> It sounds like you're arguing that Mozilla could attract a more competent CEO while paying them much less.
The current CEO is well remunerated and seems by many popular accounts to lack competence, so this seems like a relatively low bar as bars go.
> How?
Hiring competent staff at any level is a challenge and depends on many things; there's no magic bullet. I at no point argued that hiring a competent CEO was easy, just that linking salary to competence as part of that hiring process is a faulty metric.
I'd say refining any hiring process by removing faulty metrics would be a good thing. Wouldn't you agree?
I've seen companies overpay for mediocre talent and assume that'll get them good work. Obviously doesn't work – you're right that high salary does not _cause_ high competence.
But if someone truly competent has an offer from the Google Chrome team and an offer from Mozilla, and Chrome can offer 10x more, well, you want to do the best you can.
"well" is not relative to average, it's relative to requirement.
> But if someone truly competent has an offer from the Google Chrome team and an offer from Mozilla, and Chrome can offer 10x more, well, you want to do the best you can.
"Competency" is a complex (& somewhat subjective) thing when it comes to leadership, but if that's your candidate's sole criteria for seeking the role, I wonder if that's who you want running Mozilla. You forget that this swings both directions: motivators are extremely important in leadership of any company, not least one with Mozilla's rights-based values.
Someone with a deep passion for building an amazing browser could reasonably be assumed to also be head-hunted by the Chrome team (and Edge, and Brave, etc...) as well as probably other, non-browser companies that just want their competence. They may also have a passion for supporting the open web, being nice to humans, etc, but they'll still have to justify to their spouse/family why they're turning down the other offers of much more money.
The perfect person could exist here but it's starting to look like very steep odds.
I'd be more for angling at someone with a deep passion for the differentiating factors between Firefox & Chrome (or more specifically, between Mozilla and Alphabet).
If someone has a deep passion for building an amazing browser but lacks any appreciation for why building Firefox might be more worthwhile than building Chrome, then I'd hope they would go work for the Chrome team, as I would not expect them to prioritise aspects of Mozilla's business strategy that differentiate their products.
Or in other words: is there any point in Mozilla existing if they ape Chrome/Google/Alphabet in their approach?
The current CEO is well remunerated and seems by many popular accounts to lack competence, so this seems like a relatively low bar as bars go.
> How?
Hiring competent staff at any level is a challenge and depends on many things; there's no magic bullet. I at no point argued that hiring a competent CEO was easy, just that linking salary to competence as part of that hiring process is a faulty metric.
I'd say refining any hiring process by removing faulty metrics would be a good thing. Wouldn't you agree?