Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 11, 2020 22:26 UTC (Tue) by tsdgeos (guest, #69685) [Link] (24 responses)

I guess the fair question here is, how much does the CEO of a tech company of a similar size make?

If they make that amount, well it's reasonable that Firefox makes that much, we don't want to "punish" financially people that want to develop Free Software, right?

How are CEO salaries calculated?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 8:29 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, my initial question isn't correct. I retract the suggestion.

CEO salaries aren't my speciality. But 2.5 million is a lot of money. I hope our community has people who do know how these things work and are keeping an eye on such things.

How are CEO salaries calculated?

Posted Aug 13, 2020 16:29 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (2 responses)

But 2.5 million is a lot of money.

$2.5 million is a lot of money for one person. But if you divide it out, it's about $10K for each of the 250 people being laid off. IOW, even dropping the CEO's salary to $0 would only save enough money to pay a few of the people who have been laid off. It looks bad for the CEO to earn many times as much as a developer, but high CEO salary is not the root cause of Mozilla's financial problems.

How are CEO salaries calculated?

Posted Aug 14, 2020 13:20 UTC (Fri) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link] (1 responses)

The entire budget of The Document Foundation (LibreOffice) is one million dollars.

How are CEO salaries calculated?

Posted Aug 16, 2020 10:28 UTC (Sun) by ms_43 (subscriber, #99293) [Link]

Which funds maybe 5% of the actual development and maintenance of LibreOffice code; the majority being funded by the commercial ecosystem's enterprise customers, and a minority done by volunteers.

But of course, not being based in Silicon Valley helps too.

How are CEO salaries calculated?

Posted Aug 16, 2020 4:46 UTC (Sun) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

It's not just that it's $2.5 million. It's that it's grown from 1/4 that to it's present value in less than 10 years. That kind of inflation while they are losing users and marketshare is just NOT acceptable.

You see this same type of stuff in publicly traded companies where the board of directors that sets the CEO salary are composed entirely of other CEO's from other companies and the stock holders aren't doing anything to fix it because the largest owners are institutional investors like mutual funds that don't go hands on over anything. This is an area where I believe the US is long overdue to impose some regulation on because these incestuous boards where CEO's are serving on boards of other companies whose CEO's server on their own corrupts the enterprise and allows things like the Sears situation to occur where a CEO turn the entire company to acting towards their own interests and no one holds them to account.

If Mozilla can't find a CEO for under a million they should promote from within.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 8:47 UTC (Wed) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link] (11 responses)

> I guess the fair question here is, how much does the CEO of a tech company of a similar size make? If they make that amount, well it's reasonable that Firefox makes that much,

Why? The salaries of Silicon Valley are extortionate, and therefore so should that of Firefox' CEO?

> we don't want to "punish" financially people that want to develop Free Software, right?

Working as the CEO of a famous non-profit organisation that aims to change the world and making "just" a few hundred thousand? I can imagine worse punishments.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 12:09 UTC (Wed) by tsdgeos (guest, #69685) [Link] (10 responses)

Ok, let me rephrase the question, are you saying that a developer working for a Free Software company should be making less money that the same developer working for a non Free Software company?

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 13:42 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (9 responses)

> Ok, let me rephrase the question, are you saying that a developer working for a Free Software company should be making less money that the same developer working for a non Free Software company?

Setting aside that the topic was CEO salaries and not developers, it is typically the case that non-profit salaries are lower than corporate salaries and it is possible, even likely the case that free software developers on an average get less than proprietary software developers assuming margins for free software products are lower

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 14:12 UTC (Wed) by tsdgeos (guest, #69685) [Link] (8 responses)

I am not say "how the world is", i'm saying "how the world should be".

I don't disagree that NGO and Free Software companies usually pay less.

What i am saying is that they should not pay less.

As the Free Software community we should reject that people are just paid less because they are doing "what they like", otherwise we're simply punishing them for liking the common good.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 14:53 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] (4 responses)

Non-profit status is important here. You can be employed by a big, for-profit organization and still work on Free Software. We would expect to be paid commensurate with our work regardless of the license at such places.

What about the salaries of others besides the CEO at Mozilla? I don't know what people make inside of Mozilla but should Free Software developers at non-profits be paid less (or even be laid off) while the CEO (and perhaps other executives) should be paid more? Executive salary at Mozilla is very relevant when others are losing their jobs.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 17:47 UTC (Wed) by bracher (subscriber, #4039) [Link] (1 responses)

Keep in mind that non-profit status also means that there is no hope of equity compensation, so salary will likely adjust up to account for that. Rings true based on conversations with a few friends who have worked for Mozilla in technical roles, they were paid more than they would have been at a for-profit tech company because compensation at the for-profit would have included stock options or grants.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 23:00 UTC (Wed) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

That differs from my knowledge. The developers I knew at Mozilla who quit and went to work at the well-known Bay Area big tech companies made a lot more after the move, even just looking at cash.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 14, 2020 7:40 UTC (Fri) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link] (1 responses)

Page 8, https://lwn.net/Articles/828581/

Looks like the next highest is $295 000.

However, CEO's base salary is $450 000 (page 52). The other $2 000 000 is under bonus and incentive compensation. It's the latter one that might be questionable.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Sep 10, 2020 12:30 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I'll say. Why on earth get millions in bonuses and incentives while your browser's market share is plunging? Bonuses for what? Failure?

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 23:23 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> What i am saying is that they should not pay less.

That position could potentially be satisfied with executives like these in general getting paid less than they are right now. You could tie that as a proportion of the average pay in the organization for instance across the industry

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 13, 2020 7:49 UTC (Thu) by ale2018 (guest, #128727) [Link]

> I am not say "how the world is", i'm saying "how the world should be".

Until we measure success by salary amount, we're not "how the world should be".

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 13, 2020 12:58 UTC (Thu) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link]

I am not say "how the world is", i'm saying "how the world should be".

In the world, as it should be, CEOs are not paid more than five times the lowest wage in their company.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 10:59 UTC (Wed) by scientes (guest, #83068) [Link] (6 responses)

No it is not. The Pepsi-Co CEO that ran Apple into the ground also got paid rediculous amounts of money, and the banksters that got bailed out became some of the highest paid civil servents precisely for screwing up their jobs.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 15:13 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

The problem basically is that CxOs don't want to be paid less than average. And they have the power to award themselves payrises.

The result is that executive salaries soar as the workers get less and less. As a multiple of average salary, the typical CxOs salary has probably risen 10 or 20-fold since the start of the century. Are they really worth that much?

Cheers,
Wol

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 17:49 UTC (Wed) by bracher (subscriber, #4039) [Link] (4 responses)

CEOs don't have the power to award themselves payrises, executive compensation would at a minimum require board approval.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 18:49 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Given that many of them sit on each others' boards, I think it's a case of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

Cheers,
Wol

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 15, 2020 15:49 UTC (Sat) by scientes (guest, #83068) [Link] (1 responses)

> "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

Sounds like the U.S. economy.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 15, 2020 16:48 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Sounds like all economies above subsistence level, frankly.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 23:07 UTC (Wed) by himi (subscriber, #340) [Link]

Remuneration boards are notorious for granting ridiculously large executive salaries and benefits packages - in large part because they're typically made up of people who benefit from that trend continuing. If it was regular workers from these companies voting on the remuneration that would be different, but it's almost exclusively other executives.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 11, 2020 22:39 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (1 responses)

> Nearly a billion dollars in the past seven years!?

umm, i think you mean nearly 10m dollars in seven years, which is still lots of money, but a fair amount less than a billion ...

jake

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 6:11 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Yes, indeed I meant 10 million :-)

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 14:47 UTC (Wed) by ubhofmann (subscriber, #47368) [Link] (3 responses)

Last year, I donated 100$ to Mozilla Foundation. I didn't know they need 24.000 donators like me every year just to get the money they need to pay their CEO. I'm surprised and disgusted.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 15:35 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (2 responses)

As far as I can tell, no donations were used to pay the CEO.

The Mozilla Foundation is non-profit, but the Mozilla Corporation is for-profit. Mitchell Baker is Chair/CEO of both. The MoFo 2018 form lists her "reportable compensation from the organization" as $0, and "reportable compensation from related organizations" as $2.5M, with a note of "PAID ONLY BY RELATED FOR-PROFIT".

So it sounds like she's paid nothing by the non-profit MoFo - she's only paid by MoCo (which I assume gets its money from search engine licensing etc). In particular, donations go to MoFo and therefore do not go towards her salary; they have to be spent in accordance with MoFo's charitable status. The highest salary paid directly by MoFo was $300K for the executive director.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 12, 2020 20:49 UTC (Wed) by seneca6 (guest, #63916) [Link] (1 responses)

Thank you for this welcome clarification.

Were it otherwise, it would be very difficult to communicate globally. While I agree that no one should be punished financially for doing non-profit or Free Software work, we also have to see the global reach of software like Firefox. A user in a developing country is also invited to donate, right? I can only guess that in their minds, being competitive in the Valley is not the primary concern.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Sep 3, 2020 18:16 UTC (Thu) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

Asking for a DONATION in Europe means culturally that the person asking for a DONATION is in dire need for help, which in turn means that people, who are NOT WELL OFF will make an effort to kindly help and donate something. An average monthly salary in Eastern-Europe is about 1400$ and a good specialist monthly salary in Finland is about 5000$, id est about 60k$/year.

For short, for a Mozilla Corporation like organization to ask DONATIONS from anywhere other than U.S. is UTTERLY DISGUSTING. Why a hell should an Easter-European software developer, who makes about 25$/year DONATE ITS WORK TIME to any U.S. open source project, where the CEO gets over 2M$/year and "low salary" developers get about 100k$/year?

Really, those people give the America a really bad reputation in Europe.

Should Mitchell Baker give most of 1 billion back to Mozilla?

Posted Aug 28, 2020 3:24 UTC (Fri) by apscomp (subscriber, #62673) [Link]

hi,

just ran a back-of-the-envelope-calculation.... at most the salary for close to the whole current decade comes to about $10 million and change... A billion$ is 1,000M dollars... where does this number come from ?