a band firing all of its members, but putting out a press release that they will continue to record and tour under the same name."

> And it's a wiki, after all, anyone can edit it!

I wonder if Mozilla is counting on the MDN people they just laid off to continue updating MDN, but on someone else’s dime?

As a previous contributor to MDN, I hope this change adds stability if nothing else. I stopped contributing after several ID/auth backend changes, thereby losing my credibility and contribution histories... repeatedly.

New people besides Wil would come in and have absolutely no respect for community contributions.

If the documents are only maintained by people working on WebKit/Chromium browsers chances are that’s going to solidify that engines status as the de facto standard even more, unfortunately.

how can I download MDN ?

wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent

Reply on news.ycombinator.com