Yesterday, along with 250 other people, about a quarter of the workforce, I was laid off from Mozilla. I think I did some really valuable work there, and it was an excellent place to spend the last nearly four years. It’s a place that gives you a chance to change the world, and I’d like to think I took that opportunity.
My biggest focus was working to build a voice program for Mozilla, not just a single product but a coherent, strategic, impactful program direction. There were existing projects and research efforts which were hugely important; what was most exciting was working to build a strategy and a plan and see that begin to come to fruition and have real impact as it did so.
I’m proud of the work my small but amazing team did with Firefox Voice, a fully featured voice assistant in your browser, including smart speaker features like text-to-speech and bringing in the University of Waterloo’s wake word processor Howl, built with both open source code and open data so that “Hey Firefox, what’s the weather” does. (I know that if something’s listening to me all the time, I really want it powered by open source so that I can trust it.)
I’m also proud of what I think of as my Principal Scientist duties, about bringing research into the company, improving the research that was done there, and reaching out to engage with the world of research outside the boundaries of the company. Some of that is represented by the papers published over that time: http://research.mozilla.org/papers-publications/, which is an impressive output for a small company.
I’m proud of the Mozilla Research Grants, through which we funded 55 grants at dozens of universities — but also changing the landscape for other funding efforts by explicitly recognizing childcare as a research expense. We’ve seen other research sponsorship programs following that practice, and I think it’s a hugely important change.
I’m proud of our conference sponsorship program — funding dozens of conferences, but, again, changing that landscape by requiring that conferences have an accessibility chair and a Code of Conduct, as well as asking serious questions about diversity of organizers, of speakers, of attendees. I think we’ll see those become increasingly important expectations for conferences across the board in the future.
Those two examples are precisely the sort of opportunity that was remarkable about Mozilla: not just the first order effects of having the intended impact, but changing the way the larger community does their work every day.
I was delighted to be able to orchestrate the ET Speaker Series: (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Speaker_Series and on Youtube) bringing a selection of some of the best minds in research into the company and out in the world, making a huge and material difference in what we thought was important. Just look at that list: it’s a stunning group of people. I’m particularly pleased that we increasingly started broadcasting these talks outside the company when possible, really expanding the reach and impact.
Maybe more than anything it was such a pleasure to work with an amazing bunch of people, particularly my small but epic team: Janice Tsai, Ian Bicking, and Abe Wallin (and earlier, Tamara Hills). If you’re looking to hire a great engineer (Ian), an excellent user researcher (Janice) or a superb designer (Abe), I have three I would highly recommend — and if you’re looking for someone else let me know — there’s a lot of very good people who have been let go.
We were so very, very fortunate to have a stunning bunch of interns of the quality you’d expect from a much more established intern program and a much larger company: Julia Cambre (twice!), Daniela Mormocea, Chioma Onyekpere, Afsaneh Razi, Jessica Colnago, Alex Williams, Kai Lukoff, Jim Maddock, Benoit Zhong, Tawfiq Ammari, Jordan Wirfs-Brock, as well as a visiting professorship from Ellen Spertus. And then there are the hundreds of Mozillians, far far too many to mention here, as well as many, many university collaborators — most recently Jimmy Lin’s team at U Waterloo for Honk, and previously Brent Hecht, Hanlin Li and Nicholas Vincent, as well as those dozens of people in the speaker series and the research grant program.
And, fascinatingly, the wider community: we had over sixty contributors to Firefox Voice and literally thousands to Common Voice. That’s something which is very rare in industry: generally, the only people who work on your project are people you pay to work on your project, and it’s an amazing experience to turn around and realize that so many other people believe your work is valuable enough to contribute their own time and efforts to help it succeed.
So. I’m going to be looking for the right next position. I’d like to find an organization concerned about making the world a better place and not just maximizing shareholder value. I have loved the strategic work I’ve done, planning a research agenda and building the capacity to have real impact and create value for the organization I’m working for, as well as in the world. It’d be great to direct a research lab or program, or play a chief scientist role for the right company. I’d also be delighted, again, to have a small team of top people and be given the freedom and responsibility to explore and create new things in the world.
One final thing: I’m stunned by the wider network of friends and colleagues I’m delighted to be able to talk with and chat with and get support from every day. So many people have reached out with messages of support and love over the last twenty four hours. It’s been amazingly uplifting. I feel I can do anything with friends and family like the ones I’m lucky enough to have. Thank you all for your support in a million different ways over these years.
