this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024

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Mozilla chairman's salary vs Firefox market share (as of 2023) (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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From https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1hokr0c/mozilla_chair_pay_vs_firefox_market_share_2023/m4aca4j/:

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

(page 3) 39 comments

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago

The argument is if you don't pay a CEO enough, they will go elsewhere where they are paid more. I don't know whether that is a good argument or not, but (at least some) CEOs have a skill set critical to the success of an organization. It would be interesting to know how the pay of CEOs in general has changed over time. That would tell you if this is shitty or not. My expectation is that it is somewhere in the middle leaning toward acceptable

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

If this inclusive to all the forks? Alot of folks run forks cus they don't like both ff and chrome. Just sayin.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

The thing I resent the most with mozilla is them dropping servo development. It was bringing great changes to firefox.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 4 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

The market share plot looks suspiciously clean, where are those numbers from?

Edit: looks like they're from page view data. I know I spoof my browser to show chrome for better compatibility, I wonder how common that is among Firefox users.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I spoof my browser (Librewolf) as Firefox for privacy and I don't encounter issues from not reporting my user agent as Chrome/Chromium. I think it's pretty uncommon for a website to not work on Firefox, so I don't see how this is necessary. The Chrome Mask extension is meant to be used on a per-site basis.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Do you use this extension? it allows you to do that on a site-by-site basis. Maybe only do it for sites with compatibility issues? You can report them right from the extension.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

i switched to firefox because it had tabs and ie didn't. ie7 had tabbed browsing in 2006? i later switched to chrome because firefox stopped working well and i got sick of troubleshooting. i switched to brave a few years ago and started using firefox again this year, but i'm regularly switching browsers still trying to find one i like.

the loss of market share was because of chrome, right? Google had a good reputation back then, and their browser worked easily and you could customize it. I wish there were more options that weren't modified firefox or chrome, but i get why it's tough.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Just the other day, I've been forced to watch at least 10 ads for Chrome on Youtube. Falls upon deaf ears with me, but others, I can imagine, will just mindlessly click and download that shit.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 136 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do you have examples for this claim?

[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages-of-1-million-or-more

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[+] [email protected] -15 points 4 months ago

Graphs like these have been going on for years.

It is possible that the CEO came in and cleaned out the bloat of workers that just come in and hang out basically (common in the tech field and has been done to Twitter (X)). -That would make the salary increase correlate to savings. Showing a correlation between development and available funds would be pertinent. Just off the top of my head, I remember significant improvements since first seeing graphs like this.

Also take into account the competition was dismal until Chrome came along. Much like the game console market when Sony entered it, the browser market was hurting with a hole to fill for a strong leader.

Mozillas politics don't help. Choosing a side can alienate about half your user base. Flip-flopping sides and you're killing off your whole user base. Declaring dishonestly that 'we can't do this without your donations' while making bank from Google (long time ago) doesn't help either. Politics would need to come into play here and how much those are on the CEO.

They mostly appeal to Linux users (people more likely to switch out things), and almost every Linux YouTuber promotes Brave (which is shady af). Brave also has or had an undeniable corporate presence in the browsers sub on Reddit with weekly Brave vs *** for a particular category Brave would win at by low karma accounts. Firefox lacked that marketing, not for being a bad browser. Prior to, they had the FOSS fanbase influencing for them.

Statistics and graphs are tools of propagandists. There might be something there, but there's often a bigger picture to be seen. Firefox isn't a bad browser, and I'm hoping they can turn it around to gain marketshare again. (and drop all politics).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

What is a senior director of gift planning and how does that justify a salary of $260k?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

The irony

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I now recommended https://apps.gnome.org/Epiphany/

Or ladybird browser when it is released.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's not a browser I would recommend to most people as it's still in early development and breaks websites all the time. Librewolf/Firefox are better.

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[–] [email protected] 194 points 4 months ago (6 children)

til my favorite browser has been losing a lot of ground over the years, i guess i've been living in my foxy bubble

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fox hole

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 4 months ago

The fact you're on lemmy puts you in good company I believe. I, too, am fighting the chromium curse.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Is it adjusted for an inflation?

I smell some spurious correlation.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 4 months ago (2 children)

22% inflation vs 700% increase for the CEO between 2016 and 2022?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Minimum wage went up to $35 an hour, so nothing to see here. /$

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But inflation for the wealthy was a lot more than inflation for everybody else. If you earn over a million a year, your income MUST increase by at least 2x PER YEAR in order to stay competitive against the rest of the ruling class! Won’t somebody think of the billionaires!!!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

We need our CEO to be the greediest, most unethical, unemphatic selfish prick we can get to try to gobble up as much cash for the company as possible. If we pay any less, the greedy assholes won't apply and we might get someone who gives some of the value back to the customer

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Nobody said this was causal... But also 14x increase is not inflation.

Its just that its a window into whats wrong with mozilla. Ofcourse many other things led to their downfall aswell.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The CEOs salary has almost zero affect on Firefox's market share.

That decline can be explained relatively simply by two things.

One, people are increasing using mobile devices and very very rarely do they install another browser so they are using Chrome on Android and Safari on Apple devices.

Two, Google was/is using Google dot com to promote chrome. That is not something Mozilla could ever replicate.

Then there is the other bit where Mozilla tries to diversify their revenue sources and the faithful skewer them for it and tell them "just work on Firefox" when it is clear the market is unwilling to pay for a browser at all.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Still, increasing payment while market share is falling seems to be the wrong incentive, doesn't it?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago

The point is that Firefox market share isn't indicative of anything useful.

A better comparison would be something like revenue - if Mozilla makes more money, the CEO can earn more.

Mozilla does a lot more than just Firefox and I'm fact increasing revenue from other sources should have been a priority anyway

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

sfgsdgdsgdsgdsgdfs

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I also wonder how much the shift toward mobile devices in browser market share (>60% today from nearly non-existent 20 years ago) played into declining Firefox market share.

Not only was Chrome lean, clean and fast at the time, it was also the default option on mobile for Android. Same for Safari on iPhone. Since (most?) people use the default option, especially if it worked well during early adoption on mobile, it seems pretty understandable why we see chrome / safari where they are in browser market share.

Anyway, I'm glad we still have options like Firefox, and hope we don't see decreasing support for the Gecko browser engine associated with the lower market share.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

sfgsdgdsgdsgdsgdfs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

"barely functional" and it was fantastic

[–] [email protected] 68 points 4 months ago

What a poor soul, started out only making half a million dollars a year?? 😑

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

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