My first 238 days at Mozilla
There’s nothing special about today’s date but I feel it’s a good time to write a bit about my experience at Mozilla so far.
First days. Joining Mozilla was, at least in the first few weeks, a rather scary experience. Mostly because it was an unknown territory—both socially and technically—and I had a lot of catching up to do. The amount of information you have to assimilate in order to understand how things are done is a bit overwhelming. But here I am, I survived! And still catching up.
Remote. One of the main concerns I had when I joined Mozilla was the working-from-home part. I’ve done it before but not for so long. It turned out to be a good experience and enjoyed it in many ways. But I still missed meeting workmates in person and having a more clearly separate environment for work. So, I’m glad that the awesome London office is now open!
Challenges. I joined Mozilla in a very interesting moment. The company is growing a lot (we’re hiring) and has gone and is still going through many changes: new release pace, native UI for Firefox on Android, Boot to Gecko, Identity, Open Web Apps, and much more. New focus, projects, and products but the mission is still the same.
Hacker-friendliness. Mozilla is a very friendly environment for hackers: meritocratic, pragmatic, and virtually bullshit-free. Feels good. You’re pretty much free to decide what to do next with very simple guidance as to what has higher priority at point in the development process.
Passion. Mozilla’s mission is taken very seriously. You see that reflected in every small and big decision inside the organization. Being a non-profit organization with such a worthy mission is very liberating because you can express your passion with no excuses. Mozillians are very passionate people.
Quick stats. I joined Mozilla 238 days ago. Since then, as part of my work at the company, I pushed 204 changesets, changed ~7,395 lines of code, fixed 106 bugs, gave 2 talks, travelled to 4 countries, and met a huge number of smart people.