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I'm not/wasn't a member of the Servo team, but have collaborated with them, and if you get the opportunity to work with them I cannot recommend it highly enough

I'm not/wasn't a member of the Servo team, but have collaborated with them, and if you get the opportunity to work with them I cannot recommend it highly enough. They have the kind of deep technical knowledge and ability to solve challenging problems you'd expect from a research group, coupled with the skills to make pragmatic tradeoffs and fix the complex real world problems needed to ship software. More than that, they are one of the most welcoming and friendly teams I ever worked with. The culture they created allowed them to take inexperienced new contributors and quickly ramp them up to a place where they were confident to solve challenging problems. Working in that environment and seeing what's possible has really raised my bar for workplace culture and mentorship.

onion2k 6y ago
That's a great recommendation but isn't it a bit late? The team were laid off. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865
- garmaine 6y ago
  Hence the recommendation. They’re presumably looking for work now.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  What absolute nonsense, Servo was the most important thing Mozilla was doing. If Mozilla isn’t making the most promising and competitive investments in its browser (e.g. parallel layout) what is it for? The Quantum project, which is tied to Servo, is the only reason Firefox is still competitive.
  - marta_morena_25 6y ago
    No it really wasn't. Nobody except tech geeks care about Servo. What Mozilla needs to do is to provide a privacy aware browser that doesn't inform Google (and everyone else) about everything we do online. They can easily go the path Microsoft took and use Chromium as engine. Had they focused on that, I think they would be in a much better position than they are now (wasting millions on projects like Servo and Rust). Don't get me wrong... I love Servo and Rust, but from a business perspective it's suicide.
    - jchw 6y ago
      This is short sighted. Browsers live and die on their performance benchmarks and security track records. Like it or don’t, “nobody but tech geeks” actually care about privacy.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        The problem is that of understanding, and of finding cause and effect. I know a few people who have been victims of identity theft. After hearing their stories, it was clear to me that it would not have happened if companies weren't tracking them and selling their personal data left and right. But it's hard to make that connection. People seem to accept identity theft as "something that just happens sometimes", even though it makes them very angry, frustrated, anxious, and eats up a lot of time and sometimes money. I think they do this because it's hard to point to one culprit as the cause, and so it feels like an intractable problem. If people could actually understand that their lack of privacy protections on the internet (and elsewhere) is one of the main factors in enabling things like identity theft, there would be more people who would affirmatively care about privacy. I'm not sure how to get people to make that intuitive leap on a large enough scale for it to matter, though. You're very right that people mainly care about browser performance (I'd even argue they don't care about security that much, though certainly more than they care about privacy); I know several people who definitely know better and understand privacy issues on the internet, but still use Chrome because "Firefox is slow on macOS" or something.
        abraae 6y ago
        > But it's hard to make that connection. People seem to accept identity theft as "something that just happens sometimes" A little like the way people talk about "cyber warfare". In real warfare, the enemy can attack your forces no matter what you do. In cyber warfare, you can build impenetrable defences. The only way the enemy can attack you successfully is if you make a mistake. This kind of thinking IMO is perpetuated by absurd tv shows where e.g McGee can hack into any computer system by tapping on his keyboard for a few seconds. It's harmless on TV, but in the real world it leads to complacency about security. People saying"poor Equifax, they were attacked" instead of "Equifax's security was a joke, and they left their system wide open for anyone to plunder".
  - ponker 6y ago
    This is what happens when in a spasm of pique you throw your 1000x engineer CEO in the rubbish and replace them with a lawyer.
    - cheez 6y ago
      That was hilarious and a harbinger of things to come.
    - thephyber 6y ago
      Eich was CEO from March 24 to April 3 of the same year. I highly doubt that was much of the problem. Certainly losing his technical talent is likely to have contributed to the problems, but I suspect it's 100x more of Chrome's dominance and Mozilla's reliance on Google's search engine contracts for revenue.
      - danudey 6y ago
        After leaving Mozilla, he went to Brave, where they launched a privacy-focused browser which inserts affiliate codes when users visit certain websites, and which collects donations "on behalf of" content creators without actually giving the money to those content creators. Maybe he's just not a great guy all around.
        gver10 6y ago
        Could you please clarify on this: how is Brave not giving BAT to content creators?
        mulmen 6y ago
        Brave does (did?) not allow creators to opt-out of donation collection and by default opts them in. This means you as a user may think you are donating to your favorite creator but in fact Brave is just holding on to the money. https://nulltx.com/brave-browser-draws-criticism-over-lack-of-creator-opt-out-feature/ https://nulltx.com/brave-browser-draws-criticism-over-lack-o...
- lvh 6y ago
  Surely immediately after a layoff is one of the better times to get a glowing recommendation? Some recruiters (and certainly plenty of hiring managers) read HN :)
asajeffrey 6y ago
Thanks!
paulrouget 6y ago
:D
nokusu 6y ago
Thanks for the kind words it was a pleasure to hang with you.
hinkley 6y ago
I don't want to detract from anyone's pain but I have been looking for a tech stack change, and if my main plan doesn't work out, my backup plan was to segue back into browser work via Rust. So I guess in addition to getting comfortable with the idea of having to change default browsers sometime in the next couple of years, I also need a plan C.

onion2k 6y ago

That's a great recommendation but isn't it a bit late? The team were laid off. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865

garmaine 6y ago
Hence the recommendation. They’re presumably looking for work now.
Brakenshire 6y ago
What absolute nonsense, Servo was the most important thing Mozilla was doing. If Mozilla isn’t making the most promising and competitive investments in its browser (e.g. parallel layout) what is it for? The Quantum project, which is tied to Servo, is the only reason Firefox is still competitive.
- marta_morena_25 6y ago
  No it really wasn't. Nobody except tech geeks care about Servo. What Mozilla needs to do is to provide a privacy aware browser that doesn't inform Google (and everyone else) about everything we do online. They can easily go the path Microsoft took and use Chromium as engine. Had they focused on that, I think they would be in a much better position than they are now (wasting millions on projects like Servo and Rust). Don't get me wrong... I love Servo and Rust, but from a business perspective it's suicide.
  - jchw 6y ago
    This is short sighted. Browsers live and die on their performance benchmarks and security track records. Like it or don’t, “nobody but tech geeks” actually care about privacy.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      The problem is that of understanding, and of finding cause and effect. I know a few people who have been victims of identity theft. After hearing their stories, it was clear to me that it would not have happened if companies weren't tracking them and selling their personal data left and right. But it's hard to make that connection. People seem to accept identity theft as "something that just happens sometimes", even though it makes them very angry, frustrated, anxious, and eats up a lot of time and sometimes money. I think they do this because it's hard to point to one culprit as the cause, and so it feels like an intractable problem. If people could actually understand that their lack of privacy protections on the internet (and elsewhere) is one of the main factors in enabling things like identity theft, there would be more people who would affirmatively care about privacy. I'm not sure how to get people to make that intuitive leap on a large enough scale for it to matter, though. You're very right that people mainly care about browser performance (I'd even argue they don't care about security that much, though certainly more than they care about privacy); I know several people who definitely know better and understand privacy issues on the internet, but still use Chrome because "Firefox is slow on macOS" or something.
      - abraae 6y ago
        > But it's hard to make that connection. People seem to accept identity theft as "something that just happens sometimes" A little like the way people talk about "cyber warfare". In real warfare, the enemy can attack your forces no matter what you do. In cyber warfare, you can build impenetrable defences. The only way the enemy can attack you successfully is if you make a mistake. This kind of thinking IMO is perpetuated by absurd tv shows where e.g McGee can hack into any computer system by tapping on his keyboard for a few seconds. It's harmless on TV, but in the real world it leads to complacency about security. People saying"poor Equifax, they were attacked" instead of "Equifax's security was a joke, and they left their system wide open for anyone to plunder".
- ponker 6y ago
  This is what happens when in a spasm of pique you throw your 1000x engineer CEO in the rubbish and replace them with a lawyer.
  - cheez 6y ago
    That was hilarious and a harbinger of things to come.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    Eich was CEO from March 24 to April 3 of the same year. I highly doubt that was much of the problem. Certainly losing his technical talent is likely to have contributed to the problems, but I suspect it's 100x more of Chrome's dominance and Mozilla's reliance on Google's search engine contracts for revenue.
    - danudey 6y ago
      After leaving Mozilla, he went to Brave, where they launched a privacy-focused browser which inserts affiliate codes when users visit certain websites, and which collects donations "on behalf of" content creators without actually giving the money to those content creators. Maybe he's just not a great guy all around.
      - gver10 6y ago
        Could you please clarify on this: how is Brave not giving BAT to content creators?
        mulmen 6y ago
        Brave does (did?) not allow creators to opt-out of donation collection and by default opts them in. This means you as a user may think you are donating to your favorite creator but in fact Brave is just holding on to the money. https://nulltx.com/brave-browser-draws-criticism-over-lack-of-creator-opt-out-feature/ https://nulltx.com/brave-browser-draws-criticism-over-lack-o...
lvh 6y ago
Surely immediately after a layoff is one of the better times to get a glowing recommendation? Some recruiters (and certainly plenty of hiring managers) read HN :)

asajeffrey 6y ago

Thanks!

paulrouget 6y ago

nokusu 6y ago

Thanks for the kind words it was a pleasure to hang with you.

hinkley 6y ago

I don't want to detract from anyone's pain but I have been looking for a tech stack change, and if my main plan doesn't work out, my backup plan was to segue back into browser work via Rust. So I guess in addition to getting comfortable with the idea of having to change default browsers sometime in the next couple of years, I also need a plan C.