Onward!
tl;dr: After 8½ years, December 7th was my last working day at Mozilla.
Mozilla was my first serious web job. Sure, Yahoo! hired me to write JavaScript and then had me write Java for 20 months, but Mozilla gave a college drop-out with "some recent Java experience" a chance, and it turns out we were compatibly weird for each other. The relationships I've forged and things that I've learned have become a huge part of who I am, and along the way I think Mozilla absorbed a bit of who I am in exchange. This makes it that much harder to move on.
Why am I leaving then? I've wondered what would come after Moz for a few years now, but most potential opportunities were pretty easy to discard. Mozilla's mission is direly relevant these days. Any time I've gotten burned out or bored, another internal opportunity was available. I was fortunate to start out as a frontend dev, work on libraries for app developers, and move to developer advocacy over the course of my time there. By happenstance, I also came to run the public-facing Mozilla-wide meeting, which means I've gotten to know a vast proportion of Mozillians and became a familiar presence in their work lives. And there just weren't that many times I looked at another organization and thought "I could see myself there".
Until this year. This year marked my 10th year in the tech industry, and my 8th year at Mozilla. I started wondering what would be next in my career, and began worrying about whether I was too "Mozilla-shaped" to be successful elsewhere. As it would happen, a company I admire posted a developer advocate role, and I figured, why not apply? Worst-case I get the job and have to make a tough decision.
Welp! Here we are.
So where am I headed next? It's not a deeply guarded secret, but I'll blab about it properly soon.
I've made some of my best friends at Mozilla. It's been the backdrop of hugely important events in my life, and its mission has been something to look to when the world has gotten bleak. Thank you to everyone over the years for making this the best and hardest-to-explain job I've ever had. And I once got paid to sit in a model home all day.
Keep on Rocking the Free Web! I won't be far away.