> 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
So out of date now, but man, some of his stuff saved my ass when I was thrown into a Mootools-heavy project in 2011-2012 with very little experience with JS.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.
Valid. I dreamed of where I am today. Living it doesn't feel like it was your dream, but remember how bad you wanted it when you were a teanager and appreciate where you are now and how far you have come. Great to reflect.
I worked 5 years at a company I dreamed about. Then 2 at another one. It was an amazing experience, I learned a lot in the process and met many great people. Problem is, there are no companies or projects left for me to dream about any more. :'(
I'm currently 27. When I was in second grade, I told my parents I wanted to do the exact job I'm doing right now when I grew up. I still have that realization every once and a while.
> 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.
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."
> 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).
> 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.
> 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...
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|5 years ago|reply
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
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.
[+] [-] tuxninja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grishka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedimastert|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jgilias|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Haul4ss|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] piokoch|5 years ago|reply
"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|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shuckles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mStreamTeam|5 years ago|reply
Mozilla is a mess, and they need to can anyone who can't contribute code
[+] [-] arnvald|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mklauber1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin_a|5 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] sciurus|5 years ago|reply
Today: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/
One year ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20190923050403/https://www.mozil...
Two years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20180923185143/https://www.mozil...
(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
[+] [-] jansan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rndgermandude|5 years ago|reply
tl;dr I agree with your hypothesis that the top level management should leave
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24238633
[+] [-] milescrabill|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
Were you not panicked at all about losing your job and income in the middle of a recession?
[+] [-] reykjavik|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joe_momma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
Has something to do with HN title debaiting or something IIRC.
[+] [-] lebaux|5 years ago|reply
It seems a hn mod edited the title. Thank for that!
[+] [-] jrochkind1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tlackemann|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ryanar|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naringas|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schwartzworld|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgwxd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thdc|5 years ago|reply
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|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ngokevin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dailygrind___|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ironmagma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benzible|5 years ago|reply
Not to be snarky, but the currently 13th ranked UW-Madison CS department would beg to differ.
[+] [-] naankari|5 years ago|reply