Executive pay does not follow the product's success. It follows the broader market for executives.

If it followed the product's success, products that are going through a bad patch, or are going downwards, would not be able to attract good executives, when arguably they are the ones who need the best executives, relative to products that are doing well, which on many occasions can sustain themselves purely on momentum.

This is further complicated for non profits which cannot use ownership stakes as an incentive either.

So why do executives bother doing anything if they get paid no matter if they succeed or not?

In fairness, some executives are there just to fill a seat and not rock the boat when a company needs a face.

If the executives are bad they will be removed, and their reputation will suffer.

Does that happen, though? We've been hearing about golden parachutes for a while but are there cases supporting the logic that you just laid out?

> Let's not forget the ridiculous pay for the executives which has been shown to not correlate with revenue (or anything else)

I may be a naive person who generally detests the organization chart gymnasts, but I honestly believe Mozilla would be better off if they just got rid of all C-suites and handed that cash to their developers to do whatever they want. So many open source projects are hugely successful without a CEO. Why would Mozilla be different? Keep the cash for the devs, and it's already miles ahead of any other big open source project financially!

$2.5M?!

How does that compare to executives in similar roles at similarly-sized software companies?

Similarly-sized software companies are also overpaying their executives at the expense of worker wages, so Mozilla is right on track.

Bingo. And so you hit the dilemma of trying to be an ethical company in an unethical environment. If Mozilla decreases their executive compensation, then they can't compete for the same executives that less-ethical companies who don't care about worker wages can. People complaining about Mozilla's executive compensation are asking for Mozilla to hobble themselves.

What ethics are we talking about here? Mozilla leadership carried out two large layoffs rounds whilst drastically increasing their own salaries. They already have unethical leaders.

For countless years they've been handed some 400-500 million(!) for "free", just by keeping Google the default search engine. For a conventional company, this kind of money requires a massive operation, customer base, etc.

Mozilla just gets a check. Half a billion for free. And then pisses away this money on projects where most are questionable, have no impact, etc. All the while the user base shrinking further and further, for over a decade now.

If that is the situation, it seems pretty reasonable to me to just get rid of leadership altogether. Let the tech people figure it out, it's not like they can do worse.

Have you looked at the chart in the link I provided? Mozilla was doing better and had more revenue with previous management who's compensation was a fraction of current management's.

To contribute negative value to the company? Seems like a good deal, for the CEO.