Mozilla is trying to push me out because I have cancer, CPO says in bombshell lawsuit Mozilla Corporation was sued this month in the US, along with three of its executives, for alleged disability discrimination and retaliation against Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira. Teixeira, according to a complaint filed in King County Superior Court in the State of Washington, had been tapped to become CEO when he was …
The sad truth, is that tech companies have a very poor track record when it comes to employees with disabilities, and fair ADA accomodation. This isn't unique to Mozilla. Mortality and the limitations of the flesh, should really be a place where tech companies augment and empower their staff, not limit them. I mean, in every one of the science fiction books of my youth, that's the way it was always supposed to be. What happened?
Geeks with power, so they punch down in the only direction that they can, those aging and those infirm.
Then, hiring additional security because for some reason, people are angry with them and they don't want to return to swimming inside of the toilet again.
Those same geeks also have a responsibility to the rest of the employees. If by employing the aging and the infirm that company starts losing money then far more people are going to lose their jobs..
If you started a company would you only employ the aging and the infirm, no, I thought not.
-- I do hope that you are not assuming that older and disabled people are necessarily less effective workers --
Older probably not, disabled, by definition, yes. Even if a disabled worker is as productive as a non-disabled one money still has to have been spent to obviate the disability.
Also its not just tech firms. Why do you thing there is legislation regarding the number of disabled a company MUST employ?
@LybsterRoy. "Older probably not, disabled, by definition, yes. Even if a disabled worker is as productive as a non-disabled one money still has to have been spent to obviate the disability."
I've no idea where you live, but in the UK at least you're simply wrong on the legislative definitions. Under the Equality Act 2010, a impairment with a substantial and long term effect on normal day to day activities is a disability. Under Schedule 1 (5) this remains the case even if it is treated. So it's entirely possible for someone to be both disabled and for their condition to be completely under control.
In which case why, you might ask, are they covered under the Act? The answer, of course, is that idiots still make incorrect assumptions and discriminate against them. You wouldn't know any of those, would you?
"Why do you thing there is legislation regarding the number of disabled a company MUST employ?"
In the UK, mandatory disability quotas were abandoned 30 years ago.
"...Why do you thing there is legislation regarding the number of disabled a company MUST employ?..."
... To prevent know-it-all jerks from deciding that the disabled are useless and shouldn't be employed ?
Don't revel too much. You're not safe. All that's needed is that sociopathy gets deemed a disability tomorrow, and you'll be forced to look at the situation from the other side.
Thomas Edison, Stevie Wonder, Steven Hawkins, Ray Charles, Gordon Brown, oops, not a good example. Not to mention millions of people working in wheelchairs. If the 80cm cubicle is too small for a wheelchair then maybe it's too small for everybody.
Glad you think I'm less effective than my colleagues in my job. Legally, I have multiple disabilities. Yet? I work a full time job in a complex job with management responsibilities. The cost to my employer? Minimal. Yet by your metric? I should be allowed to be discriminated against simply because I'm disabled.
God help you if you ever end up disabled yourself.
Same here... I have 4 minor ailments that are gestalt when combined and am considered 'disabled' I have a blue badge to go along with that.
Yet I head up a team of 9 developers and engineers that is developing software for (NDA Applies here) and have been in charge of said team for the past 4.5yrs and am contracted for a further 18 months.
When I see that kind of ignorant arsehat rhetoric... I'd like to punch a few faces... But then I realise that's what these pathetic trolls want... a reaction.
So instead... I just suggest they hide back under their bridge as some billy goats are coming.
It could just be plain ignorance: the lack of knowledge that, in a modern knowledge-based economy, mental ability is unhindered by physical capability. He / They / Us / She is working with an antique mindset of how the world was 40 years ago - hello, 21st Century calling??
I agree with that thinking. One of my disabilities is hearing loss. I'm not totally deaf yet, but it can affect conversations etc. But, the tech that helps me work? Comes free in every modern OS - I have live transcribe on my phone for calls, and can enable it should I need to when talking to someone in person is talking to me. Or my PC has it built in so it can transcribe videos I watch. Or Teams has it built in so I can read what people are seeing in a Teams call.
40 years ago? That would've been much more difficult.
Bit like many UK politicians / celebrities/ people with a public profile of all stripes left, right and centre- misquoting ill remembered, outdated, simplified high school sound bites on genetics to justify discrimination and erasing non binary people and then playing victim when people push back against their bigotry and often resorting to bullying SLAPP suits to silence critics, along with stoking up a hate mob....
I have asthma, gout and (used to have) hypertension.
I am also a programmer.
What does having those disabilities (mild ones at that) have to do with my ability to sit at a desk and code?
Jeez, this is like the time Renesas refused to hire me just because of my hypertension plus the fact that I'm overweight all over again.
"If you started a company would you only employ the aging and the infirm, no, I thought not."
Your argument is beyond specious, it is just a cheap jibe at the 'aging & infirm' because all the ten year-olds in IT think that *only* the young can THINK OR DO ANYTHING USEFUL !!!.
In the right setting the 'aging & infirm' are quite capable of doing just fine.
Of course, I am not going to ask for them to be hefting the goods around in the warehouse *but* neither would I be asking the Ten Year-olds to apply their 'extensive' decades long experience to future projects.
Like any sane person I would employ a combination of people, suitable for the work & conditions ... and not pre-judge them for not being perfect specimens of Homo Sapiens !!!
Note, also, that the 'Aging & infirm' are grouped together because *only* the aging get ill and it is a foregone conclusion that being ill makes you *unemployable* !!!
Never heard of a young person getting seriously ill ... such as cancer !!!???
Maybe, this can be more simply stated as reading does take so much of your valuable time:
===================
*** GROW UP !!! ***
===================
:)
By some definitions, everyone has cancer, all the time — small groups of cells that are reproducing without trimming telomeres and aren't responding to apoptosis signals. It's just that the immune system does a good job of clearing them out, most of the time.
> Never heard of a young person getting seriously ill ... such as cancer !!!???
Indeed. I developed cancer at age 18 while I was in college.
I wound up keeping it quiet with some employers as I feared of any repercussions of the, by then, old news might have on my ability to get *any* health insurance (even for non-cancer illnesses).
> If you started a company would you only employ the aging and the infirm, no, I thought not.
Everybody ages, are you suggesting that companies do away with the human parts of their organisation? I know companies are desperately trying to use error-prone automated predictive text (AI) to replace people. But it's not going well for them.
It's like some one trained an LLM solely on Daily Mail comments, then turned the arsehole factor to max.
This is quite ironic: "If you started a company would you only employ the aging and the infirm, no, I thought not."
No one claimed they'd employ only such people, but I'd certainly employ them. I draw a line, however, at stupid angry tossers, so you'd be out on yer ear mate. Looking at your downvotes I wouldn't be alone in holding that view.
The prejudice you have towards older people and the disabled has been clearly laid out by you... Did you say the quiet part out loud again?
It's typical of the ignorant to assume that older and disabled people are somehow unable to perform tasks at all... it's the only reason for that kind of prejudice to exist. Now I'm sure you'll attempt to come back with some kind of strawman or ad-hominem to justify yourself... But for me at least. It's clear that you think that if anyone you consider inferior to yourself gets treated equally to you... it's a disgrace.
I have a very physical sort of job, which pays just okayish, and leaves me hurting some way or another at the end of the day. It's not a job for everyone, and there's a lot of turnover. A couple younger guys didn't even last two hours, and walked off the job at first break. I continue to work there for an important reason: they don't care how old you are.
I've had potential employers and employment agencies talk me up a positive game, "Blah-blah-blah, oh yes, you'd be great at this job, do call or come by next week."
Next week, I stop by, and get a, "what the fuck are you doing here?!" look, they get very uncomfortable-looking, say, "Hey, I have to return a couple phone calls, then we'll talk. It'll just be a few minutes," and they scurry into their office. Twenty minutes ... an hour ... and hour and a half later, they come out, don't invite me to their office, but keep me standing in the reception area. They start by talking in polite, meaningless generalities, then finally come round to, "we don't think you'd be a good fit for this job, but thanks for your interest. We'll keep your resume on file for any opportunities which come up."
I'm polite, bathe and shave daily, have no tattooes or body piercings, etc.
There's nothing I can prove in a court of law, or to any of the various government agencies tasked with preventing age-based discrimination, but it's there.
I would revise that to companies focused on profit in general, its just that tech is such a huge, front page, unavoidable, fact of life that we hear about it.
No one cares if a production line worker in a factory is fired u justly. No paper would take up that story unless it had gotten to court stage and people were noting it was happening regardless of if its reported on, then you might hear about it as the "Thoughts and Prayers" cohort buy a paper to read about it.
For one thing: death in service benefits or life insurance etc based upon average earnings. Although the insurance side would likely be calculated at time of diagnosis.
I have a feeling that the treatment costs have been making a large dent in the family savings and, like any loving parent/spouse, you want to make sure your family are in a decent position to take care of themselves when the inevitable happens.
Plus there's the professional aspect: if your mind is still working, you want to use that and not fade away.
"Plus there's the professional aspect: if your mind is still working, you want to use that and not fade away."
Really? F*ck that. God forbid if that ever happens to me and/or mine I'll be taking an advance on my death in service benefits or pension or similar and be making the most of my time left with my family and/or a big pile of hookers and cocaine. F*ck the job. What kind of weirdo judges the worth of end of their life by what they do at work?
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/21/firefox_127_private_window/
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_betting_privacy/
Just in the Last week they bought an ad company to "bring meaningful adverts to firefox" - f*cked up the privacy setting and now this ...
I must say, based on my end-user viewpoint, the former technical and strategic leads (CPO among them) seem to have done a much better job than the current ones.
Independent from that:
If only half of the allegations with regard to handling the illness of a staff member in this article are true, Mozilla should probably fire their CEO instead of the CPO.
I hadn't realized that Mozilla was being run by a group of Feminazi's? Looks to me, they saw an opportunity to kill the rooster, and be done with him? Someone liked how the CEO suit fits, and decided to keep it on. Someone should remind her, Karma is like hitting a golf ball inside a tiled bathroom, it WILL, find you!
> [ blah blah ] Feminazi's [ blah blah ]
Isn't it funny how some words not only jump right out, but almost instantly kill off the prospect of anything else the person has to say being taken seriously?
(Also, a "group of Feminazi's" what's? A group of Feminazi's pet goldfish? And do these fish belong to a single Femanazi- as the position of the apostrophe would suggest, but then where is the indefinite article?- or are these several Feminazis' pet fish...?? The tragedy is that we may never... care.)
Mozilla is now just as bad as any other company, non-profit has gone out of the window and it should no longer be recognised as such. It is in my opinion on a death slide and the only thing keeping it afloat is the pay cheques from Google for default search engine and whatever they can rustle up from buying the add company, which will be interesting to see if Mozilla adds code to stop adblockers from blocking?
Non-profits are not necessarily what you expect them to be. Firstly a non-profit can make a surplus. It looks similar but has a different name and doesn't get distributed as a dividend to shareholders. Secondly it can pay a small governing clique very generously. However profitable it may be to them, the organisation is still a non-profit.
You have to look very carefully to check whether the non-profit is actually working in the way you hoped.
I think that will be ceasing from me if this is how people are treated.
I always felt I was fighting a battle for Firefox as the RoW told me I should be using chrome, credge or something else.
I guess, for once, the RoW was right, but not for any other reason than this being piss poor behaviour from an organization that relies on donations.
Well, like Adobe, they can GTF!!!!
Too many women on positions of power.
Assuming this "Dani" person is a woman, does she not know anything about the law?
Putting a woman as "interim" anything is going to result is a nasty power struggle when the time comes for that "interim" is about to end without her becoming permanent.
Sorry if this offends some but 30 years dealing with the Corporate environment had learned me these lessons.
Are there good female senior managers? Yes, I work for one right now. Are they the norm? No, they are the exception!
Remember, for most women, their primary motivation is "self-validation!"
Blame the patriarchy. It means that management positions select for sociopathy, psychopathy and toxicity (i.e. predominantly male traits). Most women who break through the glass ceiling will have these traits even stronger than her male peers because of the discrimination she has to overcome.
This is why we need equality quotas and positive discrimination.
Firefox is still one of the best browsers out there and should still be supported over Google Chrome but this is a bit mess up and people should call them out on this and on the other blunders that have happened.
Do want to point out there no proof they will ban adblockers and they said they will keep supporting them and the privacy setting thing was a bug that being fixed.
I doubt if many readers have had the experience of a colleague or boss get hit with Stage 4 cancer. Its not a disability, its a life-threatening condition where the treatment is often as bad as the disease itself. It literally takes over your life and so if you're in a key position in a company you really need to step aside while its dealt with (because, let's face it, when it eventually kills you will step aside whether you like it or not). Claiming its "just a disability" is bogus; a disability is a physical or mental impairment that otherwise normally healthy people suffer from which once suitable accommodations are worked out allows them to participate in the workplace just like anyone else.
The problem here isn't really Mozilla so much as the crap healthcare and social care situation in the US. A cancer diagnosis is not only devastating for the sufferer but its also devastating for the person's family. Despite recent changes such as the ACA healthcare debt is still the primary driver of bankruptcies in the US. I've had an engineering VP die from cancer of the esophagus on us and so I saw both the devastating effect it had on him and the problems it caused the company because despite his best efforts he couldn't do his job. (This particular cancer is both very fast moving and almost always fatal so the problem eventually resolved itself but hardly in what I'd call an entirely satisfactory way.)
Exactly. Stage 4 is not a disability. It is an immediate life threatening condition with very poor odds of survival.
We also need to wait for confirmation, through due process (i.e. the courts) to see if what he says is true about his job. Trusting what any executive says at face value is naive at best.
I once met Steve back when he was still a developer for Borland. He struck me as a stand-up guy and very talented. He co-authored the "Delphi developers guide' together with Xavier Pacheco (another great guy).
Every story has two sides. Except this one. Go get them Steve!
Its amzing how so many posters make some many claims but have completely forgot the most obvious.
The leadership want to fire this one guy not because he is a man but simply because one less share means everyone else in leadership gets a larger pie.
Pathetic, so many brainwashed americans forget the most basic fact that the board is ONLY about greed for themselves. They pay workers as little as possible only so they can give themselves bonuses. Their selfish greed is always the motivating factor.
Be very wary about notifying your employer about serious illness. Keep every single email. Don't accept anything verbal.
Many will lay you off very quickly "Because reasons" which are usually to avoid:
a) being proved of not doing enough for you and
b) avoiding that inconvenient "Death in Service" payment.
You are completely expendable - keep all the emails.
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