From Mozilla to NodeSource

Today I have officially handed in my resignation to Mozilla and will be starting work at NodeSource on June 16.

The decision to move was difficult. Dan Shaw can attest to that by the fact he'd taken every opportunity these last six months to bring me over. During that time I'd told him straight out that it would never happen. Working at Mozilla was about as good as any job could be. I mean, come on, Mozilla paid me to work on Node.js as a core maintainer but without any of the corporate oversight which could have required my efforts to focus the company's needs over my own desires as a maintainer to improve Node. Doesn't get much better than that for someone who enjoys developing open source software. Because of Mozilla I've been able to dive into many of the gritty aspects of core code and make them better just for the sake of having better code.

What eventually changed my mind? First, I have to give Dan credit at meeting my many requirements. Event to the point that he personally called my old manager Mark Mayo and discussed how I could continue to be closely affiliated with Mozilla after the transition. I realize that with how open Mozilla is it wouldn't be a problem for me to continue contributing, but there is some difference. Like, being able to walk a few desks down and speak with the Rust devs vs. chatting on IRC.

After feeling confident in being able to continue contributing back to the community just as openly as I have, and continue my work as core maintainer the same as usual, the decision to make the move felt more appropriate.

At NodeSource I'll have greater opportunity to work with companies that are using Node in the wild. These new interactions will give additional insight on how to focus my efforts as a core maintainer. My mantra is "make all the things fast", but with limited development hours it helps to know what to prioritize. Similarly I'm hopeful it will spark more creative madness to take Node to new levels of performance awesomeness.

NodeSource has coalesced an awesome group of talent. They'll definitely help me help the community, and to be honest, the community will get more out of me than before. Simply because I have additional assistance to assemble my mess of thoughts and code into something legible. So, you can thank NodeSource for future blog posts on how to make your Node apps faster.

So, here I jump from one awesome company to another. Never found myself a sentimental person. Irrational, rageful and sometimes impertinent sure. But it's always been about the code. Though in this case I'll make an exception (or maybe it's the Yo-Yo Ma instrumental piece I'm listening to while writing this) and say this is both a sad and exciting time in my career.