
My Summer at Mozilla - ryanseys
https://ryanseys.com/blog/summer-at-mozilla/
======
abhinavsharma
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.

~~~
acchow
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 :)

~~~
abhinavsharma
I was thinking about that and I think you're right as far as the overall
numbers go, but the intern group is really small (it was <20 when I was
there), so the entropy in the distribution would be higher than
Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon.

And yeah I agree, as much as you like your first internship, switching it up
for the second is usually a good idea because that mobility is harder when
working full-time.

------
eshvk
I interned at Mozilla too; my experience there was just as phenomenal. Free
$3000 laptop, random games, free food, free apartment etc. However, I think
the thing that I cherished the most were the people themselves, they were
committed to their mission of making the web a better place. This is
especially true of the Metrics team. So many of the discussions regarding
privacy and the amount of information I could analyze seemed frustrating then,
yet, it is only after a couple of years in industry that I realize the true
value of respecting those who trust their data with you and using it to do
greater good.

~~~
marcamillion
Do you get to keep your laptop after - or do you have to give it back at the
end?

~~~
tekacs
You get to keep it.

(source: comment below and friend who interned at Mozilla)

~~~
marcamillion
That's hella cool.

This post makes me want to work at Mozilla!

~~~
infinite8s
That just means it becomes taxable income.

~~~
marcamillion
Never thought of it like that - that's interesting.

------
fennecfoxen
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.

~~~
not_rhodey
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 exceptional job unless you
want to live in the idealized city apartment and collect a sizable salary.

~~~
eshvk
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. :)

~~~
frewsxcv
RE point 1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation)

~~~
gerv
As that article points out, the Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of
the Foundation and therefore shares its public benefit purpose.

------
staunch
Am I out of line thinking Mozilla should be far more conservative? It seems
vaguely irresponsible for a non-profit to be so lavish in the number of
employees they have, their office, their perks.

I'm not suggesting they need to be extreme in the other direction, just
somewhat conservative.

That Google money can't last forever and it seems like they should be
stockpiling a large portion of it for the long term, not blowing every dollar
-- living, effectively, paycheck to paycheck.

I wonder if the employees/interns there have a sense that it's all eventually
going to come crumbling down. Because I get that sense every time I hear about
how they operate, and I really hope it never happens because I think they're a
good thing in the world.

~~~
simanyay
Mozilla _is_ more conservative with money than other companies. No corporate
credit cards, no daily travel allowances, no daily breakfast, lunch and dinner
(only lunch and only once a week, after all-hands).

However, being too conservative doesn't work in Silicon Valley because you
have to compete with companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. for talent
with their perks and benefits. Whether it's good or bad in the long term I do
not know but it is a fact.

~~~
sambeau
No shareholders to pay.

------
austinz
Cool blog post! From your resume it looks like you worked at Blackberry
earlier this year. Do you have any thoughts about the differences (cultural,
technological, etc) between working for a large company and working for a non-
profit organization?

~~~
ryanseys
The differences are really night and day. Blackberry is too large to really
have that "home-like" feel, it really just feels like work. Mozilla has
character which I definitely feed off for motivation. The attitude of the
people at Mozilla is much different than those at BB, as well. Mozilla and
everything in it has life, Blackberry unfortunately feels much less-lively.
Motivation at Mozilla is fueled by the love of the work and at Blackberry you
really can feel the money is the end goal. Both companies are just really
different for different reasons, but I definitely prefer Mozilla.

------
mrmagooey
That sounds like so much fun, I'm very jealous.

------
cbhl
It's always interesting to hear what other Software Engineering students have
been doing on their internships.

Now, if only writing a blog post could replace your work term report. :)

~~~
ryanseys
I wish we could replace that report with something a little more lively!

------
iblaine
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.

~~~
st3fan
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.

~~~
zobzu
I don't think regular employes get to keep their laptops :)

------
AYBABTME
Cool to see you had fun this summer, now you can come back and give a talk
about things you worked on at our Ottawa Ruby/JS meetups!

~~~
ryanseys
I'll be back in January to do just that!

~~~
AYBABTME
Ah, I'll be gone in January =S

------
gluxon
Where do I sign up? :)

~~~
reubenmorais
Here! [https://careers.mozilla.org/](https://careers.mozilla.org/)

~~~
coke12
It looks like their 2014 internships haven't quite opened up, is that right?

~~~
ryanseys
That is correct.

------
whatts
Cool guy, is an "open-source advocate" but removes PureCSS's copyright notice:
[https://github.com/yui/pure/blob/master/LICENSE.md](https://github.com/yui/pure/blob/master/LICENSE.md)

~~~
ryanseys
This would be a side-effect of using a CSS minifier, not an intentional act
against Pure.

~~~
whatts
Pure's stylesheets are already minified, the only result of re-minifying them
is that the copyright will be removed:
[http://yui.yahooapis.com/pure/0.2.1/pure-
min.css](http://yui.yahooapis.com/pure/0.2.1/pure-min.css)

~~~
ryanseys
I squash all my stylesheets into one giant .css file to serve rather than a
bunch of individual stylesheets. A side-effect of squashing + minifying (which
is done every time I generate my website) is that all comments are removed.

You are correct, that notice is not present, but I did not remove it
intentionally. To be honest, I didn't read the LICENSE.md of Pure CSS. Shame
on me :)

Feel free to file a bug against this at:
[https://github.com/ryanseys/ryanseys.com](https://github.com/ryanseys/ryanseys.com)

~~~
zheng
TBH, I don't think you're in the wrong here, but expecting someone who has
already brought something to your attention to file a "bug report" against
your personal website is a bit arrogant.

~~~
ryanseys
Fix'd.
[https://github.com/ryanseys/ryanseys.com/commit/2c043f](https://github.com/ryanseys/ryanseys.com/commit/2c043f)

