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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

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