- cross-posted to:
- firefox
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- firefox
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Total 2022 pay: $6,903,089
Total 2023 pay: $6,260,072 - a $643,017 decrease
Base chair pay: $600,000
2023 chair bonuses and other incentives: $5,622,600
Sources:
For comparison, here are other executive salaries ($0 bonuses for each)
| Executive name | Title | Total Pay (2023) |
|---|---|---|
| MARK SURMAN | PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | 715,143 |
| J. BOB ALOTTA | SVP, GLOBAL PROGRAMS | 508,138 |
| ANGELA PLOHMAN | COO, SECRETARY & TREASURER | 452,234 |
| ASHLEY BOYD | SVP, GLOBAL ADVOCACY | 427,701 |
| ZHILUN PANG | DIRECTOR OF FINANCE | 273,069 |
| DAVID WALKER | SENIOR COUNSEL | 268,565 |
| LAINIE DECOURSY | DIRECTOR, ORG EFFECTIVENESS | 267,028 |
| JUAN BARANI | SENIOR DIRECTOR, GIFT PLANNING | 262,879 |
| STEPHANIE WRIGHT | SR PROGRAM MANAGER, MOZFEST | 236,785 |
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This graph shows a disingenuous relationship between revenue and the market share of a free and open source project within the walls of a not-for-profit organization. Firefox is not a revenue stream in the traditional sense. In fact, most of Mozilla 's money comes from grants and donations for projects and research they do.
I get that CEO=EVIL is a viral topic these days but if all you know about Mozilla is that they make the Not Chrome browser, then you should really educate yourself on what it is that Mozilla actually does for the internet. Then you might feel a little better with this pay scale graph.
That all aside, this graph shows the market share of Mozilla when there were 5 browsers available to the vast majority of users, Internet Explorer, Firefox, chrome, Opera, and safari. It’s also before chrome took over the market share from IE at the same time that it pushed out Firefox as the leading browser because chrome was available on the iPhone and was the default browser on Android devices. Hardly a surprise to see that when the internet exploded in users and literally every human being started to carry around a chrome device in their pockets that Mozilla Firefox’s market share went down.
The Mozilla foundation’s largest source of revenue is Google, who is also their largest source of competition. To simply keep increasing the pay of their chief executive officer, to keep them kissing the ass of Google, seems like a strategy that doesn’t align with what many would consider metrics of a successful project, like active users…
Looks like you missed the point of the graph.
Graph doesn’t even show active users. It shows market share which is totally different. Market share is percentage of total users regardless of how many users are out there. Active users can go up while market share goes down. That’s why this graph is disingenuous.
How much money do they actually spend on the development of Firefox? That’s a figure I haven’t been able to find. However, in 2023, they had $1.5 billion in assets.
The only justification for a high-paying CEO is if they need to coordinate some large scale fundraising effort - schmoozing with other rich fucks to gain further donations, and plotting elaborate strategies to get more donations.
They have $1.5 billion in assets. How much more do they really need? Need someone to manage Mozilla’s assets? Make me the CEO. I’ll do it for you. In fact, I’ll do it for free. That will be my contribution to the Firefox project. I’ll stick that $1.5 billion in simple bond and index funds and withdraw at a very conservative 2% rate. And that will provide $30 million a year to spend on developers to improve Firefox and other projects. And we can just keep doing that forever. I’ll purposefully withdraw funds at a rate lower than the market averages, so the real value of the endowment grows over time. And that will allow us to slowly expand the scope of operations and start new projects. And while I won’t spend any time or effort to schmooze and jet set across the country to kiss the ass of some billionaire, if one wants to throw some money in the pot, we’ll have a donation button on the website.
What a self serving wank fest
Even if he made the air suck everyone’s dick and chocolate pudding rain from the sky, he shouldn’t have seven million US dollars every year
700k is high for us but low for CEO pay… I don’t see why CEOs should get as much money when they never have any liability but that’s another question. (Or… what are they really good for, and couldn’t they simply be replaced by the decision matrix their team builds for them anyways)
CEO of a major company? Sounds like reasonable pay to me… The problem is that most workers are not getting paid what they deserve (assume this is correct pay for a top level CEO and adjust your thinking on what fair pay actually is accordingly) It’s not the CEOs (or doctors, lawyers, actors, etc) who are the root problem… It’s the kids born with a billion shares of fortune 500 stock who either grow up to be Trump/Elon or just do fuck all their whole life, but still get to rake in 90% of all “profits”. The people who inherited owning the whole world, they are the problem. The CEOs are just assholes willing to work for the people born into wealth… They still suck, and they uphold the shit system for their own benefit, but I don’t think they are hoarding the wealth, and I think the wealth being hoarded is the ultimate problem.
The average salary in the US is about 66k, meaning that for this to be justified it makes sense that one man gets the same compensation as about 105 average salaries. Does it still sound like reasonable pay?
Sounds like those 105 employees aren’t being paid what they should be. Pay them more. Leave this guy’s pay alone.
Personally I’d say, if top level CEO pay is $6.5m, and we set that as reasonable pay for that level job, and maybe we say the top should earn 20x the bottom, then the average pay in the US should be $325k. Which sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Stop thinking in terms of dragging the top down… Think in terms of lifting everyone else up. If the owners need to own less for this to happen, then so be it
“Just pay everyone more” is nice idea - but obviously that would require a lot of additional money. Whereas “lower CEO pay and raise employee pay” does not require additional money.
Lower profits, pay workers more
You are misinformed too.
This is only about the Mozilla Corporation. Hence, “the ones that make Firefox”.
The ones fighting for an open Internet are the Mozilla Foundation.
The Mozilla corporation are whole owned by the Mozilla Foundation… They are the same company. And both are not-for-profit.
iphone/android etc
reasonable point but firefox is hardly better off if you look at only desktop share
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202411
What happened in 2010?
Google released the stable version of Chrome, and funneled significant resources into marketing it. This was the first stage of their strategy - they focused on firstly making a good product, and the squeeze on users only came later (and is probably only just starting in the scheme of things).
til my favorite browser has been losing a lot of ground over the years, i guess i’ve been living in my foxy bubble
The fact you’re on lemmy puts you in good company I believe. I, too, am fighting the chromium curse.
There are dozens of us!
To be fair, there are probably a ton of users who disable telemetry and use extensions that mask useragents.
Maybe even 1%
You can gain users while losing market share. This graph includes the rise of smartphones (+chrome preinstalled)
It almost perfectly correlates with chrome coming to android circa 2012.
Fox hole
owo
One can keep using good software even if others don’t.
A better graph would compare salary to revenue and inflation
You can gain users while losing market share
2009, that’s about the time that smartphones were really taking off.
Chrome on Android and Safari on Apple now make up almost 90% of all internet browsing.
It’s just a play on the charity CEO scam.
- Start a charity
- Get a CEO (usually the person who starts the charity)
- Pay the CEO what other CEOs make because if we don’t pay at that rate we won’t get the best CEO
- Fuck who ever the charity is for they’re just PR to afford the CEO salary
This is just hyperventilation. There’s no scam, there’s no conspiracy, it’s just the (sad) way the system works.
I think you mean hyperbole
maybe op suffers from asthma
Do you have examples for this claim?
Wtf That’s some serious BS
A lot of them are hospital CEOs in America’s for-profit healthcare system. It’s good to be the king.
Firefox user here, fuck chrome!
You can see where chrome and Firefox 3.x coexisted.
Usually I find these kinds of “non profit CEOs shouldn’t make money” things kind of annoying but honestly I don’t see any argument for a CEO to make more than a couple million regardless of context.
Remember people, 12M a year is over 32.000 a day. Every day.
People live on 32k a year.
Yeah that’s fucking insane. 2 million is over the top even
People live on a lot less than $32k a year.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-fpl/
Yeah I’m not against the CEO earning similar amounts to those of organisations doing similar things and bringing in similar amounts of money… But those CEOs, too, are compensated disproportionately.
Yeah I’m not against the CEO earning similar amounts to those of organisations doing similar things and bringing in similar amounts of money
This is the exact argument boards of directors (which are made of other CEOs) use to excuse continually ratcheting up CEO pay, which their own boards in turn use to excuse ratcheting up their pay. It’s the huge grift of the CEO good ol’ boys club.
Yeah and the reason they get away with it is because a single person’s (exorbitant) pay in the end hardly affect what’s left for the shareholders, whereas giving all employees raises costs a lot more.
Yeah, you need a good and competent CEO and that’s especially important for a non profit. But most of those salaries are just extreme. Is it really impossible to find good people without paying them multi million salaries?
yeah, for profit ceos shouldn’t make money either. most ceos are useless at best.
deleted by creator
You know what else coincides with 2009? Google Chrome’s release- a browser by a company with far more resources. I’m absolutely not a supporter of CEO pay going up in general- this post is just incredibly lazy
I dont feel the post is saying the two are correlated, more so simply that despite Firefox doing worse year over year, the CEOs compensation continues to rise.
As much as I’m opposed to Mozilla CEOs paying out absurd amounts, we still have to acknowledge that Mozilla has way more revenue streams nowadays than they had a few years ago.
So a sinking market share of one of their (free and open source) products doesn’t mean that the company is making less money overall.
Especially because a sinking market share doesn’t mean there are less users. This graph doesn’t reflect the exponential adoption of smartphones and tablets on which most users just use the preinstalled browser (eg Chrome and Safari).
So the user base is probably still similiar in size or even bigger, but the number of devices just exploded due to smartphones beeing adopted by a broad audience in markets like Asia and Africa.
Users on just desktop has been shrinking too, despite more people using computers in general https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
Yeah, I’d love to see an additional line with user count as well
This is precisely how I read it.
In other words, the marketshare isn’t tied to the ceo? I don’t see the point in putting that out there without any context, like is lowering the ceo’s compensation supposed to magically give Mozilla more market? Do they want a new ceo? How much is Mozilla making? What’s the end goal? Right now they’re competing with Microsoft and Google- it’s not exactly fair competition.
It’s just indicative of where their priorities lie. Dude’s compensation is like 3.5% of their total development budget. Meanwhile they’re being absolutely dominated by their competitors. Maybe instead of working on their golden parachutes, they should focus more on not being obliterated in the next 24-48 months.
Yeah maybe if Firefox could be the default browser on Android, mac, and windows, they’d be able to outpace the others on marketshare. We know this’ll never happen though, and desktop usage (their majority market) is dwindling; this is while the vast majority of users never change from the default browser and their competitors are the default and thus the target for compatibility on the web. Maybe you’re right and the ceo could change all this by being paid less. Tbh I’m happy as long as they have the revenue to stay afloat and can continue making the browser without adding a bunch of tracking. All this talk about marketshare is nonsense- the CEO’s job is to find money and they’re finding money and diversifying. In 2023 alone, they were able to increase developer costs by 40m (so now about 260m, almost a 20% jump and 10% the year before that from 200m), so acting like they don’t invest in their products is so asinine.
Totally! How dare OP post some visual data without having detailed plans about how to solution a company’s various business issues. Super lazy.
Does it make sense for a CEO to be paid more while the business they manage dwindles?
In a vacuum, no- but we all know life is more complicated than this chart. For example, how do they compare to the market rate of other CEOs? Are they increasing profitability (something marketshare alone doesn’t say)? I’m not just gonna say “lower ceo pay = problem solved”- we have to do better. CEO pay is a systemic problem and needs a systemic solution- imo it should be capped across the spectrum or based on lowest employee pay but I’m sure I’m in the minority
The situation is always more complicated than a single graph can represent. Which is why I’m taking this in consideration with other context, and it’s solidifying my impression that Mozilla is failing and I need to find a firefox alternative before they shit it up further chasing money to pay their CEO a ridiculously inflated “market rate”. What good is some theoretical increased profitability (they’re a non-profit!) if all it does is serve to further inflate already inflated compensation packages?
Tbh there really isn’t any replacement, which tells you a lot about how profitable browsers that care even a little about privacy vs browsers that are just supported by bigger companies and have better marketing. And yes, there’s a bunch of smaller browsers around but they’re mostly reskins and die overnight without Google and Mozilla to carry the major load. It’s sad but privacy is not as popular as compatibility with every website and when you’re the default, you’re compatible everywhere. I’ve been around since Netscape and I don’t see a way to change this at all. Mozilla literally relies on Google ad money to stay afloat.
There is no Firefox alternative. There is Firefox and there is Chrome. Everything else is just a fancy reskin of either one of them.
firefox is not gecko, but yeah there is a depressing lack of viable alternatives
Without Firefox there is no Gecko
There’s no gecko without Netscape either, but one of those isn’t around anymore.
The decline started much earlier than the increase of salary
It couldnt be connected even if there was no other reason
It’s sad to see Firefox continue to lose popularity I thought there might be some kind of comeback but no.
Part of the problem is both Chrome and Edge come installed by default on the company’s own products, and they have massive campaigns to keep you from switching, since user data is so profitable for them to sell.
It is up to us, the “person who does IT for the whole family” to beat back the other browsers.
Firefox is the default on Linux. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ugh I use Firefox because fuck chrome, but they do have some really annoying ass bugs that should have been dealt with long ago before they kept adding features.
Haven’t come across any bugs that i know of, but im really annoyed that they still haven’t added HDR support. Has been requested for literal years.
Like what?
Pull to refresh for starters on mobile is wonky as hell accidentally triggering. It’s not nearly as nice and consistent as chrome
Weird, I don’t know of a sire where I’ve had a problem with that.
What a poor soul, started out only making half a million dollars a year?? 😑
too much money but, mozilla does a lot more that firefox… (see also: rust
they started it, but it’s not been their project for a long time
Not even, they laid off most of their Rust people already.
they started it, but it’s not been their project for a long time
Seems very suspicious that the CEO is getting paid millions while Firefox’s market share is dropping like an anvill.
I think that money would be better spent on improving the browser and making sure there are more privacy protections, maybe even set an example for other browsers to follow. Make average people actually want to use Firefox instead of Chrome.
Firefox isn’t their only product, but it’s clearly their most popular one so this is very questionable.
Would be even better with info about their other product market share as well, and adjustment for inflation. Wouldn’t change the overall message, but would give less stuff for jerks like me to nitpick.
1.) Market share is a different number from daily active users. You can have increasing daily active users while losing market share if the market balloons like it did in 2012.
2.) Mozilla is a nonprofit to begin with. The goal is not to make money on Firefox or any other projects for that matter. The goal is to make the internet better for everyone. Firefox’s profitability will never have any real impact on Chairman pay.
- Firefox has recorded a drop in active users too.
- Ex-CPO Steve Teixeira stood up to Mozilla laying off people in his department, even though it was turning a profit. Ex-CPO.
I agree that Mozilla should act like a non-profit, which is in contrast to people in this thread who say Mozilla should be ranked alongside for profit corporations. But I don’t see Mozilla practicing what they preach
What is a senior director of gift planning and how does that justify a salary of $260k?
They’re probably responsible for spending the nonprofit’s funds in meaningful ways by donating it to smaller projects. There needs to be someone who oversees it and ensures it’s not being wasted.
The irony
The “t” is a typo.
Dude is in charge of animated memes.
