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Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

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Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#31

Post by gcp »

nsebban wrote: post #22
jvehent wrote: post #5

I've been at Mozilla four years, working on operations security, and I still consider it the best job I've ever had. I worked in banking and a few startups before joining Mozilla, and neither the culture or technology were ever great. Mozilla has both of these things, and a mission statement that still makes me want to get out of bed in the morning (work for mankind, not for the man). Is it a sinking ship? Only if we…

> Is it a sinking ship? Only if we're not up for the challenge of fighting back corporations that want to lock the web being walled gardens. Time will tell, but someone should fight the good fight, even if it's a lost cause. It definitely is a fight worth fighting. And most people will agree that having several good web-browser options is important. What bothers me is the strategy that Mozilla used, to try and compet…

giving Firefox users a browser that looks like, and feeling like Chrome.

Yawn. What did we do this time? Make it faster? Follow platform guidelines or modernize the design style? Adopt an extension model that can be combined with replacing the browser internals? Use rounded tabs? No wait, scratch that, they're square again.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#32

Post by dao- »

vanderZwan wrote: post #28
dao- wrote: post #23

Come help us prevent the ship from sinking. :) I've been at Mozilla for ~11 years, worked from home for many years, now splitting my time between the Berlin office and home. I feel good about the work I do and don't intend to change jobs anytime soon. There have been some leadership / management issues but it's not all bad. Admittedly some people (e.g. those working on Firefox OS) were effected more than others.

> the Berlin office There's a Berlin office? Wait, what am I saying, of course there's an office for an organisation like Mozilla in privacy-obsessed Germany. ... are they hiring? EDIT: Yes! https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/

It's in Kreuzberg, close to Schlesisches Tor. We just moved there from the old Berlin office, which was an interim solution and too small.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#33

Post by k__ »

I was a contributor 3 years ago and my experience with Mozilla was mixed.

On the one hand, the people are skilled and super nice and I think you do good stuff when working there.

On the other hand you work on big old software projects with all the tools that grew onto them over the years. So if you on the technical side of things, you better like maintenance work, hehe.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#34

Post by gcp »

vertex-four wrote: post #6

Surely it depends what you're working on there? There'll be projects that are mostly-ignored and slowly dying, and projects which are core to the organisation's goals.

I'm sure it also depends a lot on your manager. Like in any corporation, really.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#35

Post by zerr »

gcp wrote: post #17
zerr wrote: post #14

They advertise remote jobs but it is actually limited to several counties. Also, they differentiate salaries based on your location.

Getting hired directly by Mozilla requires them to have a (minimal) legal presence in your country. If that isn't there, you'll be hired through an intermediary, but that is - as far as I know - possible essentially worldwide.

No, that intermediary option is also limited to some particular countries.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#36

Post by falcolas »

gcp wrote: post #27

I worry it's a sinking ship The ship already sunk once, it just keeps resurfacing every time the water drops because the competition suffers from the CADT Model wrt their attitude towards the internet.

Wow. Glad Google kept that in it's cache, and even more impressively that JWZ kept those pages online.

From 2003: CADT == "cascade of attention-deficit teenagers"

> I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt-model/

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#37

Post by gcp »

k__ wrote: post #33

I was a contributor 3 years ago and my experience with Mozilla was mixed. On the one hand, the people are skilled and super nice and I think you do good stuff when working there. On the other hand you work on big old software projects with all the tools that grew onto them over the years. So if you on the technical side of things, you better like maintenance work, hehe.

So if you on the technical side of things, you better like maintenance work, hehe.

It depends on what you work on. The Servo people feel differently ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#38

Post by zerr »

jvehent wrote: post #18
zerr wrote: post #14

They advertise remote jobs but it is actually limited to several counties. Also, they differentiate salaries based on your location.

Legal requirements in a handful of countries make it really hard to hire, but the vast majority of the world is usually fair game. I'm not sure what the industry standard is wrt adjusting salary based on location, but considering the cost of housing in the Bay area or NYC, it seems fair to pay the folks who live there more than, for example, me who lives in the boonies of Florida.

Extremes aside, one of the main reasons for working remotely is to escape the local [low wage] market, especially in developing countries.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#39

Post by dan1234 »

celticninja wrote: post #25
Jdam wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried changing my default web browser. Worked.

So what's your default web browser and how does it greet you?

Not OP, but Safari. It greets me with a blank page, which is just how I like it.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days?

#40

Post by gcp »

zerr wrote: post #38
jvehent wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal requirements in a handful of countries make it really hard to hire, but the vast majority of the world is usually fair game. I'm not sure what the industry standard is wrt adjusting salary based on location, but considering the cost of housing in the Bay area or NYC, it seems fair to pay the folks who live there more than, for example, me who lives in the boonies of Florida.

Extremes aside, one of the main reasons for working remotely is to escape the local [low wage] market, especially in developing countries.

Differentiated salary does not imply low wage. It means you don't get 150k USD/year for a Junior Software Engineer in rural India.
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