Mozilla Corporation's workforce is taking a hit from the coronavirus pandemic. The company has announced that it is restructuring the organization, and as part of that change, it will lay off 250 employees.
CEO Mitchell Baker told employees in an internal message that the company's original product plan for 2020 before COVID-19 kicked in is "no longer workable". As a result, Mozilla is shifting its focus to "new product development and and go to market activities". Additionally, 60 employees will be forced to change teams and Mozilla is shutting down operations in Taipei, Taiwan.
Affected employees will receive severance pay that's at least equivalent to their full base pay and COBRA benefits for the U.S. staff until the end of the year. They will also get their individual performance benefits as previously allocated by the company. In addition, Mozilla will help as many employees find new jobs.
As Mozilla rolls out its new structure, it has also introduced specific areas of priority, including focusing Firefox on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences. That means reduced investment in developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, as well as a transition of its adjacent security and privacy products to the New Products and Operations team.
Mozilla is also investing in new products including Pocket, Hubs, VPN, Web Assembly, and privacy products. It will also form a new design and UX team for those new efforts as well as a new team to integrate machine learning features into Mozilla’s platforms.
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