I am someone who does give a shit about not wanting to reward assholes.

There is one thing I think is worth noting. There's always all of this talk about, "It's the talent that matters, not the social justice stance of a developer. Keep the talented assholes; don't hire for social justice posturing!"

Well, I'm waiting to see all of those displaced "talented assholes" band together to create a product so compelling it will *prove* they were replaced by inferior developers for "social justice" reasons. By now there should be so many uber-talented people who aren't given their fair shake because of their abhorent political/social beliefs.

Or maybe... just maybe... those assholes talk a big game (as assholes often do), but aren't as indispensible as they believe themselves to be?

Being an "asshole" is not a white or black thing. Do you use linux? Because for many people, Linus is considered an asshole.

So, I've worked for a lot of effective asshole in my life, I may not have always liked them but I almost always respected what they were achieving.

So, sure someone is against gay marriage, i'm sure if you look carefully you can find uncomfortable things about anyone. I mean for some people just flying a US flag is a uncomfortable because it represents a country that still hasn't come to terms with genocide against the native people and imported slavery, as well as an economic system that rewards people for behaviors far more offensive than whether someone believes in gay marriage.

I've been sitting through my own companies D&I training for the past year or so, and the most important takeway I've gotten is something one of the trainers said, taken out of context... "We all need to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable"

So, if you damage your org over something did on their own time serving their own opinion your no better than them. Yes people trying to tell others what to do with their own personal lives (in their own personal bedrooms) is pretty sick, but so is getting into peoples private beliefs that they aren't wearing on their shoulder.

Just interpreting what the OP said and not really sure where I stand on the topic, but I think he means that "social justice" controversies have purged asshole devs that were competent developers producing good features and that firefox as a product is not as good due to that. Taking senior engineers off the roster will usually impact the product whether or not they were assholes.

As far as I can tell, OP's talking about the replacement of Mozilla Corporation CEO Brendan Eich, who had an engineering background[0] and was CTO but made a small but controversial donation to an anti gay marriage campaign, with Mitchell Barker, who came from a legal background and was formerly the president of the Mozilla Foundation.

At the time this was pretty divisive, because it was a candidate with objectionable social opinions but great technical chops getting ousted by a candidate who was uncontroversial but seen as more business-minded and more inclined to broad-spectrum activism outside the confines of Firefox's typical free software and online freedom work.

[0] he was the creator of javascript, among other things

Your timeline is off, FWIW. Brendan Eich resigned in 2104 and was replaced by Chris Beard as CEO from 2014 through 2019. Mitchell Baker became CEO in 2020.

Oh dear, yeah, that's totally wrong. I got Chris Beard's MBA confused with Mitchell Baker's law degree.

In my experience Firefox has become a much better browser in the last 18 months, so if there was an asshole purge then maybe that helped?

If Firefox is missing specific capabilities that make it noncompetitive, and those deficits are traced to the asshole purge, then @rpnx might strengthen their argument by citing those examples.

Yea, could be that a purge helped. I tend to think assholes produce a toxic working environment and are almost like malignant cancerous tumors in the way they impact a company in the long run.

I give a shit that the people building my tools are injecting their politics into my tools in places where they don't belong. Browser makers being happy to decide what I should see on the web will make me bail.

Now, there are of course parts of politics that are pertinent to the tool in question - privacy issues for browser developers, for example, or tracking.

Both the Brave and Vivaldi teams have people I know I disagree with politically. But I like their products, and I like the companies? Why? Because whatever the companies' employees views, the two companies' politics are about user control and privacy, and they walk the talk. Both in their own ways that reflect the people making the tool, but insofar as the companies are political, they are political in a very, very narrow way.

Basically, they understand their job is to make hammers and not to sermon about flower arrangement. Mozilla (and much of the tech sphere, sadly) is increasingly the reverse.