The Fix The Internet incubator doesn't look like very much money is involved. A $2500 stipend for participants, a top prize of $25,000, not that much money. Whereas layoffs of 250 people will save maybe $50 - $100 million a year.

Of course, perhaps they will also cut future funding to this incubator, and it's just a different timing that they announce it.

They're paying their devs 200-400 grand a year? Jesus.

I was laid off and had 10 years of tenure. Salary, bonus, and benefits amounted to a TC of around 300

Mozilla’s layoffs were to get rid of the highly paid engineers, IMO. We have new talent coming in fresh and loose for a bunch less.

We also have a lot of cash in the bank. Mozilla is wealthy. CFO was asked to increase runway.

That makes sense (as explanation, not necessarily justification). In general, this remote era is a "great" way to push dev salaries down, even for organizations that were already decently remote like Mozilla.

Salary, bonus, healthcare, dental, 401K, office space, taxes, equipment, ... employees are not cheap. That figure would be competitive in the Bay Area for quality dev work.

I think I found the solution, not basing yourself in one of the highest cost of living areas.

Mozilla hires devs all across the world, many in countries where developers are much cheaper than in the USA.

So then where does the 200k - 400k come from? That salary would be outrageous for software devs over here in .nl, let alone for a non-profit.

I'm an American who worked in Germany. I interviewed in the the Netherlands, but was horrified by how low pay was in the industry.

I meant to show that more as a benchmark. The claim was that Mozilla hires employees in low-cost countries.

I agree that the pay in The Netherlands is pretty bad for software devs compared to other countries with similar wealth (UK, Germany, US, etc), but I know that it’s much worse in e.g. Eastern European countries, which I also expect Mozilla to hire from.

Germany is not that much better than NL except for fintech and that pays well everywhere.

Why hire in eastern europe only? Mozilla hires the best from around the world.

It's more the American tech wages which are an outlier. Salaries in Europe are much lower but quite normal compared to the rest of the developed world.

Its speculation. Cost of benefits/rent/etc is expensive in the Bay Area, but no one is getting $25k worth of dental insurance or anything.

It's just an estimate for an based on my experience in the industry, but I think it's a reasonable one. I did estimate based on American costs though. For example, an entry-level software engineer at Google in the U.S. makes $188,000 according to https://www.levels.fyi/ . That's the amount of compensation that goes to the employee, though; that doesn't count employer taxes and the additional costs of overhead like office space. So I added a range of up to twice that much to account for overhead, to estimate what an employee costs to the employer.

There are a couple other factors - one extra factor is this is just for entry-level employees, another extra factor is that Mozilla probably doesn't pay quite as well as Google. I am not sure how large those factors are, but it's just an estimate and they work against each other, so I think the range is a reasonable guess. I would be surprised if it's very far off.

Tough when the best talent is in that high COL metropolitan area.

Silicon Valley is so far up its ass that they can't see the light of day. There is good talent in the high COL metro area, but that doesn't mean all of the best talent is there. And it's definitely not all cultivated there.

At most it's just brain drain from around the world (and around the U.S.) due to capital concentration NOT talent concentration.

There's this belief that anybody who isn't willing to move to high COL metro couldn't cut it there because having a worldview outside of living in SF or similar isn't something that can be fathomed.

"At most it's just brain drain from around the world (and around the U.S.) due to capital concentration NOT talent concentration."

Brain drain implies relative talent concentration - are you sure this is what you mean to say?

Look - I hate SV and don't live there. The reality is unavoidable: for software, the best talent lives in the Bay. It's not that deep.

Myth or reality? The world vs sf and the valley?

I'll go with the world.

history has been with the valley (so far ...)

Money has been with the valley.

Microsoft has brilliant engineers and is in Seattle, for example.

That's interesting topic

What about Tencent? and things like HK's HFT

What about competitive security? here's huge variety in countries e.g 2 very strong teams are Poland based

Depends highly on where they are, but Bay Area engineering compensation (salary, bonus, stock) is indeed 200-400k. As others have mentioned, there are other costs such as insurance, 401k, etc, but yeah software engineering salaries are very high and if you want top talent, you need to be competitive with FAANG.

Not in just salaries, but that estimate would include all the costs associated with an employee.

I find the crowdsourced data at levels.fyi to be a good reality check on what dev compensation is like at large tech companies.

Let's take three others that make well-known desktop browsers: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Apple,Google,Microsoft&track...

According to that data, senior developers at Apple (ICT4), Google (L5) and Microsoft (64) make on average $320k, $352k, and $225k. Their fully-loaded costs (benefits, payroll taxes, office space, etc) to the company will of course be even higher.

These are examples of peer companies Mozilla is competing against for employees. As I explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138083 , Mozilla does not try to attract people solely via compensation. However, you can only offer so much less before you're no longer able to hire and retain the talent you need.

I don't know the details, but the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation have different budgets and legally have to spend the money on different things (since the Foundation is a non-profit). They can't just move money around like a normal company can.

The corporation can spend money on whatever the hell. That's why they set it up.

You can infer from the foundation tax returns that most of the assets are held by the corporation: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...

It's the assets held directly by the foundation that have implications for their tax status, and they only move assets to that status as necessary.

"The corporation can spend money on whatever the hell. That's why they set it up." oh that is not true at all ... fiduciary duty doesn't work like that.

There's no need to be so literal.

And conveniently, the people directing the Corp are the ones setting the agenda for the org (which that agenda is the thing the Corp has a fiduciary duty towards...).

Well... can they fix that? Please? At least for the future so this doesn't happen again?

I'm not opposed to nonprofits creating systems to make sure donor money is handled appropriately, but it seems to me there's something seriously wrong with the current structure. In hard times, organizations generally need to focus on their core initiatives, not branch out even more!

Probably would mean paying $$$ tax and/or returning money to whoever donated it.

As someone who's been involved in setting up a corporate incubator, this is a pretty common dilemma.

The way that we viewed it at my previous company was basically it's two different businesses, two different P&L's and two different sets of metrics and KPIs. You could see them as two different business units that can succeed or fail independently.

If one Business Unit is struggling, you can't just fill the holes by taking funds from another BU to fill the gap. You need to solve the inherent profitability problems in the struggling Business Unit in some other way, typically by selling more, increasing the price/mix or reducing the cost.

Don't know if this is how Mozilla reasons, but this was definitely the way we reasoned in the last two large corporations I worked for.

That doesn’t work in a non profit contexts . Most non profit missions are well, not profitable in the first place.

While the Mozilla corporation is for profit entity , the goals of the foundation and reason Mozilla foundation /corporation exists is not to make or maximise profit .

Non profits generally run on the principles of sustainability I.e are they spending more than endowments or they drawing on the principal amount etc.

In Mozilla case drop in revenue/ donations resulting in cancelled projects is per se not abnormal , but which projects are shelved depends on how the mission is interpreted.

It is perfectly within the foundation remit to infuse capital into the corporation if they had more money and they also believed the work of the corporation is more important than some foundation projects to the overall foundation’s mission.

Just like NASA cancels other projects when one project like JWST goes a lot overbudget , with approvals from congress if required .

Clearly the foundation did not think corporation projects were worth saying over others , we can debate that , but they did and do have that choice

Or spends 2.5m just for its CEO yearly (not to mention the other executives). I guess it is easier to fire the servo/rust people who did actual work rather than any of the designers or the higher ups.

This also turned up in the other Mozilla-related thread 12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129926

Different people. Fire one side to fund the other. Many companies use COVID as an excuse to get rid of management mistakes too.

Too bad it's not "mistakes in management" getting fixed instead

Management can have high turnover too. Imagine trying to explain away being head of strategy at a company that drove into a ditch.

Doing layoffs doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the cash to pay everyone, or even that you're not cashflow positive. Sometimes orgs do big layoffs amidst big hiring pushes, meaning they don't feel like their resources are allocated correctly. Sometimes layoffs are a part of bigger organizational restructuring (this is Mozilla), saying they want to emphasize certain parts of the business and downsize others. If layoffs weren't evenly distributed around the company (ie every org loses 5% vs. we just laid off all of x department), it can mean different things.

> Doing layoffs doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the cash to pay everyone,

Sure but that's the case here.

Where did they say they couldn't afford to pay these people?

If revenue from Firefox isn't enough to pay the bills anymore, then not funding R&D is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

'revenue' from Firefox was never enough. It's only really just struck me that of course Google funding them made a dependency and 1) made the company grow beyond its needs, and 2) made it not seek self-sufficiency.

If Google are stopping the money then FF is like a person with no money taken in by Google and hooked on drugs; once they're kicked out they can't fund the habit and reliance on Google has meant they've not had to find ways to fund themselves.

I realised Google held the cards, but hadn't twigged on how the excessive nature of the funding made Firefox/Mozilla weaker.

Unless FF were aware of how that might go and put half of their Google money into investments?

>'revenue' from Firefox was never enough

I mean I'm looking at the leadership page and all I can ask myself is do you need to pay that many executives just to build a web browser?

I'd be fascinated to know how much it costs Apple to develop Safari, a browser multiple times more successful than Firefox judging by Wikipedia. Just a hunch but I'd bet money it's a fraction of the cost of running this bloated pseudo-charity.

Best thing for the internet is for current Mozilla to fade out fast and something more sustainable be built from the technology remains.

If Mozilla sold devices bundled with Firefox as the default browser, Firefox would also be "multiple times more successful".

They did do that; see the Alcatel Pixi 3. Firefox OS is regarded as one of Mozilla's failures.

yes. if there was someone like Stallman (for all its flaws he seemed to not have waste money on random capitalistic ventures) coming up and forking it, when it finally goes under, I'm happy to pitch in my 5$/month. If it's a charity for god knows what and includes a sizeable PR department: well....

It's not true that "'revenue' from Firefox was never enough", and it's bordering on misinformation to speculate that "Google are stopping the money".

edit: Really, could you please not do that? Asking "Is the search deal not expiring?" is even worse than the earlier comment...

Ok, cool I've found it hard to find financial details - could you perhaps list for an example period the main revenue not from Google and it's origins? Then maybe the top 3 lines of the expense report?

I mean unless we're going back to phoenix days it seems like Google's money both saved and potentially secured Firefox's demise.

Re the speculation that the Google money is stopping (AIUI its something of the order 90% of income) Mozilla seem to be hunting for all and any revenue streams and urgently cutting costs. They look like they're preparing for it to stop, and I get the impression they want to be self-sufficient. It strikes me (and recall I have little knowledge of their financials - perhaps they've put a lot of income aside) they need to be self-sufficient in order to not be scared to follow a privacy route that could readily [probably has already IMO] annoy Google. Google aren't giving them $X00 Million for fun, I feel. The less useable data, and sellable users, Mozilla directs their way the less useful Mozilla is to Google.

(Perhaps there's also a benefit in keeping FF to prevent the appearance of Chrome being a monopoly.)

Is the search deal not expiring?

e: to your edit.

I'm not sure what is wrong with the question. My understanding is that the search deal is expiring and is the source of most of the FF related revenue.

If that is not the case I'd like to know. It seems like a reasonable question.

The search deal is indeed expiring in a few months, but also neither party has said whether it'll be renewed or not, so it's not yet time to assume it won't be.

Ok, that's fair.

pbhjpbhj's comment did predicate the speculation with an "If". And Mozilla has already had two rounds of layoffs this year ostensibly because of declining revenue. I think speculation on what will happen if the search deal is not renewed is reasonable.

I do appreciate pointing out that we do not know this will expire.

Mozilla should have a pretty good idea, if they don't that's a serious problem. The ones made redundant now might be the lucky ones if Google haven't yet indicated their general intentions.

Used to be the case. But then, at some point, Mozilla decided grew from ~300 people to ~1200 people to both attempt to remain feature-competitive with Firefox and try new things.

Fixing the browser revenue is at best difficult (i.e. significantly increase market share, more hard work to do on the browser which will cost $$$ for labor) while the Fix The Internet initiative could result in a miracle that saves them. Management often opts for for the miracle.

Which then predictably doesn't happen and then we all get to buy Aeron chairs at a discount.

As a company, you know you're doing something wrong when websites such as this pop up on HN. I hope Mozilla is able to turn back to its origins.

What origins? Was Mozilla ever a focused, well-run organisation?

I remember reading another comment on HN somewhere that broke down how project costs are different from employee costs. Something to do with employees being recurring expenses vs projects being somewhat fixed....I'm not going to do it justice. If I find the comment I'll link to it.

I encourage you to learn more about business! I have found that process to be interesting for someone on the technical side. More tech people need to consider it and respect it, in my opinion.

Basically, part of situation analysis is that you have to evaluate the future potential of your projects and where your investment dollars go. Businesses are always thinking of the future, and that includes non-profits.

The Boston Consulting Group matrix is one tool that might fit this scenario: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/st...

The scenario you describe might be analogous to this hypothetical example: let’s say Microsoft laid off its entire Microsoft Surface team, and simultaneously invested $10 billion into Microsoft Azure. You might think, what the heck, the Surface lineup are good products that seem to be profitable (I actually have no clue if they are).

But, perhaps the Surface product line is a dog. It’s a low-market share product in a low-growth market. Azure might be a star: it has a large portion of a fast-growing market, and deserves more investment.

Even though Mozilla is a non-profit, I think it’s clear that they are looking to diversify their income stream. The “fix the internet” incubator can probably come up with services in high-growth markets that are less costly to implement and more easily monetized than a web browser (and fit their organizational goal of improving the Internet).