Let's assume good faith and that executive pay in general at Mozilla was not competitive.
That would be similar to a company noticing that it has been underpaying software engineers and then choosing to bump up compensation significantly.
A question that raises is: do executives (and software engineers?) bring the value that is associated with those pay grades, given that they seem increasingly detached from other roles?
I don't know - are many people here on HN familiar enough with executive-level strategy, connections and work practices to discuss whether that value is justified?
In honesty I believe that some executives are probably capable of using their personal networks to bring on-board significant expertise, industry influence, negotiating power and other talents (such as, frankly, the ability to dominate conversations and sway opinions, for better or worse - as long as it doesn't hurt the company) that are typically hard to quantify or certificate.
If the tech industry continues consolidating into a smaller number of more important companies then it seems understandable that those influence and network effects become more important in order to stay competitive.
I'm not sure if that's fair - those might not be the kind of skills that can necessarily be learned; I'd argue they're frequently side-effects of people's upbringing, social networks, and psychological profiles (including some dark/problematic personality types). But it explains the realpolitik of the situation without demonizing individual decision-makers for what may be rational choices in the environment.
> Let's assume good faith and that executive pay in general at Mozilla was not competitive.
The problem is that this is a very subjective claim. If you think of mozilla as belonging to the same category as tech giants or successful tech startups, and believe it needs to compete with them to attract talent then it's not unreasonable. If you think of firefox as a charity then it's completely insane.
Compensation for charity CEOs, even tech focussed ones (like the EFF, TOR, wikimedia, khan academy) are lower, usually much lower. A number of charities have managed to attract impressive CEOs despite not paying 'market' rates.
It's pure conjecture but I'd imagine that the compensation culture in this case started near the top of the company (given that it appears executive-centric) - perhaps based on conversations with potential hires, vendors, competitors, and so forth.
Given the nature of Firefox, I'd expect many of those third parties would have been anchored in the 'tech giant' world -- perhaps leading compensation policy astray.
Let's assume good faith and that executive pay in general at Mozilla was not competitive.
That would be similar to a company noticing that it has been underpaying software engineers and then choosing to bump up compensation significantly.
A question that raises is: do executives (and software engineers?) bring the value that is associated with those pay grades, given that they seem increasingly detached from other roles?
I don't know - are many people here on HN familiar enough with executive-level strategy, connections and work practices to discuss whether that value is justified?
In honesty I believe that some executives are probably capable of using their personal networks to bring on-board significant expertise, industry influence, negotiating power and other talents (such as, frankly, the ability to dominate conversations and sway opinions, for better or worse - as long as it doesn't hurt the company) that are typically hard to quantify or certificate.
If the tech industry continues consolidating into a smaller number of more important companies then it seems understandable that those influence and network effects become more important in order to stay competitive.
I'm not sure if that's fair - those might not be the kind of skills that can necessarily be learned; I'd argue they're frequently side-effects of people's upbringing, social networks, and psychological profiles (including some dark/problematic personality types). But it explains the realpolitik of the situation without demonizing individual decision-makers for what may be rational choices in the environment.