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.
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).
one of the more effective things I did when I was laid off was to work with a friend who was a professional resume editor, and who helped me rework my resume to tell a coherent story focusing on the important bits and (perhaps counterintuitively) actually removing things that I did but that were not relevant to the specific kinds of job I was targeting.
as you say, you can't rely on the cover letter to supply the narrative, so you need to make your resume tell it somehow. maybe even go as far as having two or three resumes focusing on different kinds of jobs you are applying for.
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.
Just for the record because this comment may make it look otherwise. While it is currently experimental and only available through about:config it got added in Firefox 149: https://shivankaul.com/blog/firefox-bundles-adblock-rust
Thanks for pointing this out. I wasn’t aware. At the risk of sounding pedantically defensive, I didn’t say Mozilla wouldn’t ever do this, merely that there is a perpetual conflict of interest that disincentivizes it.
There is a concept of a “wall” in journalistic circles to at least create a nominal barrier between advertising interests and journalistic ethics. If there is consensus amongst Mozilla’s management that a commitment to privacy is more important than funding, perhaps they could institute a similar wall and commit to it publicly.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything in the OP, but most of it hit pretty hard.
For the past year or so, I've been asking myself a question. “Who am I doing this for?”
That's exactly how I felt as I was leaving. The same managers were being promoted over and over, sometimes in rapid succession, being charged with ever larger subsets of the org. I remember one round of such promos where those individuals hadn't been in their current role for more than six months. Why were they promoted? They weren't god's gift to management -- they were promoted simply because there were vacancies in the next level above.
I wasn't enjoying what I was doing anymore and I was tired of being told that I needed to stop escalating stupid shit people were doing because of how bad it made those "esteemed colleagues" look.
I knew I recognized your name from somewhere. I was looking for something about Firefox I knew I had discussed on Tildes earlier today and one of the conversations I had was with you. This bit stood out to me as relevant to the current subject.
Thank you for your response! Frankly speaking your reply is exactly the sort of reply I was looking for, but all I got was unhelpful product owner lingo responses or suggestions to talk on the forums where the discussion would be the same.
I still appreciate the time you took back then to give context to my frustration. One part still standing out is teams being understaffed. I am not sure if that was the webextensions team or the devtools team. But both sometimes feel a bit forgotten. Given the sketched out management style (basically "industry standard") it doesn't surprise me, but it still saddens me.
Yeah, thanks. It was right around the layoffs from then that I realized that the Mozilla I loved when I joined was effectively dead. It took me a few months to get through the stages of grief!
Didn't they also get the Eudora codebase? And then failed to make the Thunderbird search nearly as good as Eudora? The only thing that might compare to how good Eudora was at search is Notmuch.
Still plan to test that actually. Got a user with three decades of firehose quantity emails and no modern mail client makes that remotely searchable
The only thing that might compare to how good Eudora was at search is Notmuch
I have no complaints with mu (driven with mu4e). Are there more search capabilities that Eudora/Notmuch had/have that I don’t realize I’m missing? If it’s just volume and speed you want, mu might be worth trying.
jorsk | 10 days ago
I had the feeling this was going to be one of those articles that hurts me spiritually, and yuuuuup.
jonathan | 10 days ago
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.
zem | 9 days ago
one of the more effective things I did when I was laid off was to work with a friend who was a professional resume editor, and who helped me rework my resume to tell a coherent story focusing on the important bits and (perhaps counterintuitively) actually removing things that I did but that were not relevant to the specific kinds of job I was targeting.
as you say, you can't rely on the cover letter to supply the narrative, so you need to make your resume tell it somehow. maybe even go as far as having two or three resumes focusing on different kinds of jobs you are applying for.
gnyeki | 10 days ago
Have you been able to get employee referrals to get through the recruiter screen? Are you passed on even then?
bityard | 10 days ago
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.
adamshaylor | 10 days ago
So long as Mozilla is financially dependent on Google, there will be strong incentives for Mozilla never to do this.
valdemar | 9 days ago
Just for the record because this comment may make it look otherwise. While it is currently experimental and only available through about:config it got added in Firefox 149: https://shivankaul.com/blog/firefox-bundles-adblock-rust
adamshaylor | 9 days ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I wasn’t aware. At the risk of sounding pedantically defensive, I didn’t say Mozilla wouldn’t ever do this, merely that there is a perpetual conflict of interest that disincentivizes it.
There is a concept of a “wall” in journalistic circles to at least create a nominal barrier between advertising interests and journalistic ethics. If there is consensus amongst Mozilla’s management that a commitment to privacy is more important than funding, perhaps they could institute a similar wall and commit to it publicly.
veqq | 10 days ago
Leadership sure isn't
dblohm7 | 10 days ago
I worked at Mozilla from 2012 to 2021.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything in the OP, but most of it hit pretty hard.
That's exactly how I felt as I was leaving. The same managers were being promoted over and over, sometimes in rapid succession, being charged with ever larger subsets of the org. I remember one round of such promos where those individuals hadn't been in their current role for more than six months. Why were they promoted? They weren't god's gift to management -- they were promoted simply because there were vacancies in the next level above.
I wasn't enjoying what I was doing anymore and I was tired of being told that I needed to stop escalating stupid shit people were doing because of how bad it made those "esteemed colleagues" look.
creesch | 10 days ago
I knew I recognized your name from somewhere. I was looking for something about Firefox I knew I had discussed on Tildes earlier today and one of the conversations I had was with you. This bit stood out to me as relevant to the current subject.
I still appreciate the time you took back then to give context to my frustration. One part still standing out is teams being understaffed. I am not sure if that was the webextensions team or the devtools team. But both sometimes feel a bit forgotten. Given the sketched out management style (basically "industry standard") it doesn't surprise me, but it still saddens me.
dblohm7 | 10 days ago
Yeah, thanks. It was right around the layoffs from then that I realized that the Mozilla I loved when I joined was effectively dead. It took me a few months to get through the stages of grief!
taras | 9 days ago
i feel like that time I rage quit mozilla, my proposal to fire all management was the correct one
apromixately | 10 days ago
Damn, this site has so many cool ideas: https://killedbymozilla.com/
Vaelatern | 9 days ago
Didn't they also get the Eudora codebase? And then failed to make the Thunderbird search nearly as good as Eudora? The only thing that might compare to how good Eudora was at search is Notmuch.
Still plan to test that actually. Got a user with three decades of firehose quantity emails and no modern mail client makes that remotely searchable
sunflowerseastar | 9 days ago
I have no complaints with mu (driven with mu4e). Are there more search capabilities that Eudora/Notmuch had/have that I don’t realize I’m missing? If it’s just volume and speed you want, mu might be worth trying.
lproven | 9 days ago
Only very kinda sorta.
Eudora OSE was Qualcomm's total rewrite of the Eudora UI only intended to run on top of Thunderbird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_OSE
skyfaller | 9 days ago
I know there's stuff missing from that list of dead projects, like the Bespin code editor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Skywriter
I'm not sure how much of what's missing is worth mentioning, but I'm a completionist.
lproven | 9 days ago
Rust, Servo, Songbird, Instantbird, Composer, Eudora OSE...
Vaelatern | 9 days ago
They should relaunch Ubiquity and also target it as an AI extension to allow anybody with AI to use your website better.
It would pave so many roads for human beings....
lproven | 9 days ago
The old Ubuntu installer for its Linux distro?
EDIT: No -- https://web.archive.org/web/20110225204522/https://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/
Sorry, should have read the link first.
You'd think after the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox sequence Mozilla would know about checking for existing names...
apromixately | 9 days ago
It's a cool idea. Apple is pushing "make your own local extension with AI" as a similar thing.