<story><title>Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy</title><url>https://fortune.com/2024/02/08/mozilla-firefox-ceo-laura-chambers-mitchell-baker-leadership-transition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wkat4242</author><text>For a company that has a declining marketshare like Mozilla it&amp;#x27;s really way too high IMO.&lt;p&gt;Her salary kept going up as the marketshare was going down...</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>Yes, that&amp;#x27;s a lot of money.&lt;p&gt;But if you&amp;#x27;re a CEO good enough to turn Mozilla around given the constraints... you could make a lot more elsewhere. If nothing else, you&amp;#x27;d get stock, which would correlate with your performance.</text></item><item><author>animal_spirits</author><text>Mitchell baker was making 6.2 million dollars a year at Mozilla in 2023.&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;AMP&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;mozilla_in_2024_ai_privacy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;AMP&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;mozilla_in_2024_a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>I agree with everything you said. All I can say in response is that being a great community leader and open web advocate doesn&amp;#x27;t always square with someone who has to make a profit for hundreds or thousands of employees.&lt;p&gt;I have no inside information, but here&amp;#x27;s my guess at what happened. John Lilly was a great CEO. When he left, there was a gigantic void. They hired Gary Kovacs, who started the &amp;quot;squirrel!&amp;quot;-ing. He wasn&amp;#x27;t well-liked, and used Mozilla as a stepping stone. So going forward they only hired from the Mozilla community, which is a small pool – both of people who could do it and people who wanted to do it. I&amp;#x27;m not sure if Mitchell wanted it or not, but I don&amp;#x27;t think there was a lot of competition.&lt;p&gt;Being the CEO of Mozilla is not a good job, and I imagine it&amp;#x27;s really hard to fill. There&amp;#x27;s a ton of pressure, relatively low salary, no equity, no exit.</text></item><item><author>lolinder</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to hear this, because from the outside Mitchell&amp;#x27;s tenure has seemed to be a disaster, with a complete inability to stay focused on one thing for long enough to make a difference.&lt;p&gt;Mozilla in recent memory has reminded me more than anything of the dogs in Pixar&amp;#x27;s Up (&amp;quot;squirrel!&amp;quot;), constantly chasing after the latest shiny tech fad while neglecting the fundamentals. They&amp;#x27;ve been a follower on &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt; and have failed to lead on &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;. Mitchell&amp;#x27;s justification for stepping down as CEO seems to me to follow this same pattern: she&amp;#x27;s stepping down in order to focus on AI and internet safety.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s good to know that she&amp;#x27;s a decent person and was good to Mozilla employees, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to square the picture you paint with the complete lack of direction I&amp;#x27;ve seen during her tenure. Maybe Mozilla was in a much worse situation than I thought at the time she took the position?</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>I worked at Mozilla back in 2012, as we were pivoting to FirefoxOS (a mobile OS). I was very low in the company, but for some reason sent Mitchell an email detailing why I thought it was a bad idea.&lt;p&gt;She not only responded in a very gracious way, but also followed up months later to check if my feelings had changed. While they had not, she didn&amp;#x27;t owe me anything and I really appreciated her attentiveness. Mitchell really cares about Mozilla and its community.&lt;p&gt;Mitchell was a great community leader. That doesn&amp;#x27;t always translate to being a good CEO or leader of a business, however Mitchell is a huge reason (if not THE reason) why we have Firefox today – and, even if you don&amp;#x27;t currently use Firefox, a huge reason why we have the web we have today.&lt;p&gt;So, while I haven&amp;#x27;t been the biggest fan of Mozilla&amp;#x27;s decisions the past few years, I do want to give credit to Mitchell for everything she did for the open web and open source. She was a supporter before anyone really cared, and played a huge part in getting is to where we are now over the past 20+ years.&lt;p&gt;(I am glad this is the direction they have chosen! Here&amp;#x27;s a 2015 post where I write about how I think Mozilla should focus on data privacy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10698997&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10698997&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Certhas</author><text>This line is trotted out all the time... but her salary also was going up as revenues and earnings kept going up. From 2005 to 2022 revenues grew more than 10 fold, from 52M$ to 593M$.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Mozilla_Corporation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Mozilla_Corporation&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;frankhecker.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;mozillas-uncertain-future&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;frankhecker.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;mozillas-uncertain-future...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In recent years, the proportion coming from Google has also been coming down (even if slowly, from 90+% to just above 80%), and considerable cash reserves have been built up.&lt;p&gt;Her compensation is ahead of the median for companies in the 0.1-1 billion revenue range, but in line with the median CEO compensation for a company with 1-5 billion in revenues:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corpgov.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;ceo-and-executive-compensation-practices-in-the-russell-3000-and-sp-500&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corpgov.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;ceo-and-executive...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corpgov.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;Figure-11.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corpgov.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;F...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So if you accept that this is an unusually complex CEO role, then it does not seems disproportionate (when judged relative to the absurd disproportionate growth of CEO compensation overall).</text></comment>
<story><title>Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy</title><url>https://fortune.com/2024/02/08/mozilla-firefox-ceo-laura-chambers-mitchell-baker-leadership-transition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wkat4242</author><text>For a company that has a declining marketshare like Mozilla it&amp;#x27;s really way too high IMO.&lt;p&gt;Her salary kept going up as the marketshare was going down...</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>Yes, that&amp;#x27;s a lot of money.&lt;p&gt;But if you&amp;#x27;re a CEO good enough to turn Mozilla around given the constraints... you could make a lot more elsewhere. If nothing else, you&amp;#x27;d get stock, which would correlate with your performance.</text></item><item><author>animal_spirits</author><text>Mitchell baker was making 6.2 million dollars a year at Mozilla in 2023.&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;AMP&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;mozilla_in_2024_ai_privacy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;AMP&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;mozilla_in_2024_a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>I agree with everything you said. All I can say in response is that being a great community leader and open web advocate doesn&amp;#x27;t always square with someone who has to make a profit for hundreds or thousands of employees.&lt;p&gt;I have no inside information, but here&amp;#x27;s my guess at what happened. John Lilly was a great CEO. When he left, there was a gigantic void. They hired Gary Kovacs, who started the &amp;quot;squirrel!&amp;quot;-ing. He wasn&amp;#x27;t well-liked, and used Mozilla as a stepping stone. So going forward they only hired from the Mozilla community, which is a small pool – both of people who could do it and people who wanted to do it. I&amp;#x27;m not sure if Mitchell wanted it or not, but I don&amp;#x27;t think there was a lot of competition.&lt;p&gt;Being the CEO of Mozilla is not a good job, and I imagine it&amp;#x27;s really hard to fill. There&amp;#x27;s a ton of pressure, relatively low salary, no equity, no exit.</text></item><item><author>lolinder</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to hear this, because from the outside Mitchell&amp;#x27;s tenure has seemed to be a disaster, with a complete inability to stay focused on one thing for long enough to make a difference.&lt;p&gt;Mozilla in recent memory has reminded me more than anything of the dogs in Pixar&amp;#x27;s Up (&amp;quot;squirrel!&amp;quot;), constantly chasing after the latest shiny tech fad while neglecting the fundamentals. They&amp;#x27;ve been a follower on &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt; and have failed to lead on &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;. Mitchell&amp;#x27;s justification for stepping down as CEO seems to me to follow this same pattern: she&amp;#x27;s stepping down in order to focus on AI and internet safety.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s good to know that she&amp;#x27;s a decent person and was good to Mozilla employees, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to square the picture you paint with the complete lack of direction I&amp;#x27;ve seen during her tenure. Maybe Mozilla was in a much worse situation than I thought at the time she took the position?</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>I worked at Mozilla back in 2012, as we were pivoting to FirefoxOS (a mobile OS). I was very low in the company, but for some reason sent Mitchell an email detailing why I thought it was a bad idea.&lt;p&gt;She not only responded in a very gracious way, but also followed up months later to check if my feelings had changed. While they had not, she didn&amp;#x27;t owe me anything and I really appreciated her attentiveness. Mitchell really cares about Mozilla and its community.&lt;p&gt;Mitchell was a great community leader. That doesn&amp;#x27;t always translate to being a good CEO or leader of a business, however Mitchell is a huge reason (if not THE reason) why we have Firefox today – and, even if you don&amp;#x27;t currently use Firefox, a huge reason why we have the web we have today.&lt;p&gt;So, while I haven&amp;#x27;t been the biggest fan of Mozilla&amp;#x27;s decisions the past few years, I do want to give credit to Mitchell for everything she did for the open web and open source. She was a supporter before anyone really cared, and played a huge part in getting is to where we are now over the past 20+ years.&lt;p&gt;(I am glad this is the direction they have chosen! Here&amp;#x27;s a 2015 post where I write about how I think Mozilla should focus on data privacy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10698997&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=10698997&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bradly</author><text>&amp;gt; Her salary kept going up as the marketshare was going down...&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d really need to decide if you thought their marketshare would go down faster or not with someone else.</text></comment>