this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Mitchelle Baker, CEO of Mozilla since 2020, will transition back to executive chairwoman role. Baker had been executive chairwoman for several decades. Board member Laura Chambers is taking over as interim CEO. Second source; The Verge

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[โ€“] [email protected] 111 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Rooting for a Firefox focused 2024! ๐ŸฆŠ

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I read few weeks ago that firefox wasn't the priority anymore, but the services.

[โ€“] darkmatternoodlecow 62 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I guess an annual salary of one hundred trillion dollars, or however ridiculously much it was, wasn't enough for her.

[โ€“] [email protected] 55 points 9 months ago (2 children)

doubt she'll get any more from stepping down... but yeah it's ridiculous how much some of these CEOs think they need. Especially in a company that is supposed to be better...

[โ€“] darkmatternoodlecow 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I know, my comment didn't make a lot of sense; her salary just triggered me tremendously the first time I heard what it was. This seemed like as good a place as any to express my disgust.

[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

Believe that most people here on this platform would agree with you on that, consider your rant redeemed :)

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Especially when you compare to Japanese CEO

[โ€“] [email protected] 54 points 9 months ago (1 children)

CEO pay is so ridiculous, there's obviously no way they're going to self regulate so we need to either tie it to worker pay/well-being or put it under the control of their employees

[โ€“] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago

Well, technically, CEOs don't pick their own salaries, they are decided by the board, and so, indirectly by the shareholders. Then again, she is also a board member, so ยฏ\_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

[โ€“] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Salaries of officers of non-profits are public information. See page 8.

She was taking $5.6M from "related organizations" (not quite sure what that would be), but not much from the Mozilla Foundation itself. The rest of the board is taking $115k-$340k directly from the Foundation.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Those are insane amounts to me, in a non-profit. Non-profit sounds meaningless when considering certain people within the organization are making $340k off of donated money. It's a mockery of the term in my opinion.

$5.6M is just on a whole separate level though. Speechless.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

If you want services and products to compete with private offerings you need talented and competent people who could otherwise work in a for profit business and get a typical salary for that position.

Unfortunately 340k is basically upper middle class household in coastal cities. Mozilla HQ is in Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Try buying even a fixer upper is the South Bay and raising two kids on less 300k in Silicon Valley. Iโ€™m making close to 200k in the Bay Area and feel like I have no money for extras like home improvements, no kids, 20 year old car, travel on a tight budget once a year for a week or so, and still behind on my retirement goals.

Rent is like 5k for a studio. Mortgage is like 8-9k for after taxes and interest for a fixer upper. Feels like having a semi nice house and a couple kids in decent school is for people making 600k+ per household.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

That is insane. What a waste of money, driving up local inflation like that.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Mozilla HQ is in Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley.

They could move. Bringing jobs to a more deprived area is the sort of thing a charity is supposed to do.

[โ€“] darkmatternoodlecow 5 points 9 months ago

I assume that on the IRS returns form for Mozilla Foundation, the "related organization" that the CEO of Mozilla Corporation gets 5+ million from is probably Mozilla Corporation. But I don't know.

[โ€“] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (1 children)

First good news from Mozilla since at least a couple of years.

[โ€“] [email protected] 70 points 9 months ago (4 children)

the thunderbird rewrite, the acquisition of k-9, the integration of outlook, the launch of mozilla.social, and saving thunderbird settings on the cloud (formerly firefox account, now mozilla account) are all things happening in the last year.

i think mozilla has been kickin ass.

[โ€“] [email protected] 61 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Commitment to Manifest V2

Opening up the Android app to support all desktop extensions

Working on local 'AI' integration that doesn't send data to Mozilla

Sure, some people are against that last one, but I'm of the opinion that if AI does exist in a browser (and the market seems to be deciding that it should be) then this is how it should be done.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

wanna be friends?

[โ€“] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Mozilla isn't committing to manifest V2, they're just making changes to V3 that are different than what's specified for the sake of compatibility with what people want. They still intend on migration.

Also, microsoft edge is getting extensions as well real soon

Finally, while this is a more personal opinion, the AI integrations that Mozilla has been working on (including some of the work on large language models) is isn't particularly contributive to the Mozilla manifesto and doesn't have much to do with the web itself. It's simply seeking something out because of hype

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Also, microsoft edge is getting extensions as well real soon

What's your point?

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're talking about Thunderbird, a project they basically abandoned to the community. Thunderbird survives in spite of Mozilla, not because of it. Meanwhile their main product Firefox is still bleeding users down into the single digit percentages while receiving half a billion a year from Google. It takes a lot of skill to run such a company so deep into the ground.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

abandoned?

the podcast and blog indicate you are mistaken.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Mozilla has a podcast?

Edit: Yes they have! https://irlpodcast.org/

Assuming you meant that they talked about this topic in one of their podcasts? Would you mind sharing which episode they did that in?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

there is a thunderbird specific one, too

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They also bought Fakespot.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

i just dont understand people who only have criticisms of them. no one is perfect but its not as though they only do bad things.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This feels like shuffling deck chairs on the titanic.

A board member and the CEO swap roles.... The core leadership group remains intact

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Back to the chairman role. She hasn't lost an ounce of power.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

She presided over a massively shrinking market share of Firefox, adding proprietary bloat like pocket, wasted huge amounts of effort on weird shit like Mozilla's own half baked metaverse, while quadrupling her own salary. The kind of stuff you expect from a lawyer.

The entire board needs to be replaced with people that actually know how to program.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

thank you. I asked a few people and no one had any answers.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I don't know how Mitchelle Baker was so I won't comment on her performance, but I hope this change of direction will lead Mozilla to a brighter future, and a more privacy-focused web for all of us.