Mozilla has fired their Chief Product Officer after cancer diagnosis
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The details are here, he posted this link a while back: https://www.geekwire.com/2024/mozillas-product-chief-sues-th...
With some crazy quotes;
On April 24, the suit says, Mozilla formally proposed to demote Teixeira to senior vice president of technology strategy, with a 40% reduction in total compensation. He declined to accept the role change. He had not requested additional flexibility related to his diagnosis, the suit says.
The suit alleges that Chambers [new CEO] pressed ahead, informing other Mozilla leaders about the demotion, and telling Teixeira’s direct reports that “it would be tough for him to continue to run a large team because of his health,” despite lacking his consent to share information about his health with others inside the company.
I've seen constructive dismissal discussed for even adding on-call to someone who was hired without on-call requirements, unilaterally. The logic being "You're suddenly asking me to be paged at any time when on call, that wasn't part of the job description", and it is paramount to effectively "firing and re-hiring" a person in another role without their permission.
Why I mention legal jurisdictions, and the above example, is because some US states are 'at will' employment states. In such a state, you can just fire anyone at any time, and thus the whole "fired and re-hired" thing doesn't kick in... as the 'fire' part is a-ok.
People have contracts in such states, typically, especially at a CPO executive level. So I really wonder here, will this be more about breach of contract?
(Of course, there are other issues. The disclosure of medical info... that's just bizarre, and smacks of massive inexperience and lack of judgement, if true)
If a company decides to change that then you must agree to the new contract, or they risk legal action. If you don't then their options are keep you where you are or fire you, and of course firing someone is it's own minefield, as shown here.
Most places, work happens at the whim of the employer (and, for what little it’s worth, the whim of the employee): employment is “at-will,” states are “right-to-work,” and so on.
Don’t know about others, but I’ve never once in my life signed a contract to work in the US.
In most cases employment in the US is at-will and does not involve a formal employment contract: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
If paid hourly, you're typically entitled to 1.5x pay after 40 hours of work. Salaried exempt status are not mandated overtime pay.
What hours you work depends. Salaried is expecting a job to be done regardless of the hours to complete. Hourly is a mixed bag of "the schedule for next week is posted every Tuesday" (common in restaurants) or routine hours long-term (such as shift work in factories).
It's awkward to try to explain, but here are some pros and cons from other people. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditForGrownups/comments/16606tt/...
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/employ...
>When you hire staff, you should provide them with a written contract or an equivalent written statement confirming their working conditions
The fact it can be a statement rather than a contract may have an impact on the companies ability to change it at any given time without agreement from the employee, but I'm not an EU employment lawyer
When covid started, my company gave all employees annexes to reduce our pay by 20%, but keep our workload the same. I told 2 bosses, the HR employee and the director of HR mobbing me I will not sign and to piss off. I was the only one to do so out of ~150 employees. I kept my full salary until I quit my job because I don't like working for cunts.
In my country, which is in the EU, having someone work for you without a contract is a crime. Because by not having a contract you're denying them rights such as pension contribution, paid vacation, health insurance etc.
Plus you have to pay taxes on salary, so if you hire them "on a handshake" as it were, you're probably doing tax evasion too.
Whilst this will make the square root of no difference, I don't want to support Mozilla with this sort of behaviour going on, so what do I do for a web browser now? I switched back to Firefox as my main browser some years ago because, well, Google and privacy concerns related to them. What now? Brave is dicey. Opera? SeaMonkey (which I think may nowadays be independent of Mozilla)?
The thing is I do a lot of web development so I need a browser that offers an at least decent developer experience on macOS.
Firefox forks are another option, depending on your reasons for avoiding the original.
any examples? if you mean crypto and ads then these are opt in last time i checked.
Keep using Firefox (with uBO installed), but disable "Pocket" and switch off all the telemetry.
But I have the whole “revolution” thing to fall back on, which is a nice emotional safety blanket. Boycotts are already very tough to use effectively, so I don’t have a ton of hope for using them without a real ethical alternative…
> B) you can “decline to accept” a demotion??
You probably can't simply decline it but you can certainly argue against it and if necessary sue in the courts depending on what your employment contract says. If he resigns then I think under UK law it is arguable that it is constructive dismissal:
"Constructive dismissal
Constructive dismissal is when you’re forced to leave your job against your will because of your employer’s conduct.
The reasons you leave your job must be serious, for example, they:
- do not pay you or suddenly demote you for no reason
- force you to accept unreasonable changes to how you work - for example, tell you to work night shifts when your contract is only for day work
- let other employees harass or bully you "
https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/unfair-and-constructive-dismiss...
That it looks like that he refused as the proposition looks unsolicited.
Maybe I should donate some time and money to Ladybird...
Plus early 2010s Nokia management.
From what I've heard, despite explicitly opting out of telemetry, it often makes requests to “laptop-updates.brave.com” which is actually also used for affiliates.
Usage of Brave indirectly helps Chrome become a better product, by significantly increasing stability and security of the chromium-base, sucking up resources that couldve also been spent on a more privacy-friendly browser alternative.
Apple and Google do not share code post-fork, and Apple denies Google ~30% of the browser market, so using "mono-" is wrong. Google has a search monopoly, but not quite a browser and definitely not a browser engine monopoly.
The KHTML/WebKit lineage is more a monoculture in its older parts, but I say this is evolution in action (cf. successful alleles and haplogroups across many populations).
So we are not "contributing" much to any monoculture or monopoly, and the alternative is dying on the wrong hill, as I just posted. Any substantive response?
I use scare quotes around rewards and earn because those are my trigger words for projects I should walk away from.
As for update pings, all browsers automate this to avoid the plague that was IE, layered like sediment from IE6 on across the chart of browsers hitting websites, creating horrendous attack surface that was actively exploited, due to lack of auto-updates.
> resigned shortly after his appointment due to pressure over his firm opposition to same-sex marriage[0]
No thanks.
I hope Firefox/Thunderbird survives current day Mozilla.
Replace "tech" with "business" (because it is), and there'll be the answer. And it is probable "Rarely, but usually no".
I'd wait for some more details before jumping to any conclusions.
My prayers goes to steve for a healthy recovery.
If I worked somewhere I didn't feel I could tell my employer, it would demonstrate a lack of trust and a toxic relationship. I wouldn't want to work there.
I typically disclose it during interview, and disclose even to recruiters that I need a day off or two once a month for health reasons. ( I don't tend to go into details until later in interview if I feel like it's going well. )
Does it close some doors? Yes, absolutely. I had one recruiter tell me that their client was "startup-y" so perhaps I "wouldn't have the stamina" for it. I insisted I was very capable, but they made their excuses (they lied that they'd send through the job spec) and left.
But that's their loss.
In EU you just go and take a sick leave from the doctor, no one at work needs to know what health issue you have.
I'd rather negotiate that into my contract than have a lot of sick days.
I remember when I decided to fully ditch Google, and today it'll be Mozilla. It's a fucking shame - a company that I've placed A LOT of hope in some years ago.
Privacy, like security, is a trade-off between being easy to use and painfully annoying. Firefox tends towards the "easy-to-use" side, while things like LibreWorld slide to the "painful" side. That's not a bad thing, but most users won't want to deal with it.
In the end, you're still supporting Firefox, which is really just Google in a clown costume.
TL;DR: We need more browser engine choice.
Completely ditching the Firefox core browser is probably not really possible. I'm not 100% sure how comparable the degoogled Chromium's are to something like LibreWolf, but something in me just doesn't want to switch to anything Google related again.
My hopes are in something completely new, something that Firefox once was, like a browser built from Servo (which was a Mozilla project, https://servo.org/), or Ladybird. But until they're ready to use for day-to-day-use we got to wait some more years, I fear.
I don't like Mozilla.
It exists due to Google's funding. Mozilla barely makes much else otherwise.
So not very hard, assuming Google continues to sponsor it.
Does Mozilla breakdown what % of Google revenue is going towards Firefox development?
~80%
So at least in 2021 at best it was 30% of revenue on developing Firefox. They spent 30m on marketing and branding.
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
They have 370M in bank if I read correctly. And further 680M worth of various financial instruments like securities etc.
"governance", "marketing" and drama.
I never liked Mozilla leadership in many, many years. It never was the point, really. The only thing that matters always was Firefox, and the only real question was if there is anything better. I don't claim to have an answer to that question (let's just say there were multiple occasions when I considered switching, but never did), but I can tell you for sure, whatever it is, it couldn't have changed because of this guy's demise.
Siding with him feels kinda ironic in a way. It was unsightly when it was about Brendan Eich or servo team, because these are technical people, who created something of value, which is why Mozilla exist. But this guy is basically the very same "evil Mozilla leadership" who only turned out on the bottom side of the internal corporate games. He isn't the one who created Firefox, or JavaScript, or Rust, or anything. He worked in Microsoft for 14 years, not in Mozilla. I'm not even sure I can recollect, how exactly Firefox changed in the past 2 years (except for Translate button, this was nice). Which is probably a good sign, but still, I don't know any reason to cheer for this guy. He is just a dude with cancer, that's basically his only "defence". Defence against... being demoted? Oh, come on. I wonder if his compensation decreased by 40% is less than the total cost of the former Servo team. (And just by the way, the fact I am constantly mentioning Servo doesn't mean I am blaming Mozilla for that decision. It surely wasn't nice, but it is understandable. Firefox is free to use, never financially viable, doesn't have any plans to become financially viable. It is a miracle of sorts that Google still agrees to sponsor them.)
And having something like this in his defence speech:
> He questioned the need for the layoffs and raised concerns about the potential to disproportionately impact women and people of color
Well, it surely doesn't make me more sympathetic.
Article should maybe point straight to the Geekwire piece at [1].
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2024/mozillas-product-chief-sues-th...
I hope Steve wins the case in the courts and receives a hefty compensation that includes Mozilla paying for all his medical expenses and several years of wages.
Often the people who are fervently in favour of DEI initiatives (rather than in a relaxed way, like ordinary people who wish for equity and inclusion) will make the accommodations only if that person is labelled, diagnosed and if they don't behave “like an asshole”.
The annoying thing is that Autism itself is a disorder, largely because the people suffering find it difficult to follow social cues, steer away from taboo subjects and are largely “too honest”. Which to people who did not grow up with Autists (I did) will seem like they’re “being assholes”.
I find this to be the highest form of hypocrisy, as disorders such as high levels of autism are expressly considered a part of DEI initiatives and DEI branding, and some fervent DEI supporters will cosplay Autism- when in reality, like all people, they’re on the spectrum but not severely impacted.
I find it hard to take this group seriously when they so blatantly disregard broader, universal, accommodations around reading speech charitably to include people so supposedly core to their endeavours.
Sidenote: Often those who are loudest here are the least likely to try to understand; I’m 100% certain they will downvote this rather than telling me I am wrong, because I’m not wrong and it makes them uncomfortable.
>I find this to be the highest form of hypocrisy
I've come to find that the best people are the guys who say "good afternoon" and "god bless you" to me when we're just randomly passing each other down the grocery aisle. Small things that might brighten someone's day; I do my best to return the favour and pay it forward too. It really does cost nothing to be nice.
On the other hand, I've come to find the people who scream about discrimination and equity and other nonsense are almost always the most discriminatory and unfair individuals. Utter hypocrisy.
We definitely need rules against discrimination at work and ways to deal with it when it happens. People should absolutely speak up if they see or experience discrimination.
But the thing is, real kindness and respect should be at the heart of all this. We need both the rules and people actually being decent to each other. It's not one or the other, it's both; hence the false dichotomy.
Dividends and Equities with Interest for Mitchell Baker?
Look, this was such a cheap shot I would be offending Mozilla to not take it.
A popular conspiracy is that since these companies have to fulfil some amount of diversity quota, they hire mostly graduate girls in India, since that's cheaper than hiring "diverse" candidates in USA or EU. Don't know how true it is.
Interestingly there's no other "diversity" other than gender diversity talked by Indian hiring managers.
This industry is a joke.
So if this story is true, believe me when I say with the utmost conviction that Mozilla is fucking evil.
Not surprising, but still.
I can't wait for Ladybird and the Servo web browser to mature so I can distance myself from this garbage company.
(No, Chrome-based browsers aren't a compelling alternative and I don't use Apple devices.)
I was about to suggest Midori, but it seems that it’s a firefox derivative now. :/
then them moving towards advertising "[looking to hire someone] passionate about display advertising in Mozilla products",
then starting to abandon the whole reason they exist (https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/remember-when-mozilla-made-...), and now this kind of shit.
Mozilla, the company, has been a dumpster fire for a long time.