February 1, 2006
Resignation
Tuesday, February 7, 2006 will be my last day as an employee of the Mozilla Corporation.
I joined the Mozilla Foundation pre-Firefox 1.0 (but not too pre-) and, closer to the end, I was given to the Corporation. Unfortunately, the Corporation and I drifted apart, and one or both of us wasn't strong enough to find each other again before it was too late.
The Foundation was a unique personal and communal experience. I miss those high days of deciphering and discovering the Project, from top to bottom, from outside in. The Foundation gave me reign to dig into Mozilla and discover its onion-like layers. Any time I was stuck in a layer, I could peel it back and learn a new one.
Those days faded. In the Corporation I had lots of day-to-day responsibility and little knowledge of where the place as a whole was headed. Somehow, while changing in other obvious ways (new hires, new structure, new offices), the Corporation became much more opaque than the Foundation had ever been.
Difficulty
From inside, the Mozilla Corporation is opaque and difficult to understand. This is hard to admit because workplaces don't become opaque without failures at multiple points. There needs to be at once activity and structural changes in the organization, and people need to either be so busy with their own work or, if they notice that it has become difficult to understand what's going on, not ask why. I fit into at least the former category and possibly the latter.
I was conscious of the opacity's extremity as a problem only later. Had I noticed it earlier, I could have asked questions. But I didn't. It was either:
Finish the release that was months behind schedule and driven internally as required for the organization to stay relevant.
or:
Make it my mission to figure out where we were headed or at least what it was we wanted to do.
False dichotomy? I don't think so, but I'll entertain the possibility. Regardless, either of these paths is a full-time job on their own. Possessing engineering tendencies, the first path was the obvious choice. In hindsight I should have chosen the second path, wading deep into the management layer to again decipher which direction we were pointed in.
Again?
Each time I had burned myself out working for Mozilla, I would disconnect for a week or two, recharge, and come back to understand where we were headed so I could help with the next big thing. I understood by watching people interact, by attending meetings, and by paying attention to the organization as a whole.
The entire cycle usually lasted around 2 to 3 months. Here's what it looked like:
| Activity | Frame of Mind | Time spent |
|---|---|---|
| Find hard+relevant problem no one has the time to tackle on their own | Recuperation/Tinkering | 2 weeks |
| Generate solutions, figure out all who's needed to solve problem | Recuperation/Furious Hacking | 3 weeks |
| Recruit people to join in fixing, fix problem | 1-4 weeks | |
| Verify fixes | Furious Hacking | 1 week |
| Burnout | Exhaustion | 2 weeks |
| Take a break | Recuperation | 1-2 weeks |
I had done this multiple times since starting at the Foundation. It required that I have no life outside of work -- a sacrifice I made so I could generate large amounts of positive change for the Project. But later I was at the Corporation and problem relevancy was for practical purposes impossible to infer.
Before I became conscious of the Opacity Problem and how deeply it was affecting me, I was feeling it as an insult to my employee-employer relationship with the Corporation. I was angry, frustrated, and negative. I got severe headaches at odd hours, I looked like death warmed over, I had trouble sleeping, and when I did sleep, I had nightmares. My relationships with close friends went nuts.
People saw the transition happen before their eyes from 2004 to 2006. I still got things done, but I went from being :) most of the time to :/ to :(.
After I became conscious of these problems, I made a personal decision: I need to be someplace where the kind of organizational transparency I'm looking for happens by default. I was quite surprised to find for myself that place was not the Mozilla Corporation.
We're up to the present, now. In broad strokes I've described how I got where I am, and what I've told you, I've told the leadership at the Mozilla Corporation. I'm happy to say that I have seen changes since I have announced my decision to them that suggests the atmosphere is opening up. But I'm sad that, having already made my decision and accepting what needs to happen, I can't experience the turnaround directly.
Human Tendencies
What have I learned from my time at Mozilla? Chiefly, that what makes me great at what I do is that I care about keeping and expressing my human qualities. That's where the weekends spent emailing and helping people on IRC drive me. That's where 30+ localizations per release happen. That's where the 90+ hour work weeks come from.
And being human, I must accept that I have beliefs, wants, and needs, and that some of those need to be served by the Mozilla Organizations if my relationship with those Organizations is to be healthy and non-abusive. To wit:
Beliefs:
- I believe the Corporation is making great things happen for the Project and trying its best to ensure it continues to do so.
- I believe the Corporation should be an ambassador for its Community to the vast numbers of users that have already adopted its primary products. The Corporation should even do this for directly- and indirectly-related open projects which deserve such a shot.
Wants:
- I want the Corporation to stay true to its Foundation roots.
- I want the Foundation and Corporation to come up with plans that blow us away by showing us how they can be more than steady-state organizations for Firefox releases.
Needs:
- I need Mozilla to accept that it is your voice, the voice of the person on the other side of this screen.
- I need the Corporation to remember that it doesn't have to be just a software company.
- I need the people in the Mozilla Organizations to grab the mantle.
It's hard for me to say these wants+needs -- that last need, especially -- because I don't like needing other people to do something I'm not doing or that I can't. I prefer to speak with my actions and I prefer to lead the way in tackling the hard stuff. It's how I operate and it's how I got credibility at the Foundation and Corporation.
Like others before, with, and (surely) after me, I've done my share of hard things at Mozilla and then some. I believe that my peers in the Organizations are just as capable as I am of making large-scale positive changes, and for those of them that aren't already, it's their turn to do exactly that. They need to keep the ball rolling on making the Organizations transparent, and helping to mesh those Organizations more evenly and openly with the Project and Community.
mozilla.public.trust
The Mozilla Organizations are extremely special. Some have assumed that the vast Foundation/Corporation effort is all about monetizing the Project. But they have utterly missed the point and are embarassingly fargone.
In a far out, unnecessarily dramatic sort-of way, I'm tempted to say that Mozilla has already IPO'd. Instead of accepting public investments of cash, though, it has accepted public investments of trust. It trusts us, and we trust it. What's new is that this is open source taken to a higher level than we've seen before in other projects. It's open trust as emergent property. It just works, faithfully and reproduceably.
Mozilla is the Internet's public trust, embodied, and I need it to do the right thing.
Comments
Good Luck with your future endeavors Chase. We are really going to miss your energy, insight and passion for the Mozilla project.
I can't thank you enough for all the great work you did over the last couple of years. I really enjoyed working with you during 'crunch time' for the Firefox and Thunderbird releases we worked on together.
You will be missed.
-Scott
Posted by: Scott MacGregor at February 1, 2006 5:47 PM
Chase, you will be missed, I hope with your future employer you will still find time to motivate us and show your light in the Mozilla community.
Also, thanks for blogging about it. I think it will help more than you know.
Posted by: Jed at February 1, 2006 7:10 PM
I've read this several times and still have no idea what the 'opacity problem' was or what exactly was meant by 'organizational transparency'. There's also a picture of a black hole and a faint star which I can't guess the relevance of. I guess I'm dumb. Could you please sum up the whole thing in two sentences?
Posted by: TheKing at February 1, 2006 8:06 PM
Best wishes, Chase. I listened to what you are saying here, and I'll be happy to try to live up to your expectations for all of us.
Posted by: beltzner at February 1, 2006 8:41 PM
You've saved the day many times in the "Furious Hacking" stage.
Will you still be contributing at all? Do you have a new employer?
Posted by: Robert Accettura at February 1, 2006 10:00 PM
Best of luck Chase
You could perhaps in the future help out in small amount of part time work or something.
Hope you find something that you will enjoy doing day to day.
Posted by: James at February 1, 2006 10:49 PM
I know you've always tried to do what was right, and that taught me a lot about you.
I enjoyed reading your post, and I hope everyone paid attention. You brought up important points, as usual.
Working with you was a lot of fun, and I hope to see your hair grow out into a massive 'fro.
Good luck, and don't be a stranger. <3
Posted by: morgamic at February 2, 2006 12:08 AM
I wish you all the best, Chase. And a special thank you as a localizer.
Posted by: Abdulkadir Topal at February 2, 2006 12:13 AM
When you're able to observe talent first hand, like hearing a great speaker, or watching an athlete do really well, or seeing you work, it's pretty amazing.
We're going to miss you. Two things: who's going to drink all that chocolate milk, and you're still on the hook for doing an Ironman. Let me know when you get started (they're not that hard).
Posted by: Rafael at February 2, 2006 12:28 AM
Thank you for taking the time to push the mac platform the way it needed to be pushed build wise.
Good luck.
Posted by: Ludovic Hirlimann at February 2, 2006 1:21 AM
A lot of users will remember you, because there are no zip releases anymore. But some users (including me), will remember you because of ...
http://www.pikslar.com/temp/Bisi/a_tribute_to_chase_small.jpg
;)
Posted by: [BISI] at February 2, 2006 3:28 AM
Chase, you have left an indelible mark on the Mozilla project, and your contributions have been a tangible indication of the organization's transition from backstage into the prime time.
Your results - not just the output but the way in which you work - with discipline and concern - are an inspiration to everyone.
I feel privileged to have worked with you during this time, and hope to do so again in the future. Best of luck to you in the future!
Posted by: Ben at February 2, 2006 9:19 PM
"It's hard for me to say these wants+needs -- that last need, especially -- because I don't like needing other people to do something I'm not doing or that I can't."
There's a name for that. It's called "teamwork". :-) Given your contribution, you should have no shame about needing other people to do things you are not doing or cannot do.
Posted by: Gerv at February 6, 2006 6:09 AM
Chase, I know we of the SeaMonkey project often came around and requested stuff when you were busy with lots of other Corporation stuff. Still, you invested you private weekend time to help keeping tinderboxen green when we did the rebranding, and you were there often enough when you were needed - even though you've been busy with Corporation stuff most of the time.
I hope I'll still be able to find you somewhere around when I'll travel to the SF area, I still owe you a meal for that work, I won't forget that :)
Best wishes for the future - and I still hope you'll be seen somewhere in the project from time to time!
Posted by: Robert Kaiser at February 7, 2006 10:11 AM