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Leaving Mozilla

emilykager.com

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Re: Leaving Mozilla

#61

Post by ironmagma »

gabereiser wrote: post #51
legerdemain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it bluntly: we don't need more context. The author has graciously shared a story about her private decision-making and intimate details about her emotional well-being. Even if some readers may want to probe further into her private life, she ultimately owes us nothing. We are reading her blog post out of passing curiosity, and not assessing the merit or evaluating the truth of any claims she is making. Sorry t…

You're right, we don't need more context. I would have liked more context. This isn't the first time I've seen a first-timer write about a toxic work environment to the point where they quit. I'm not demanding anything, just wishing I had more context to be more empathetic to her situation.

I doubt HN would ever be that sympathetic to her situation [1] because this is a website of people who overwhelmingly find the tradeoffs of software development to be worth it.

[1] and that's probably OK. We don't need to feel empathy for everyone who feels dissatisfaction in the world. That would probably be debilitating, honestly, seeing as how so many people are dissatisfied.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#62

Post by renerthr »

throwawayboise wrote: post #17
thgaway17 wrote: post #5

Looking at the picture makes me wonder why tech doesn’t get more constant criticism for being almost completely devoid of black faces?

Maybe it's largely out of their control? You can't hire people who don't apply, and in my 30 years in tech (albeit not in SV) I can probably count on one hand the number of black job applicants I encountered, and they were all non-US/immigrant blacks.

How could you tell they were immigrants?

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#64

Post by vlunkr »

She says in here that she "cared deeply about the product." Honest question, it is better to not care about the product?

As I've grown as a developer, I've become less personally attached to the products I work on. I still care that it's a quality product, and that it's stable, tested, etc. But I don't attach it to my personality or my self-worth. Ultimately what happens to it is out of your control, (assuming it's not a 100% solo project) so it's dangerous to have that attachment. I'm not sure that caring deeply about a project actually improves it in a meaningful way.

Also, this is a nice post. Sharing real stories about burnout and helping others understand it is great.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#65

Post by dralley »

throwaway123x2 wrote: post #3

FireFox is my main driver and I still use it on Android... but I have to say the android refresh wasn't great. It's full on random usability errors, it crashes, and they started curating extensions for mobile. That said, I do appreciate all the work FireFox devs put in to give us a Chrome alternative. Misfires happen. I hope FF for Android keeps getting better with time.

I've never seen a crash, and personally I can attest that the new version is much snappier and more responsive. I don't like every aspect of the UI but it was a worthwhile upgrade IMO.

re: addons, a lot of people were understandably upset about this, myself included for a while. With that said, in the months after release every extension which had been disabled by the upgrade started coming back online as the extension API was slowly added back after the rewrite. I can certainly sympathize with the maintenaince headache of trying to maintain one old decrepit piece of software while simultaneously trying to get the one one out the door, since that's exactly what I've spent the last 4 years of my life doing.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#66

Post by SemNome »

codys wrote: post #15
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #2

> The cherry on top was being specifically targeted for harassment that same week after the release by unhappy users of Firefox looking for someone to direct their frustrations at. Thats lovely.

I was curious about this, and went searching, and it's fairly difficult to figure out exactly what is being referenced. There is a reddit thread that links to deleted tweets that appears like it might be related: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb

You can see them through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://twitter.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20200731235001/https://twitter.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20200801025736/https://twitter.c...

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#67

Post by EvilEy3 »

renerthr wrote: post #62
throwawayboise wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's largely out of their control? You can't hire people who don't apply, and in my 30 years in tech (albeit not in SV) I can probably count on one hand the number of black job applicants I encountered, and they were all non-US/immigrant blacks.

How could you tell they were immigrants?

You know that they're people and can, like, talk?

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#68

Post by meetups323 »

walrus01 wrote: post #9

> That and.. I am also extremely burnt out. > Working too much during the week for the last 2 years was normal for me We need to stop normalizing working beyond a 40 hour work week. I can accomplish far more and with greater clarity of purpose, mental acuity and motivation in an actual 40 hours, than I could if I attempt to push myself to 10-12 hours a day.

> Working too much during the week for the last 2 years was normal for me [...] it would have been impossible to hit our deadlines and ship something I was proud of without it.

Seems like a good indication to push back the "deadlines" [1]. If the release is a month/quarter/semester/year later, literally no-one actually cares. If the release ends up being totally unsupported after v1 because all the developers got burnt out and left, people care.

[1] A term I hate - no-one dies if the software is late. Management just gets "upset", while continuing to take $$$$ bonuses.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#69

Post by dessant »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #2

> The cherry on top was being specifically targeted for harassment that same week after the release by unhappy users of Firefox looking for someone to direct their frustrations at. Thats lovely.

I remember seeing her tweet as I was struggling to migrate away from Firefox for Android since I also got surprised by the half-baked release, and closing the Twitter tab in disappointment.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200801082154/https://twitter.c...

Despite maintaining two of the handful of extensions currently available for Firefox for Android and developing for the beta versions of Fenix leading up the release, I had a very hard time finding my footing as a user in the new browser, and I ended up switching to Samsung Internet.

I'm not familiar with the harassment she has suffered, and it's saddening if people have singled her out, though I can see how people might have overreacted to her nonchalant attitude about the workflows of millions of users being thrown belly up.

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