The “relentless onslaught of change” is being blamed as Mozilla makes its second sweeping job cull of the year.
The jobs impacted are from within the Mozilla Foundation, which the nonprofit arm of the Firefox browser creator and is reported to have around 120 employees.
However, 30% of these are now facing redundancy as the foundation has admitted that it needs to make yet more cuts.
Job Losses at Mozilla
Staff were notified of the planned cuts in an email from the Mozilla Foundation’s executive director, Nabiha Syed. She explained that the two divisions that are being disbanded are the advocacy and global programs.
“Our mission at Mozilla is more high-stakes than ever,” she wrote and TechCrunch shared. “We find ourselves in a relentless onslaught of change in the technology (and broader) world, and the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical.”
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“Navigating this topsy-turvy, distracting time requires laser focus — and sometimes saying goodbye to the excellent work that has gotten us this far because it won’t get us to the next peak. Lofty goals demand hard choices,” Syed continued.
Layoffs Confirmed
TechCrunch reached out to Mozilla to confirm the job cuts and received a response from Mozilla Foundation’s communications chief Brandon Borrman.
His statement read: “The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward.”
Second Round of Job Losses for 2024
In February, Mozilla announced that it was laying off 60 workers as interim CEO Laura Chambers settled in her new role.
The cuts saw the closure of Mozilla’s 3D virtual world Hubs and reduced investment in its social media improvement project, mozilla.social; VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber.
The company also announced a renewed focus on bringing “trustworthy” AI capabilities into Firefox and rejigged some teams to make this happen. Its latest launch is an MVP called Lumigator 2, which is designed to “help developers confidently select the best LLM for their specific project”.
Mozilla is openly hoping to be a go-to resource for companies as they negotiate how to use AI. These drastic cuts show exactly how focused the company is in maintaining its place at the table as AI uptake surges.
2024 has been a brutal year for lay offs in the tech industry, and with 2025 in sight, shows no sign of slowing down.
