Mozilla Foundation Lays Off 30% Staff, Drops Advocacy Division (techcrunch.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a "relentless onslaught of change." When reached by TechCrunch, Mozilla Foundation's communications chief Brandon Borrman confirmed the layoffs in an email. "The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward," read the statement shared with TechCrunch.
According to its annual tax filings, the Mozilla Foundation reported having 60 employees during the 2022 tax year. The number of employees at the time of the layoffs was closer to 120 people, according to a person with knowledge. When asked by TechCrunch, Mozilla's spokesperson did not dispute the figure. This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of employees who work on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser. [...] Announcing the layoffs in an email to all employees on October 30, the Mozilla Foundation's executive director Nabiha Syed confirmed that two of the foundation's major divisions -- advocacy and global programs -- are "no longer a part of our structure." The move, according to Syed, is in part to produce a "unified, powerful narrative from the Foundation," including revamping the foundation's strategic communications. "Our mission at Mozilla is more high-stakes than ever," said Syed. "We find ourselves in a relentless onslaught of change in the technology (and broader) world, and the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical."
"Navigating this topsy-turvy, distracting time requires laser focus -- and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that has gotten us this far because it won't get us to the next peak. Lofty goals demand hard choices."
According to its annual tax filings, the Mozilla Foundation reported having 60 employees during the 2022 tax year. The number of employees at the time of the layoffs was closer to 120 people, according to a person with knowledge. When asked by TechCrunch, Mozilla's spokesperson did not dispute the figure. This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of employees who work on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser. [...] Announcing the layoffs in an email to all employees on October 30, the Mozilla Foundation's executive director Nabiha Syed confirmed that two of the foundation's major divisions -- advocacy and global programs -- are "no longer a part of our structure." The move, according to Syed, is in part to produce a "unified, powerful narrative from the Foundation," including revamping the foundation's strategic communications. "Our mission at Mozilla is more high-stakes than ever," said Syed. "We find ourselves in a relentless onslaught of change in the technology (and broader) world, and the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical."
"Navigating this topsy-turvy, distracting time requires laser focus -- and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that has gotten us this far because it won't get us to the next peak. Lofty goals demand hard choices."
There we go: (Score:4, Insightful)
[...] the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical.
Oops. Somebody said the quiet part out loud. This should just be stamped on all our foreheads at birth at this point. It seems to be the focus of our entire species now.
Greed is God. Profit before all.
Re:There we go: (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that seems like a false choice. Putting "people before profit" doesn't mean they have to spread out into all sorts of other time-and-energy-wasting channels. Focussing on Firefox and Thunderbird might be the best "people before profit" thing they can do.
Mozilla's always seemed like it was afflicted with a weird corporate manifestation of Zawinsky's Law [wikipedia.org].
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Zawinsky's Law always makes me think of Emacs. It can be a good editor. It's also a toaster, a coffee maker, and a breakfast cereal.
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If you make a browser you’re just a geek.
If you advocate for global change you’re a thought leader or something. I assume it gets more chicks than improving your JavaScript VM benchmark performance. More cocktail parties and less thinking anyway.
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Zawinsky's Law always makes me think of Emacs. It can be a good editor. It's also a toaster, a coffee maker, and a breakfast cereal.
This is a revolution for your kitchen, smashed potatoes, sliced tomatoes, apple juice, blueberry, raspberry, cherries and peaches in a fraction of a second!
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Funnily enough, Jamie Zawinski was involved in Netscape Navigator but left the Mozilla project after it had been decided that its codebase would be totally rewritten.
Re:There we go: (Score:5, Insightful)
And what has Mozilla done with all that money? Fancy offices in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the country, lots of pointless bullshit ("advocacy" and "global programs") and not much else. Meanwhile, the Thunderbird e-mail client is reduced to begging for money from the public because Mozilla's brain-dead management can't be bothered to throw them a few dollars.
Dear Mozilla,
Fuck you.
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Good summary. Imagine getting $3B from your main competitor and then crying like you're the victim.
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Seriously, those are real numbers?
I'm pretty sure 95% of slashdot could manage to hire a team to make a better browser with $450m / year in free money.
And oh yeah we could make a better email client, too. Just for kicks.
Yet somehow with $450m they can't afford 120 employees? Super nutso.
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The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward
Translated: Our sugar daddy is putting the squeeze on us, we're cutting back some of the accumulated deadwood.
Re:There we go: (Score:4, Interesting)
The advocacy stuff was things like pushing for open standards that at least try to respect user privacy. You can argue that they didn't do a very good job, although they were influential in things like deprecating 3rd party cookies and moving towards ad metrics that don't involve user tracking.
Either way, I really doubt that the web will be better off now they are cutting those staff. If you pay attention to these things and follow the discussions of new web standards, Mozilla staff do make valuable contributions, even if they don't always succeed in convincing everyone else.
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The advocacy stuff was things like pushing for open standards that at least try to respect user privacy. You can argue that they didn't do a very good job, although they were influential in things like deprecating 3rd party cookies and moving towards ad metrics that don't involve user tracking.
Either way, I really doubt that the web will be better off now they are cutting those staff. If you pay attention to these things and follow the discussions of new web standards, Mozilla staff do make valuable contributions, even if they don't always succeed in convincing everyone else.
It almost makes one wonder if Google didn't say that dropping the advocacy group, long defenders against Google's dominance in all web standards, wasn't the price to pay for continued "contributions" to the Mozilla organization.
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Mozilla Foundation tax filings
Pro Publica Nonprofit Explorer [propublica.org] (2022): Revenue: $49.7M; Expenses: $30.3M; Total Assets: $95.6M; Total Liabilities: $6.22M. Also includes compensation for key employees and officers. Mark Surman (President & Executive Director): $344,483; J Bob Alotta (Vp, Global Programs): $314,036; Ashley Boyd (Vp, Advocacy And Engagement): $304,915.
Mozilla Foundation Public Records [mozilla.org]
IRS Form 990 [mofoprod.net], fiscal year 2022. This is a bit odd: Investment income, prior year: $533,000; current year: $
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I really wish I had a mod point for you.
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I wonder what the CEO's salary is. In non-profits, all the employees get screwed because "we don't have the money" but the people at the top are always exempt, and almost always are the cause of most of the problems.
Typically, non-profits run on the same premise as any other business, just that at the end of the year, anything left over goes right to the C-Suite bonus pool so as not to leave any pesky profits laying around for the auditors to find.
Re:There we go: (Score:5, Informative)
so as not to leave any pesky profits laying around for the auditors to find.
An auditor would flag if a legitimate non-profit didn't have profits. The name is a misnomer. Profits are identified on the balance sheet as capital, net worth or undivided earnings. Non profits cannot issue equity and are subject to unique accounting rules known as "fund accounting" and file publicly viewable as Form 990.
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Mark Surman (President & Executive Director): $344,483; J Bob Alotta (Vp, Global Programs): $314,036; Ashley Boyd (Vp, Advocacy And Engagement): $304,915.
Hindsight is 20/20 but... (Score:3)
Money is social status. It's social power. And political power. But for most, it is the only means of acquiring the basic necessities for survival.
We have made a pretty F'd up system for ourselves.
Re:There we go: (Score:4, Interesting)
[...] the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical.
Oops. Somebody said the quiet part out loud. This should just be stamped on all our foreheads at birth at this point. It seems to be the focus of our entire species now.
Greed is God. Profit before all.
Computing is a business, from top to bottom, and always has been. Maybe, just maybe, if the Mozilla people had run their org like one, they wouldn't be in deep shit. But Mozilla became a political organization wearing a tech company's skin.
Somewhere, Brendan Eich is kicking back and having a deeply satisfying glass of Scotch.
LOL well finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally a bit of sense
Advocacy and Global ...
Right really excellent software speaks for itself. Mozilla would be in a much better place today if they had stayed on mission and focused on raising money to write best of breed web software, from user-agents to services and server and a lot of the script and application framework in between.
Instead they forgot they were a technology group and decided to do politics and social issues. Congrats on massive market share losses, and increasing wide technical gulf between the only really free browser engine and its corporate controlled competitors.. bravo...
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Firefox was leapfrogged technology-wise by Google all the way back in 2008. They've been falling behind ever since. Not surprising considering the resources Google has.
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Google's always been much better than Mozilla at spyware and disabling useful extensions.
Re:LOL well finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Not surprising considering the resources Google has.
In 2013, Mozilla was using its resources to sponsor a surfing contest in Hawaii [mozilla.org].
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Doesn't have to have the best tech. Just the tech that people want.
Make it fast, on all platforms
Make it secure
Give it sensible defaults but make it configurable (and extendable)
It does NOT have to be and look like Chrome
There is probably one or two more things that could be added, but I am sure if they managed to get that right, the numbers would speak for themselves.
Thunderbird, on the other hand. This has plenty of opportunities. A better Exchange/x365 client than Outlook, that would be great. Also, coul
Re:LOL well finally (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not "if they got it right". They had it right. They decided to squander getting it right with other crap to the point that even the people who were advocates for Firefox everywhere left them.
First was abandoning XUL. Sure it had tons of problems, but it had tons of extensions as well. Then they decided to "rapid release" and constantly broke extensions, and as extensions get left behind as their authors couldn't keep up, so did users.
Then was the whole rearchitecture and switch to webextensions. Then to completely ignore the community which basically had to abandon every extension they used, many of which had no replacements. And then to screw the user interface up and get rid of the options (sure, you could edit some config files, but really?). At this point the last remnants pretty much switched to Chrome because they were tired of all the sudden changes and with no workarounds.
They had advantages in many areas, but they decided to squander those advantages to the point where you're either going to keep with a browser that's basically completely new with new extensions, or switch to a new browser. And most people decided it was easier to just go with Chrome and not deal with Firefox anymore.
Firefox had a good number of people advocating for it, they decided to make changes to squander all that goodwill to the point most people left and never looked back. They ended up pissing off their users who gave up and moved on.
Re:LOL well finally (Score:5, Informative)
"Advocacy" has become a dirty word to a lot of people lately, but it can be important.
Mozilla has advocated for:
- Free and open web standards
- Rejection of the Microsoft monopoly of the web browser.
- Rejection of the Google monopoly of the web browser.
- Privacy by default when using the web.
- Preventing the tracking and monitoring of people as they use the web.
- No DRM support (or at least minimal) built into the browser.
- True user control over their browser: user scripts an styles, extensions unfettered by competing corporate interests, open source, etc.
No doubt there's more I'm not coming up with off-hand. You might disagree with some of their positions, but most of these are innately important goals if you want a healthy Internet. They complement, not replace, creating "excellent software".
Re:LOL well finally (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that is true; however a quick look at the linked bio's makes it abundantly clear those were not the topic they advocacy group was really focused on.
They might have also spend their time pushing those things but they were not the passion projects. They should have been sure, but we know they werent. If they were they would have hired someone like RMS, or Bruce Schneier, or someone else with a history in the Open Source or Privacy movements.
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>If they were they would have hired someone like RMS, or Bruce Schneier, or someone else with a history in the Open Source or Privacy movements.
Good point.
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>"however a quick look at the linked bio's makes it abundantly clear those were not the topic they advocacy group was really focused on."
^^^ This
It seems they were more interested in social stuff and "equity" nonsense than in pushing for diversity in browers, which is what we really need/needed. I say "seems" because that was quite visible. I don't know what resources were really spent on what.
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There's nothing intrinsically privacy-preserving about browsers that aren't chrome skins; but technical standard-setting and market adoption both tend to require actually shipping an alternative to what you are against, rather than just dragging out a rearguard action a
Still too glib (Score:2)
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This has nothing to do with Mozilla.
FWIW I voted today in PA and it was a very smooth procedure. It helped that it was a short ballot form, with no judges and local county officials on it (unlike what I was used to from being in MN for the past decade.)
Getting back on topic I hope they have fired the people that want to mess with the UI every few weeks instead of just fixing the bugs.
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No, dumbass. What they're doing in PA is sequestering all the ballots in locked, tamper-proof boxes. Once the machines are running they will, with witnesses present, scan all the ballots to get their final tabulations.
Everything is a g
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We have tons of evidence of online vote swapping ( a crime ) entire exchanges are setup to do it.
You mean this? [wikipedia.org]: "vote pairing occurs informally (i.e. without binding agreements), but sometimes with great sophistication in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, where voters often use online venues to organize such strategies. In all three countries, the process has been subjected to legal challenge and been deemed legal."
Oh, and also: you mention "evidence" several times, but you never actually present anything resembling evidence. Saying things is not evidence.
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This left wing insanity (...)
There's nothing "left wing" in woke ideas. They're liberal, not socialist. You know, Liberalism? The political doctrine about individual liberties and rights, free enterprise, free markets, one person one vote, all under the rule of law? The one system actual Socialists allied with actual Fascists over and over to, together, fight against? Yes, that Liberalism.
Sure, completely-on-the-right Liberalism is to the left of current Republican policies, but then almost everyone, including most traditional Conserva
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I think you're splitting hairs.
This is important. Back when people fought on the side of the European Enlightenment against the Absolute Monarchies, it was extremely easy to understand what right and left meant. Nowadays, when the old enemy is long gone, people get extremely confused an invent a boatload of nonsense trying to figure out what ought to be extremely evident.
* Ancien Regime: power comes from God, kings are His sovereign ministers, the people are Their subjects
* Enlightenment: power comes from the people, rulers are their emp
Interface Destruction Team (Score:3)
Who keeps making usability more difficult?
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>"Who keeps making usability more difficult?"
And, yet, it isn't any worse than the only other significant multi-platform browser, Chrom*. The problem was copying what the competition did instead of sticking to their long-held principles.
[Not directed to the poster] I get tired of people saying they are switching away from Firefox because of UI, when what they are switching TO is (IMHO) considerably worse, or at minimum very similar in that regard.... And in the process of doing so, they throw away priv
"increase agility" (Score:2)
Whenever a company wants to "increase agility" (or the equivalent), what it really means is "we're screwed, we need to lay off a bunch of people because we can't afford to keep them".
They lost the mobile market (Score:2)
Re:They lost the mobile market (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile desktop Firefox's only feature left of note is ublock support, ...
I disagree. Firefox's cookie management is head and shoulders above that of every other web browser.
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As with most features, it used to be much better before they stripped it down. Today all cookies for a domain are grouped together and you can't see the cookie contents without extensions.
Hell, I remember when they decided to get rid of the size count for downloads in progress. WTF were they thinking getting rid of basic features that were already implemented and working?
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But I sure hope they continue supporting it because it is the basis for the DuckDuckGo browser that I prefer.
I'll be damned to use Chrome or Edge, there is already enough spying on an Android phone.
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>"Meanwhile desktop Firefox's only feature left of note is ublock support"
Strongly disagree.
* Firefox is more permissive with addons (what you already mentioned, indirectly; but it is more than just uBlock Origin).
* Firefox is more configurable through about:config
* Firefox is more customizable with userChrome
* Firefox has better privacy
* Firefox has better cookie management options
* Some would argue it has a smaller memory footprint
I am sure I missed some. And that is while being at least as secure and
mobile: Thunderbird (Score:2)
Thunderbird just took over K-9 Mail. I've loved K-9, but I'm not optimistic about the new branding and future changes.
They need to get a clue (Score:1)
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They can't really do this though... because they are turning themselves into an advertising company. See https://www.reddit.com/r/firef... [reddit.com]
Odd (Score:2)
It strikes me a bit odd that Mozilla is struggling when Google Chrome is threatening to push ads harder.
The bullshit never ends (Score:3)
"The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward,"
The fact that this word salad passes as significant, meaningful communication is both sad and terrifying. A once vital and ground-breaking organization - one which has contributed so much to the tech landscape - has been reduced to buzz-phrases which were already cliches by the first time they were ever written or spoken.
It's sad because what we say often indicates how we think as well as what we think - and the "thinking" indicated by this drivel would explain how far Mozilla has fallen. It's terrifying because language like that used in Mozilla's press release has become the norm. This is the stuff of an "if we can't dazzle 'em with brains we can at least baffle 'em with bullshit" mindset which has become the linguistic version of the emperor's new clothes. Frankly, it just sucks.
60 employees? (Score:2)
Can someone tell me what they are doing with their prime real estate that is in San Francisco? Because it seems absurd when you look at the downward trajectory of the company
Won't help much (Score:2)
Some lays off won't help much, Mozilla desperately needs something else: a healthy increase of their market share. And for this they need to make a browser people want to use.
Mozilla needs to focus on Firefox (Score:2)
And, no, not piling on endless amounts of features, but improving security, performance, and stability. Features can be provided by extensions and plug-ins.
Hurry before they savage a great browser! (Score:1)
1) Firefox handles memory better than ANY other browser. Try putting 4000 rows by 200 columns into https://jacobsm.com/browtest3.... [jacobsm.com] and see if your browser can handle it.
2) Firefox can loop WAV files perfectly using its HTML5 AUDIO tag. Check out some of the loops at the top of https://jacobsm.com/mjmidi.htm [jacobsm.com] . All other browsers have a gap at the loop point, whereas only Firefox is seamless.
Both t
BS overload (Score:2)
""The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all."
This person needs to go work for Soros.
I think Mozilla has been compromised (Score:2)