14 ms·

Leaving Mozilla

558 points by lebaux 6y ago

the-dude 6y ago
Title is actually "39 Shirts - Leaving Mozilla". Has something to do with HN title debaiting or something IIRC.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  What does "39 shirts" mean? Doesn't mean anything more to me than "shirts", heh.
  - twic 6y ago
    What's in the photo at the top of the post?
    - jansan 6y ago
      A bunch of Mozilla merch, 39(?) t-shirts and a Firefox stuffed animal.
    - Macha 6y ago
      To be fair, the server was suffering, it's possible the images or the post did not load for the poster.
  - gravypod 6y ago
    At large company gatherings for big tech companies some people get given shirts/hoodies/bottles/etc.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    What do you think about "37 Signals" ?
  - Macha 6y ago
    He has 39 pieces of Mozilla swag (from Mozilla internal events presumably). Basically an unusual way of saying he's been there a long time.
    - johnward 6y ago
      Man when I was at IBM I had to buy a Watson shirt.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Jimmy Carter t-shirts, of course! "Jimmy 39" https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/jimmy-carter-by-redboy/27221703.FB110.XYZ https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/jimmy-carter-by-redboy/2... "Carter 39" https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-39-President-America/dp/B07C47DGCB https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-39-President-America/dp/... "I'm Nuts About Jimmy. Vote Carter in the '76" https://www.wish.com/product/5a784d351a8c211973880ae4?hide_login_modal=true https://www.wish.com/product/5a784d351a8c211973880ae4?hide_l...
- lebaux 6y ago
  Hi, I posted this with the title "39 Shirts - Leaving Mozilla", but it got truncated to "Shirts - Leaving Mozilla" for whatever reason. I could not exactly go back and edit it. It seems a hn mod edited the title. Thank for that!
  - the-dude 6y ago
    That is what I said : Number prefixes in titles are automagically removed. Indeed it seems a mod removed the 'Shirts' later.
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      XXXIX Shirts - Leaving Mozilla
      - the-dude 6y ago
        Thirtynine Shirts - Leaving Mozilla is too uhhh plain?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Haul4ss 6y ago
Lots of great sentiments in that article. You don't have to love every day of a job to love the job. You can love the organization even as you need to let it go (or it needs to let you go). He's proud of the arc of his career and understands that sometimes a good thing needs to come to an end for a new good thing to begin. Endings are bittersweet. You can focus on the bitter, or you can focus on the sweet. He seems to be doing the latter.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  What a great summary to an even greater blog post
- disown 6y ago
  > You don't have to love every day of a job to love the job. You shouldn't love your job. A job isn't a person. You should love your friends and family. A job is what you do for money. Like a trick, michael. I would love to know when the idea of "loving your job" came into the culture. It feels so manufactured like "I (heart)/love NY". Similar to "productivity" today. "Have you been productive today"? When did "productivity" sneak into the culture. Edit: The replies indicate what I am talking about. People are so conditioned into thinking that you should "love" your job that they get defensive when you point out that a job isn't something that you should "love". You can enjoy your job, you can get fulfillment from your job, but a job isn't a person. It isn't something that you should "love". Words matter. I don't like how love has been hijacked into a meaningless term now. I love my job, my hobby, my football team, etc. Someone wrote they spent decades with a job they loved. If you did, then you wasted your life. Do other countries/languages also "love their job" or is this an american thing? It's such a strange thing to "love". Strangely enough, only on hacker news would you people so religious defend their love of their job.
  - hnracer 6y ago
    You can love your job in the same way that you can love a hobby that you're passionate about, where you look forward to Mondays, and get genuine excitement and pleasure from the work. I think that's what people mean when they say they love their job.
mklauber1 6y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20201007125029/https://davidwalsh.name/leaving-mozilla https://web.archive.org/web/20201007125029/https://davidwals...
totaldude87 6y ago
getting a 500x, did hacker news broke your site?
- cmg 6y ago
  Internet Archive has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20201007112514/https://davidwalsh.name/leaving-mozilla https://web.archive.org/web/20201007112514/https://davidwals...
alexander9866 6y ago
Thanks for sharing a wonderful news.
piokoch 6y ago
This posts makes Mozilla problems better understood. One thing are slightly overpaid bosses, but there is more... "After leaving MDN, I took on a dual role: WADI (Web Advocacy & Developer Initiative) and Firefox OS for TV Partner Engineering. With WADI I had the pleasure of contributing to the Service Worker Cookbook. With the TV role I got a beautiful 60" ultra HD TV where I helped partners bring their video sites and games to life." it seems there are some jobs at Mozilla that might not necessarily contribute significantly to its success. And it looks like overall management in Mozilla is not in the greatest shape: "When things got a bit tough at Mozilla, I shifted to Mozilla's "Productivity Tools" team. My first two weeks were nothing short of hilarious; my new manager didn't know I was a front-end engineer, so I stumbled through completing a big python migration."
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > it seems there are some jobs at Mozilla that might not necessarily contribute significantly to its success. Important observation, and it demonstrates where room for improvement is needed and actionable. One of the failings of Mozilla was not recognizing this and making active efforts to spin out useful (but not useful to Mozilla's core efforts) projects (for example, MDN should've been spun out long ago, similar to Thunderbird). Best wishes David on your journey.
  - wbl 6y ago
    MDN is extremely useful for Firefox as it documents Firefox capabilities so web designers can use them. Without it people would think webkit=the internet.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - est31 6y ago
      Yeah places like caniuse are biased towards Chrome. They rarely add a feature that's only present in Firefox, but often add features only present in Chrome. Also caniuse is no full MDN replacement.
tlackemann 6y ago
Congrats David, excited to see where you take the web next. Personal anecdote, I've been following David since I began my professional web career back in '07. I was always impressed by each redesign of his site and all the tips, tricks, and advice he had to offer. Just a wonderful person to follow.
martin_a 6y ago
> but COVID and other business factors contributed to 25% of the organization being made redundant. Well... Maybe the leadership is just plain incompetent and 25% of the organization would still be there if the C-level people would have been kicked...
- jansan 6y ago
  I fail to understand how COVID could have made 25% of the people redundant at Mozilla. Where those all facility managers or working in the cafeteria(s)?
  - cmorgan31 6y ago
    It may take a bit more speculation. If it is like almost every large organization in 2020 they are under going a consolidation effort to mitigate the economic fall out of covid. You often don’t throw away talent due to a consolidation until after you determine the redundant roles. The roles did not begin as redundant. They became redundant after smooshing teams together.
    - ema 6y ago
      What I don't understand is how covid affects Mozilla's revenue. I mean nobody stops browsing the web because they have to work from home, or can no longer eat out, or whatever other measures where taken.
      - IainIreland 6y ago
        The economy gets worse. Ad spending goes down. Google's search revenue decreases. Mozilla's search deal with Google is less profitable.
        syshum 6y ago
        Do you a source that google ad revenue is down? YouTube Ad Inventory, seems to be WAY UP, as many of the youtubers that were not getting ads before are saturated with ads today. Further I do not believe their Search deal is dependent on Advertising at all, it is about number of searchs, and being the default not a % of ad spend
arnvald 6y ago
> Would I have passed an interview for that job? Hell no. Did I succeed in the end? Hell yes. Not the point of the article, but it pretty much sums up big part of job interviews in tech. Also, the article feels very bittersweet - it seems like Mozilla is full of enthusiasts caring about its mission, it's sad to see it going through these rough times.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  I think the author is actually saying they weren't productive at the start.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    I agree. His background was not a fit, but his drive and willingness to learn got him through. BTW that also seems to be the problem with tech interviewing we keep hearing about. He probably would have passed an interview with me even for the Python work. I have 3 things I look for in tech interviews and he's clearly got 2 of them. The 3rd requires his feedback on a particular role.
ryanar 6y ago
Congratulations to David for living his dream. He certainly is more optimistic than I would be. To live and breathe the mission for so long, constantly move around and help where needed, stepping outside his comfort zone and it sounds like working more than 40 hours a week, he still gets the axe because of incompetent management. I wish him the best going forward, it sounds like he is an awesome developer and teammate and whatever company he goes to next will be lucky to have him.
- johnward 6y ago
  Sounds like it did land a job: https://twitter.com/davidwalshblog/status/1311685449975508992 https://twitter.com/davidwalshblog/status/131168544997550899...
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Might be a great time to reflect on browser development. Maybe approach gov or heritage conservatories for funding a new browser? Btw I used FF mobile for as long as I've used Android, and think it deserves better promotion; just ad blocking alone saves bucks/mobile data and PII leaks big time.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  I love the idea of a browser being developed as a public service, but I wouldn't trust the American government to run code on my machine.
  - Yoric 6y ago
    Well, that leaves Europe.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  Didn't block the ads at the bottom of the post though. Self-hosted image and a plain anchor tag. Advertising done right.
gulbrandr 6y ago
500 Internal Server Error The server is also leaving David Walsh :(
steve_adams_86 6y ago
> To the 18 year old David who sat in that lonely computer lab: you fucking did it, dude. You lived that dream. To 37 year old David: Go do it again. I really enjoyed that part. I forget sometimes that my career - what I woke up to do this morning, the reason I'm in this office right now - this was my dream. I should remember that more often. This dream started almost 20 years ago (I'm about the same age as David) and it's easy to forget... I thought this would be impossible once. Well, the odds looked pretty bad at first. I barely scraped by in school, would never enter post secondary school, and at the time was terrible with math and logic. I didn't care about programming specifically though, I cared about what I could create with it. In retrospect, I'm glad I had the attitude and optimism that I did. More on topic, I know of David through his website which, early on on my front end days, was an incredibly helpful resource. I vividly remember figuring out Mootools problems with the help of his articles. Ha, like this: https://davidwalsh.name/namespace-mootools https://davidwalsh.name/namespace-mootools So out of date now, but man, some of his stuff saved my ass when I was thrown into a Mootools-heavy project in 2011-2012 with very little experience with JS. Great memories.
- dannyw 6y ago
  This really hits close to. home as well. 15 year old me learning programming dreamed of where I am now.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    15-year-old me wanted to control an army of robot minions from a moon base. I mean, I'm not sad with how my life turned out, it's pretty great, but I don't even have one robot minion since the Roomba died.
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      It's not too late.
    - jayshua 6y ago
      Checkout https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/. You could control your very own army of minions.
joe_momma 6y ago
You rock dude, mozilla was lucky to have you. Will be eager to see what you do next, your an inspiration for an entire generation of javascript ninjas.
thdc 6y ago
This resonated greatly with me because I wanted to follow a similar path to end up doing developer stuff at Mozilla (granted I'm only early 20s now with a couple yoe so I hadn't tried applying yet, but I do have a good number of contributions to their projects) But with the current sentiment around them/shift in focus, I'm not sure if this will still be the case for me in a couple of years. Either way congrats to David for achieving his dream.
- zbraniecki 6y ago
  Hi! It's not all that black/white. I'm also on a similar journey to David (volunteer for Mozilla since I was 16, I'm 37 now), with a lot of passion for the project and invested in some large projects there. AMA, and don't let other people's journeys decide on yours.
  - thdc 6y ago
    Thanks for the response! I understand it's not black/white and the current restructuring to focus on increasing revenue in the near future could be temporary and they could eventually refocus on improving the internet for people. I'll still keep an eye out for that and if this is the case in the future, then I will definitely try my luck at applying then.
reykjavik 6y ago
So they laid off a guy who worked there for 20years, and is crazy passionate about the company? Good job, mozilla.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- codingdave 6y ago
  8.5 years, whose interest was waning and he kind of wanted to be laid off. So I agree - good job. I've always wished companies would successfully identify those who no longer are thrilled with being there. I've seen too many layoffs where they let people go who wanted to stay, and keep people who wanted to leave.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I only partly agree. You can have people who are considering or happy enough to move on but are still doing a great job and you can have people going through the motions who would rather continue to collect a paycheck than go through a job hunt.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    I didn't know "loving the job" was part of the job. I think I see what you're saying if I stretch a bit, but "effectiveness in role" and "communicates respectfully and accurately" should be the main drivers, not "Does she still dream about her merge requests?"
    - codingdave 6y ago
      That is exactly my point - effectiveness in role and communications should not be the main drivers. Desire to be at the job should be the main driver. If you don't want to be there, you effectiveness will suffer. But if you have a team who does want to be there, you can coach them to improve effectiveness and communications.
naringas 6y ago
Mozilla as an organization has lost its principles. Just one example is the fact that it is not possible to run a fully self-hosted sync service. You must use Firefox accounts or something like that. Sure, you can run your own actual data hosting, but it still forces you to use some authorization service. Sure, you can try to also run your own version of that, but now you have to setup two distinct services for one sync function. It's a gigantic enormous hassle to do it, you must also override several Firefox settings to make it use your "3rd" party auth service. Oh and the documentation is not existent because their official stance is "don't do this, don't run your own Firefox Accounts service" Once upon a time this wasn't the case, but at some point it was decided to 'upgrade' the sync stack. which resulted in a centralized auth function. Gotta keep up with google chrome I suppose.
- kelnos 6y ago
  At the risk of sounding all like "you should take what you're given and like it", which is not what I intend... the fact that it's even possible to swap out a cloud service provider without hacking through the code is pretty unusual for a mainstream piece of desktop software. Yes, Mozilla should document it better and make it easier for people to do it, and avoid making big unannounced changes to it, but they deserve some recognition for making it possible in the first place.
draw_down 6y ago
Well, working at a company you think is neat is certainly an achievable goal. I’m glad for the author that they got to fulfill it.
codingdave 6y ago
This is a terrific perspective to have on a job. All jobs end in one way or another. Being able to look back on it as a meaningful and successful chapter of your life is the most healthy way to then move on to the next chapter.
naankari 6y ago
Thanks for sharing your journey and feelings. Whats next? Would love to know. Please do write again.
benzible 6y ago
> I didn't grow up in a tech-centric place -- Wisconsin is full of farms, cows, and people dreaming outside of the cornfields Not to be snarky, but the currently 13th ranked UW-Madison CS department would beg to differ.
milescrabill 6y ago
I was part of the August layoffs as well and this rings very true to my experience. Getting laid off was bittersweet - Mozilla has played a huge role in my life for the past 5 years and I care deeply about the people and the mission, but I felt the same relief when I saw the email and my calendar invite.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > I felt the same relief when I saw the email and my calendar invite Were you not panicked at all about losing your job and income in the middle of a recession?
  - milescrabill 6y ago
    I'm about a month into my next (interim) role at this point. Mozilla gave people who were laid off a generous severance and recruiters were messaging everyone with a job at Mozilla on LinkedIn from the moment the news broke.
dailygrind___ 6y ago
Why would a web company let a notable developer (who has contributed so much to the grow of the web itself) walk away is beyond me.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  When companies reach a certain age and renown, they lose all sight of what brought them to that point.
SebastianKumor 6y ago
Nice article David. I wish i was this exited about my job.
ngokevin 6y ago
Congrats, David, I remember we started on the same day! Well, me as an intern. It's fun seeing that picture again!
torgian 6y ago
Awesome story.

Leaving Mozilla

558 points by lebaux 6y ago

the-dude 6y ago

Title is actually "39 Shirts - Leaving Mozilla". Has something to do with HN title debaiting or something IIRC.

jrochkind1 6y ago
What does "39 shirts" mean? Doesn't mean anything more to me than "shirts", heh.
- twic 6y ago
  What's in the photo at the top of the post?
  - jansan 6y ago
    A bunch of Mozilla merch, 39(?) t-shirts and a Firefox stuffed animal.
  - Macha 6y ago
    To be fair, the server was suffering, it's possible the images or the post did not load for the poster.
- gravypod 6y ago
  At large company gatherings for big tech companies some people get given shirts/hoodies/bottles/etc.
- the-dude 6y ago
  What do you think about "37 Signals" ?
- Macha 6y ago
  He has 39 pieces of Mozilla swag (from Mozilla internal events presumably). Basically an unusual way of saying he's been there a long time.
  - johnward 6y ago
    Man when I was at IBM I had to buy a Watson shirt.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Jimmy Carter t-shirts, of course! "Jimmy 39" https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/jimmy-carter-by-redboy/27221703.FB110.XYZ https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/jimmy-carter-by-redboy/2... "Carter 39" https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-39-President-America/dp/B07C47DGCB https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-39-President-America/dp/... "I'm Nuts About Jimmy. Vote Carter in the '76" https://www.wish.com/product/5a784d351a8c211973880ae4?hide_login_modal=true https://www.wish.com/product/5a784d351a8c211973880ae4?hide_l...
lebaux 6y ago
Hi, I posted this with the title "39 Shirts - Leaving Mozilla", but it got truncated to "Shirts - Leaving Mozilla" for whatever reason. I could not exactly go back and edit it. It seems a hn mod edited the title. Thank for that!
- the-dude 6y ago
  That is what I said : Number prefixes in titles are automagically removed. Indeed it seems a mod removed the 'Shirts' later.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    XXXIX Shirts - Leaving Mozilla
    - the-dude 6y ago
      Thirtynine Shirts - Leaving Mozilla is too uhhh plain?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Haul4ss 6y ago

Lots of great sentiments in that article. You don't have to love every day of a job to love the job. You can love the organization even as you need to let it go (or it needs to let you go). He's proud of the arc of his career and understands that sometimes a good thing needs to come to an end for a new good thing to begin. Endings are bittersweet. You can focus on the bitter, or you can focus on the sweet. He seems to be doing the latter.

raverbashing 6y ago
What a great summary to an even greater blog post
disown 6y ago
> You don't have to love every day of a job to love the job. You shouldn't love your job. A job isn't a person. You should love your friends and family. A job is what you do for money. Like a trick, michael. I would love to know when the idea of "loving your job" came into the culture. It feels so manufactured like "I (heart)/love NY". Similar to "productivity" today. "Have you been productive today"? When did "productivity" sneak into the culture. Edit: The replies indicate what I am talking about. People are so conditioned into thinking that you should "love" your job that they get defensive when you point out that a job isn't something that you should "love". You can enjoy your job, you can get fulfillment from your job, but a job isn't a person. It isn't something that you should "love". Words matter. I don't like how love has been hijacked into a meaningless term now. I love my job, my hobby, my football team, etc. Someone wrote they spent decades with a job they loved. If you did, then you wasted your life. Do other countries/languages also "love their job" or is this an american thing? It's such a strange thing to "love". Strangely enough, only on hacker news would you people so religious defend their love of their job.
- hnracer 6y ago
  You can love your job in the same way that you can love a hobby that you're passionate about, where you look forward to Mondays, and get genuine excitement and pleasure from the work. I think that's what people mean when they say they love their job.

mklauber1 6y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20201007125029/https://davidwalsh.name/leaving-mozilla https://web.archive.org/web/20201007125029/https://davidwals...

totaldude87 6y ago

getting a 500x, did hacker news broke your site?

cmg 6y ago
Internet Archive has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20201007112514/https://davidwalsh.name/leaving-mozilla https://web.archive.org/web/20201007112514/https://davidwals...

alexander9866 6y ago

Thanks for sharing a wonderful news.

piokoch 6y ago

This posts makes Mozilla problems better understood. One thing are slightly overpaid bosses, but there is more... "After leaving MDN, I took on a dual role: WADI (Web Advocacy & Developer Initiative) and Firefox OS for TV Partner Engineering. With WADI I had the pleasure of contributing to the Service Worker Cookbook. With the TV role I got a beautiful 60" ultra HD TV where I helped partners bring their video sites and games to life." it seems there are some jobs at Mozilla that might not necessarily contribute significantly to its success. And it looks like overall management in Mozilla is not in the greatest shape: "When things got a bit tough at Mozilla, I shifted to Mozilla's "Productivity Tools" team. My first two weeks were nothing short of hilarious; my new manager didn't know I was a front-end engineer, so I stumbled through completing a big python migration."

toomuchtodo 6y ago
> it seems there are some jobs at Mozilla that might not necessarily contribute significantly to its success. Important observation, and it demonstrates where room for improvement is needed and actionable. One of the failings of Mozilla was not recognizing this and making active efforts to spin out useful (but not useful to Mozilla's core efforts) projects (for example, MDN should've been spun out long ago, similar to Thunderbird). Best wishes David on your journey.
- wbl 6y ago
  MDN is extremely useful for Firefox as it documents Firefox capabilities so web designers can use them. Without it people would think webkit=the internet.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - est31 6y ago
    Yeah places like caniuse are biased towards Chrome. They rarely add a feature that's only present in Firefox, but often add features only present in Chrome. Also caniuse is no full MDN replacement.

tlackemann 6y ago

Congrats David, excited to see where you take the web next. Personal anecdote, I've been following David since I began my professional web career back in '07. I was always impressed by each redesign of his site and all the tips, tricks, and advice he had to offer. Just a wonderful person to follow.

martin_a 6y ago

> but COVID and other business factors contributed to 25% of the organization being made redundant. Well... Maybe the leadership is just plain incompetent and 25% of the organization would still be there if the C-level people would have been kicked...

jansan 6y ago
I fail to understand how COVID could have made 25% of the people redundant at Mozilla. Where those all facility managers or working in the cafeteria(s)?
- cmorgan31 6y ago
  It may take a bit more speculation. If it is like almost every large organization in 2020 they are under going a consolidation effort to mitigate the economic fall out of covid. You often don’t throw away talent due to a consolidation until after you determine the redundant roles. The roles did not begin as redundant. They became redundant after smooshing teams together.
  - ema 6y ago
    What I don't understand is how covid affects Mozilla's revenue. I mean nobody stops browsing the web because they have to work from home, or can no longer eat out, or whatever other measures where taken.
    - IainIreland 6y ago
      The economy gets worse. Ad spending goes down. Google's search revenue decreases. Mozilla's search deal with Google is less profitable.
      - syshum 6y ago
        Do you a source that google ad revenue is down? YouTube Ad Inventory, seems to be WAY UP, as many of the youtubers that were not getting ads before are saturated with ads today. Further I do not believe their Search deal is dependent on Advertising at all, it is about number of searchs, and being the default not a % of ad spend

arnvald 6y ago

> Would I have passed an interview for that job? Hell no. Did I succeed in the end? Hell yes. Not the point of the article, but it pretty much sums up big part of job interviews in tech. Also, the article feels very bittersweet - it seems like Mozilla is full of enthusiasts caring about its mission, it's sad to see it going through these rough times.

richardwhiuk 6y ago
I think the author is actually saying they weren't productive at the start.
- phkahler 6y ago
  I agree. His background was not a fit, but his drive and willingness to learn got him through. BTW that also seems to be the problem with tech interviewing we keep hearing about. He probably would have passed an interview with me even for the Python work. I have 3 things I look for in tech interviews and he's clearly got 2 of them. The 3rd requires his feedback on a particular role.

ryanar 6y ago

Congratulations to David for living his dream. He certainly is more optimistic than I would be. To live and breathe the mission for so long, constantly move around and help where needed, stepping outside his comfort zone and it sounds like working more than 40 hours a week, he still gets the axe because of incompetent management. I wish him the best going forward, it sounds like he is an awesome developer and teammate and whatever company he goes to next will be lucky to have him.

johnward 6y ago
Sounds like it did land a job: https://twitter.com/davidwalshblog/status/1311685449975508992 https://twitter.com/davidwalshblog/status/131168544997550899...

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Might be a great time to reflect on browser development. Maybe approach gov or heritage conservatories for funding a new browser? Btw I used FF mobile for as long as I've used Android, and think it deserves better promotion; just ad blocking alone saves bucks/mobile data and PII leaks big time.

schwartzworld 6y ago
I love the idea of a browser being developed as a public service, but I wouldn't trust the American government to run code on my machine.
- Yoric 6y ago
  Well, that leaves Europe.
kgwxd 6y ago
Didn't block the ads at the bottom of the post though. Self-hosted image and a plain anchor tag. Advertising done right.

gulbrandr 6y ago

500 Internal Server Error The server is also leaving David Walsh :(

steve_adams_86 6y ago

> To the 18 year old David who sat in that lonely computer lab: you fucking did it, dude. You lived that dream. To 37 year old David: Go do it again. I really enjoyed that part. I forget sometimes that my career - what I woke up to do this morning, the reason I'm in this office right now - this was my dream. I should remember that more often. This dream started almost 20 years ago (I'm about the same age as David) and it's easy to forget... I thought this would be impossible once. Well, the odds looked pretty bad at first. I barely scraped by in school, would never enter post secondary school, and at the time was terrible with math and logic. I didn't care about programming specifically though, I cared about what I could create with it. In retrospect, I'm glad I had the attitude and optimism that I did. More on topic, I know of David through his website which, early on on my front end days, was an incredibly helpful resource. I vividly remember figuring out Mootools problems with the help of his articles. Ha, like this: https://davidwalsh.name/namespace-mootools https://davidwalsh.name/namespace-mootools So out of date now, but man, some of his stuff saved my ass when I was thrown into a Mootools-heavy project in 2011-2012 with very little experience with JS. Great memories.

dannyw 6y ago
This really hits close to. home as well. 15 year old me learning programming dreamed of where I am now.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  15-year-old me wanted to control an army of robot minions from a moon base. I mean, I'm not sad with how my life turned out, it's pretty great, but I don't even have one robot minion since the Roomba died.
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    It's not too late.
  - jayshua 6y ago
    Checkout https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/. You could control your very own army of minions.

joe_momma 6y ago

You rock dude, mozilla was lucky to have you. Will be eager to see what you do next, your an inspiration for an entire generation of javascript ninjas.

thdc 6y ago

This resonated greatly with me because I wanted to follow a similar path to end up doing developer stuff at Mozilla (granted I'm only early 20s now with a couple yoe so I hadn't tried applying yet, but I do have a good number of contributions to their projects) But with the current sentiment around them/shift in focus, I'm not sure if this will still be the case for me in a couple of years. Either way congrats to David for achieving his dream.

zbraniecki 6y ago
Hi! It's not all that black/white. I'm also on a similar journey to David (volunteer for Mozilla since I was 16, I'm 37 now), with a lot of passion for the project and invested in some large projects there. AMA, and don't let other people's journeys decide on yours.
- thdc 6y ago
  Thanks for the response! I understand it's not black/white and the current restructuring to focus on increasing revenue in the near future could be temporary and they could eventually refocus on improving the internet for people. I'll still keep an eye out for that and if this is the case in the future, then I will definitely try my luck at applying then.

reykjavik 6y ago

So they laid off a guy who worked there for 20years, and is crazy passionate about the company? Good job, mozilla.

deleted 6y ago
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codingdave 6y ago
8.5 years, whose interest was waning and he kind of wanted to be laid off. So I agree - good job. I've always wished companies would successfully identify those who no longer are thrilled with being there. I've seen too many layoffs where they let people go who wanted to stay, and keep people who wanted to leave.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I only partly agree. You can have people who are considering or happy enough to move on but are still doing a great job and you can have people going through the motions who would rather continue to collect a paycheck than go through a job hunt.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  I didn't know "loving the job" was part of the job. I think I see what you're saying if I stretch a bit, but "effectiveness in role" and "communicates respectfully and accurately" should be the main drivers, not "Does she still dream about her merge requests?"
  - codingdave 6y ago
    That is exactly my point - effectiveness in role and communications should not be the main drivers. Desire to be at the job should be the main driver. If you don't want to be there, you effectiveness will suffer. But if you have a team who does want to be there, you can coach them to improve effectiveness and communications.

naringas 6y ago

Mozilla as an organization has lost its principles. Just one example is the fact that it is not possible to run a fully self-hosted sync service. You must use Firefox accounts or something like that. Sure, you can run your own actual data hosting, but it still forces you to use some authorization service. Sure, you can try to also run your own version of that, but now you have to setup two distinct services for one sync function. It's a gigantic enormous hassle to do it, you must also override several Firefox settings to make it use your "3rd" party auth service. Oh and the documentation is not existent because their official stance is "don't do this, don't run your own Firefox Accounts service" Once upon a time this wasn't the case, but at some point it was decided to 'upgrade' the sync stack. which resulted in a centralized auth function. Gotta keep up with google chrome I suppose.

kelnos 6y ago
At the risk of sounding all like "you should take what you're given and like it", which is not what I intend... the fact that it's even possible to swap out a cloud service provider without hacking through the code is pretty unusual for a mainstream piece of desktop software. Yes, Mozilla should document it better and make it easier for people to do it, and avoid making big unannounced changes to it, but they deserve some recognition for making it possible in the first place.

draw_down 6y ago

Well, working at a company you think is neat is certainly an achievable goal. I’m glad for the author that they got to fulfill it.

codingdave 6y ago

This is a terrific perspective to have on a job. All jobs end in one way or another. Being able to look back on it as a meaningful and successful chapter of your life is the most healthy way to then move on to the next chapter.

naankari 6y ago

Thanks for sharing your journey and feelings. Whats next? Would love to know. Please do write again.

benzible 6y ago

> I didn't grow up in a tech-centric place -- Wisconsin is full of farms, cows, and people dreaming outside of the cornfields Not to be snarky, but the currently 13th ranked UW-Madison CS department would beg to differ.

milescrabill 6y ago

I was part of the August layoffs as well and this rings very true to my experience. Getting laid off was bittersweet - Mozilla has played a huge role in my life for the past 5 years and I care deeply about the people and the mission, but I felt the same relief when I saw the email and my calendar invite.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> I felt the same relief when I saw the email and my calendar invite Were you not panicked at all about losing your job and income in the middle of a recession?
- milescrabill 6y ago
  I'm about a month into my next (interim) role at this point. Mozilla gave people who were laid off a generous severance and recruiters were messaging everyone with a job at Mozilla on LinkedIn from the moment the news broke.

dailygrind___ 6y ago

Why would a web company let a notable developer (who has contributed so much to the grow of the web itself) walk away is beyond me.

ironmagma 6y ago
When companies reach a certain age and renown, they lose all sight of what brought them to that point.

SebastianKumor 6y ago

Nice article David. I wish i was this exited about my job.

ngokevin 6y ago

Congrats, David, I remember we started on the same day! Well, me as an intern. It's fun seeing that picture again!

torgian 6y ago

Awesome story.