The official internal message started with: We are making significant changes at Mozilla Corporation today. Pre-COVID, our plan for 2020 was a year of change: building a better internet by accelerating product value in Firefox, increasing innovation, and adjusting our finances to ensure financial stability over the long term. We started with immediate cost-saving measures such as pausing our hiring, reducing our wellness stipend and cancelling our All-Hands. But COVID-19 has accelerated the need and magnified the depth for these changes. Our pre-COVID plan is no longer workable. We have talked about the need for change — including the likelihood of layoffs — since the spring. Today these changes become real. —-snip—-

But every tech biz I know has benefited from Covid except rare cases like AirBnB that has direct exposure to the travel industry.

During Covid there has been a big move towards remote work and remote earning, and surely Mozilla would have benefited?

I’ve also noticed a trend over the past two years of using Covid as a justification when the real reason is something less comfortable. Covid has become the new “to spend time with their family”.

So did Covid really affect Mozilla that quickly and that badly that they had to ditch a quarter of their team? This happened in August 2020.