Leaving Mozilla
33 points by bhearsum
33 points by bhearsum
When everyone else ran out of the room, I was the one that would sigh, raise his hand, and take on the task. This did not do wonders for my career, but it was honest, hard work and constantly challenging.)
I had the feeling this was going to be one of those articles that hurts me spiritually, and yuuuuup.
I felt this line hard. I spent 15 years at one company doing all the things that no one else wanted to do, problems too weird or niche. Sometimes I was just stuck holding the bag. I became a problem solver spanning roles, products, and teams, a generalist unmoored from the hierarchy and JDs. It was lucrative and kind of fun to always have something challenging to work on.
It was also disastrous for my career prospects once I was laid off. My resume and titles look like someone who doesn't know what they want to do. My titles didn't necessarily reflect the work I was doing or the value I was providing. It's hard for recruiters and hiring managers to categorize me, so I'm passed on nearly all roles (no one reads the cover letter with the narrative).
I don't know if I'd do it differently though. I learned a ton and I got to tackle some large projects that I otherwise would not have been able to. It came at a high cost though and I'm not sure I would recommend a similar path for others.
Have you been able to get employee referrals to get through the recruiter screen? Are you passed on even then?
Man, it is refreshing to see someone who has been on the inside confirm most of the things I have long suspected about the leadership of the Mozilla for years now. Firefox market share has been dropping because of (rather than in spite of) their efforts to simply copy everything the Big Tech browsers are doing.
If anyone from Mozilla is listening: completely abandon the idea that Firefox will ever be a serious Chrome/Edge/Safari competitor. Instead, put all of your focus on catering towards power users and the highly privacy-conscious. Shun web technologies that primarily used (or designed for) user tracking. Hire or fund gorhill and build ad-blocking directly into the browser. Design Firefox to be relentlessly extensible and customizable. Do a better job on bringing feature parity to your mobile ports. Embrace prominent features from Opera/Vivaldi and set a goal steal their users and marketshare. Stop doing UX refreshes that no one asked for. Fold up and retire all side-quests that have nothing to do with developing Firefox: none of them have put Mozilla on firmer financial ground and none will.
Do these things, and even I might switch back to Firefox some day.
It feels like its only a matter of time until Google pulls their funding of Firefox and if that happens before Mozilla has turned the ship around, the whole company is basically going to implode soon after.