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posted by chromas on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the here-today,-gone-tomorrow dept.

Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

The Mozilla Corporation announced today it was laying off approximately 250 staff members in a move to shore up the organization's financial future.

The layoffs were publicly announced in a blog post today. Employees were notified hours before, earlier this morning, via an email [PDF] sent by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation Chairwoman.

Baker's message cited the organization's need to adapt its finances to a post-COVID-19 world and re-focus the organization on new commercial services.

[...] In 2018, the Mozilla Corporation said it had around 1,000 full-time employees worldwide. Mozilla previously laid off 70 employees in January. Several sources have told ZDNet that the recent layoffs accounted for nearly a quarter of the organization's workforce.

Main casualties of today's layoffs were the developers working on the company's experimental Servo browser engine and Mozilla's threat management security team. The latter is the security team that investigates security reports and performs incident response. The security team that fixes bugs in Mozilla products is still in place, according to sources and a Mozilla spokesperson.

Changing World, Changing Mozilla

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Also at TechCrunch and The Verge.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:43PM (17 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:43PM (#1036103)

    Mozilla had 1,000 full time employees, and Outreachy funds 20 interns for six months per year. Mozilla full time employee demographics are 75% white and 75% male. 7% of the employees total are black, Native American, or Latinx.

    But tell me again how Outreachy is the cause of Mozilla's problems and the reverse discrimination is oppressing white men.

    Jesus Christ, I hate the tech industry. You all make me ashamed to be a white man, a member of the biggest bunch of whiners on the planet.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:49PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:49PM (#1036207)

    Wtf is a Latinx? Is that like a crossbreed of a Latina and a Lynx? How do I get one?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:19PM (#1036258)

      No, silly. It's one of the new starter Pokemon!

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:43PM (#1036296)

      >> Wtf is a Latinx?

      It's the new politically-correct name for wetbax.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:34PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:34PM (#1036235)

    Your sanctimonious virtue signaling here still isn't going to get you laid.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:33PM (#1036290)

      Thanks for playing.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:49PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:49PM (#1036243)

    You don't seem to realize how toxic these types of outreach programs are. Anytime you let someone in based on different criteria, the other people start looking down on, start dismissing, and get aggressive towards everyone who matches the group of the people let in with easier criteria. It's a "I worked hard to get here while they just let you in for metrics, so you must not be any good. Go away and let me do the real work." mindset that happens over and over again everywhere because we're all human. The resentment slowly builds, the work environment becomes passive aggressive, and the new people leave the field entirely thinking it's full of assholes.

    If a business wants more of a certain group of people then they should work on educating that group of people so there's more of them who'll get through the same hiring process. But of course that takes more work, more money, and there's a lag time for the effects to kick in. Doing anything which looks like it could be token hirings just makes everyone else resentful for the new guys' special status whether true or not. That's simply how human nature works and it's a self-fulfilling downward spiral. You can't fix an industry by doing things like this.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:07PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:07PM (#1036309)

      Outreachy is an internship program. They aren't hiring and promoting unqualified full time employees to fill diversity quotas, they're getting 20 interns in two three month periods per year. It's literally 2% of their work force, and the most junior people in the work force. That sounds like "educating that group of people so there's more of them who'll get through the same hiring process" to me. What's the problem?

      Further, the assholes who look down on people who they perceive as getting unfair advantages are blind to their own unfair advantages. My college computer science class had 60 students, and 57 were white men. Do you think that helped me feel comfortable, and feel like I could succeed, when I was a nervous freshman struggling in CS101? You bet your ass it did. If the classroom was me and 57 black guys, or 57 Indian women, would I have persisted when the course work got too hard? Hell no, I would have given up. I barely squeaked by as it is. At my first job after college all the execs and 90% of the engineering department were white men. Would I have felt as comfortable in the interview and the work environment if it was a building full of Latino men? Hell no again. Jesus, I even bombed CS101 interview questions in one job interview speaking to a white guy who just had an English accent. That's how much of a crutch my comfort with other white men is. So here I am, a 40-something white man making six figures in the tech industry specifically because white men dominated the tech industry 20 years ago. I wouldn't be here without that unfair advantage.

      Tell all your acquaintances that look down on Outreachy interns to sneer at me too - and if they want to eject the people in those programs from the industry, they should also track down every white guy in the industry who wouldn't be here if the entire industry demographics were, say, all Japanese 20 years ago and eject all those white guys too. Funny thing is, I bet most of the people looking to torpedo Outreachy would be on that list. Every successful person had tons of unfair advantages, all the diversity programs do is spread them around.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @12:18AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @12:18AM (#1036378)

        If the classroom was me and 57 black guys, or 57 Indian women, would I have persisted when the course work got too hard?

        Take your politically correct white punk ass to India, or China, or anywhere in the world, and see if you can get a job. When you've accomplished something like that, we might listen to your whining. Until then, you're just another self-loathing white fuck.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:13AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:13AM (#1036470)

          How would you categorize yourself, if I may ask?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @12:24PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @12:24PM (#1036510)

          Funny how "political correct" means "easily offended" but you're the one upset at the suggestion you might have had an unfair advantage. Which one of us is the whining one?

          The point is that in the US when I went to school, white men were just under 40% of the population and 90% of the tech industry. I wouldn't expect to fit in as a student or job applicant in India or China, because it would be pretty normal for the classroom or company work force to be at least 95% Indian or Chinese, respectively. But in the US, if you were someone that wasn't a white guy trying to get into tech you felt like a fish out of water in the classroom and in the workforce, and that gave white guys an unfair edge. Most of us are oblivious to the edge because it's not the kind of thing we consciously think about it. But it still exists, and we unconsciously benefit.

          There are people that have the raw talent or just the sheer grit to get into the industry despite the obstacles. That includes most of the women in the industry in the US today, and most of the non-whites, and a good portion of the white guys in the industry too. But it's not everyone. Of the 57 white guys in my college CS classes, I knew 10 or so that breezed through the course work. They probably would have succeeded no matter what. And 10 or 20 washed out. But of the remaining 30 or so, how many of us would have succeeded if we felt out of place in the classroom? I don't know, but I guarantee it's less than 30.

          You want to shut diversity programs down? Kick me and millions of others like me out of the industry too. It's only fair way to tackle the situation.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:31PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:31PM (#1036566)

            (Self loathing racist and sexist whining by a rich white male, who completed a hard program with average results, yet was lucky to get a 6 figure job in the tech bubble)

            How 'bout we put cardboard cutouts of non-white males in the classroom, so that non-white male students don't get "scared away"? Would that help assuage your obsession about the sex and race of the other students?

            I did study in China, and the race and origin of the other students and the people on the street didn't matter a shit to me. I was there to study a program I had chosen, and that was that. But I am from an older generation that still believed we were all equal regardless of sex and race.

            In the US, there weren't many white women in my CS classes. But there were many more among the Chinese and Indians. Society wasn't pushing CS. Nobody was forced to enroll. Apparently foreign cultures were more accepting of their daughters doing CS. And once we got through, we got jobs in industry for around $40k and went to work.

            When did we in America turn into a country where it seems self-loathing pussies are dominating the narrative? We are expected to be competitive like that?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:10AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:10AM (#1036468)

        If the classroom was me and 57 black guys, or 57 Indian women, would I have persisted when the course work got too hard?

        Why on earth would that influence you ability to study? I don't get it. Is it because you think the black are out to get you "with their gangster attitudes" or is it the indian women who distract you with their bollywood dancing and singing? You were in a room with 57 other people, I'm not saying your should be that awful excusist "colorblind" thing, where apparently we are only equal if we don't have colors, but they're just people, where they are born, their gender or color why would that matter at all?

        Don't get me wrong I get it you had social issues, so do I, so severe that I can't have a regular job because it gives me anxiety and stress.. but my social issues are colorblind.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @11:56AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @11:56AM (#1036506)

          It has nothing to do with them being "out to get me" or distracting me with ethnic activities. It has to do with feeling like I fit in, and having the confidence that I've got the intelligence and persistence to learn what I need to know. When the whole educational program is full of people with backgrounds basically identical to mine, who look like me, and have a ton of shared experiences, then I'm constantly thinking, "Hey, if they can do it, so can I?" Conversely, if the room is full of people who seem very different than me, then just because most of them can understand the lesson and complete the programming assignments doesn't necessarily mean that I can do it too. I wouldn't feel as comfortable asking a classmate for help, or tutoring (which is something I did do with some of my white male classmates, and it made a big difference).

          I don't have any such concerns now because I'm comfortable established. I'm not a nervous 18 year old kid struggling to understand what variable assignments or programming language expressions mean, worried if I have what it takes to succeed, and nervous what my classmates think of me. So hopefully my treatment of peers, managers, and junior staff at work is colorblind in all of the good ways. But as a beginner it mattered, and being a white guy in classrooms full of white guys (including 7 of the 8 professors in the department) helped.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @05:30PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @05:30PM (#1036621)

            So you weren't properly socialized as a child, and are less comfortable around people who don't look like you. That's a good argument for enforced diversity in K-12.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Friday August 14 2020, @10:41PM

              by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday August 14 2020, @10:41PM (#1036802)

              So you weren't properly socialized as a child, and are less comfortable around people who don't look like you. That's a good argument for enforced diversity in K-12.

              Maybe that is the case for him, but it is far more difficult to push that diversity where people live than where they work. My mother was a freaking George Wallace (the Trump of his day, targeting the same demographic) supporter. My experiences with people who looked different than me (let alone those from other cultures) were very limited and my views were tainted by my parents and others I knew. Going off to college was a real eye opener, although it took years for some of those lessons to take root. Mostly I learned that most of what I was taught to believe about people, either consciously or unconsciously, was just bullshit. After decades in the workforce I have definitely learned race, sex, etc. doesn't mean squat, it is what a person is willing and capable of learning that matters.
              I think the point the GP was making is that most minorities breaking into professions dominated by a single majority group have a lot of questions they have to ask (and answer) themselves above and beyond that of the established group, and their successes and failures are as a result subject to much more internal pressure on their own belief of whether or not they are capable of success. The less confident and most borderline in the established group are far more likely to succeed anyway than those in minority groups as they do not face that extra pressure.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:47PM (#1036779)

            Okay, that makes more sense to me. I have never felt like I belonged in any group, so perhabs that is why I had difficulties understanding. It's not like im sad about that fact and perhabs there is some hacker community out there where I feel like I belong and that would be great, but I'm also quite happy working alone hacking away on stuff I find interesting.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @02:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @02:02AM (#1036398)

    [...] But tell me again how Outreachy is the cause of Mozilla's problems and the reverse discrimination is oppressing white men. [...]

    Oppress white men? Hah! They don't oppress white men. They gaslight them.