Wednesday July 16

ex-netscape

I arrived at Netscape in August of 2000. At the time, the skies over the Mountain View campus were still blue, but a dark cloud could be seen quickly approaching. I participated in the Netscape 6.0 through 7.0 releases, along with a long line of Mozilla milestones, and expansion of the XUL framework. During that time I had the pleasure of working with a number of incredibly talented and dedicated people who became very good friends of mine. We slaved away together to create products we were proud of despite a great deal of negativity directed at us by the press and the general public.

As time went on, the quality of the Mozilla and Netscape releases became better and better, and the world began to warm to us. Sadly, at the same time AOL was growing colder and colder towards us. After years of paying us to contribute virtually nothing to the bottom line, yesterday AOL finally cut the cord for good. I had to watch most of my friends lose their jobs, and come to terms with my future at AOL being devoid of so many people that I care about. It's kinda like a graduation ceremony in which half of your classmates are shot in the head while you duck just in time to dodge a bullet, and then pick up your diploma from the executioner.

Undoubtedly my fallen comrades will land on their feet quickly, as those few companies in the Bay Area that are hiring would be silly to pass up all this fresh talent. Still, it marks the end of one of the most fun and exciting eras in my career, and one that will remain fresh in my memory for a very long time.