Mozilla cuts 250 jobs, says Firefox development will be affected
Mozilla Corporation is laying off 250 people, about a quarter of its workforce, explaining that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly lowered revenue. Mozilla previously had about 1,000 employees.
The Firefox maker's CEO, Mitchell Baker, announced the job cuts yesterday, writing that "economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue. As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer workable."
In a memo sent to employees, Baker said the 250 job cuts include "closing our current operations in Taipei, Taiwan." The layoffs will reduce Mozilla's workforce in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Another 60 people will be reassigned to different teams. This will take a toll on browser development. "In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team," Baker wrote.