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My Summer at Mozilla

ryanseys.com

11–20 of 58 posts

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#11

Congratulations. You've officially been spoiled. :) You will take a job somewhere else some day and experience great anguish when it is significantly less awesome. :P The plus side is that you can use that anguish to effect change.

This, this is a really lame. You're a software developer which means you have the opportunity to work virtually wherever and whenever you want. You can write software on a sunny day in the local park, inside a tent in the midst of an Arctic storm, or aboard a boat in the middle of the Atlantic. A laptop can be purchased for $200 and internet can usually be found free. There is no reason to compromise on a less than e…

I am not sure where you are going off on the parent post. Also, I don't particularly know what you mean by "exceptional job".

However, let me describe a few thoughts I had whilst there (not the submitter).

1. Mozilla's mission is just as important as random company making the pipes more efficient for sending cat/twerking/whatever videos. They are a non-profit and are operated as such.

2. They have some incredibly interesting problems that they are working on. From the research team to the browser development itself. Read interesting = hard.

3. They do pay well. I know this as a former intern; also from word of mouth from people who worked there. :)

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, this is a really lame. You're a software developer which means you have the opportunity to work virtually wherever and whenever you want. You can write software on a sunny day in the local park, inside a tent in the midst of an Arctic storm, or aboard a boat in the middle of the Atlantic. A laptop can be purchased for $200 and internet can usually be found free. There is no reason to compromise on a less than e…

I am not sure where you are going off on the parent post. Also, I don't particularly know what you mean by "exceptional job". However, let me describe a few thoughts I had whilst there (not the submitter). 1. Mozilla's mission is just as important as random company making the pipes more efficient for sending cat/twerking/whatever videos. They are a non-profit and are operated as such. 2. They have some incredibly int…

I think only the highest of Mozilla and everything they stand for.

"You will take a job somewhere else some day and experience great anguish when it is significantly less awesome."

What I'm trying to convey is that I don't believe that anyone need make this compromise. Mozilla is awesome, other organizations are awesome, some freelance gigs are awesome. You can be a software developer without putting yourself through anguish, it's just a matter of priorities.

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, this is a really lame. You're a software developer which means you have the opportunity to work virtually wherever and whenever you want. You can write software on a sunny day in the local park, inside a tent in the midst of an Arctic storm, or aboard a boat in the middle of the Atlantic. A laptop can be purchased for $200 and internet can usually be found free. There is no reason to compromise on a less than e…

I am not sure where you are going off on the parent post. Also, I don't particularly know what you mean by "exceptional job". However, let me describe a few thoughts I had whilst there (not the submitter). 1. Mozilla's mission is just as important as random company making the pipes more efficient for sending cat/twerking/whatever videos. They are a non-profit and are operated as such. 2. They have some incredibly int…

RE point 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#14
As a former Mozilla intern, I can confirm that the company has an unusually great intern program!

Sure, there's some perks like free food, laundry, free yoga and other things that are taken for granted at startups missing but some of my favorite things about it were:

1. Mozilla has the most geographically diverse set of interns of any Silicon Valley company I know. In addition to regular recruiting at North American Universities, Mozilla also recruits from the open source Mozilla community, and that means people come from everywhere. I was recruited on-campus but two of my roommates whom I lived with were recruited directly from the community and were from Argentina and India.

2. At least on my project (I worked in the Labs group), I got total freedom to scope out a project I wanted to work on, convince my managers about why it could be great, then go ahead and build it. This is a remarkable amount of flexibility for an internship.

3. You got to keep the laptop. Because Mozilla's open source, we just used the default OS X with no custom stuff. Since the value would go down after the summer, they let us keep it as a perk!

4. Once every two years, they fly out everyone in the company and a lot of people in the community to a single place to meet up (Summit). This might sound crazy in theory, but face time is invaluable in growing teams that are spread across the planet.

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#17
post #16

Seems like there is a growing trend by tech companies to spoil interns with the hope of improving HR. This is great and by all means take advantage of it.

Interns are not spoiled. They are simply treated like any other regular employee.

I am not sure what you mean with 'improving HR'. Did you mean 'PR' ? Because Mozilla's HR department is doing a pretty great job.

Re: My Summer at Mozilla

#19

As a former Mozilla intern, I can confirm that the company has an unusually great intern program! Sure, there's some perks like free food, laundry, free yoga and other things that are taken for granted at startups missing but some of my favorite things about it were: 1. Mozilla has the most geographically diverse set of interns of any Silicon Valley company I know. In addition to regular recruiting at North American…

I'm fairly certain the Google intern demo is more geographically/culturally diverse.

Really glad this guy had a phenomenal time at Mozilla. All of the top internship programs in the bay area are equally good and I hope he gets a chance to try some others :)

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