John’s Blog

After 3 years at Mozilla, our VP Engineering Mike Schroepfer, is moving on to other opportunities and we wish him well.

Here at Mozilla that means some changes are in order, and Mike Shaver is our new Interim VP Engineering. Mike’s an amazing leader, deep technologist, committed Mozillian (Mozillite?, Mozillan?), and talented evangelist. He’s contributed lots of code and innovation to our current code base, including a number of the key Javascript enhancements you’re (hopefully) enjoying while reading this post in Firefox 3. He’s one of the most articulate advocates of the Open Web, and one of the most inspiring speakers on that subject (and many others) that I’ve ever heard.

All of which means that we’re in great shape with Mike taking on this new responsibility. The rest of the management and leadership in the engineering team remains the same as previously.

We’ve got a lot to do, starting with the upcoming Firefox 3.1 later this year, and I have great confidence that Mike will step into his new role and do a wonderful job.

As MIke mentioned over on his blog, after 3 years at Mozilla, he’s moving on to new adventures. For anyone who doesn’t know, he’s been the VP Engineering for us during most of that period, and he has been a huge force for helping make great things happen. Among other things, he’s been a great product execution person, a great technology strategist, a great source of ideas and inspiration, and a great recruiter.

But more than anything, he’s been a great leader and teacher, for everyone in the organization and in the larger community. And that means that while we’ll miss his day-to-day contribution, he’s left a legacy of other outstanding engineering managers and leaders ready to take new responsibilities — many of them who you can observe leading what we’re doing already.

So Mozilla owes a big thanks to Mike for his contribution, and I think will miss him greatly.

As a personal note, Mike’s been an extremely important collaborator and friend to me, and I’ll miss our day-to-day interactions very much.

But life moves on, and if I were you, I’d watch him closely, because he’s going to do great things in his next post, too.

Mike’s put up a great idea & discussion on TechCrunch about their idea for an Internet tablet with Firefox & Skype, a great screen, and for low cost. I’m really happy about the post and the idea — obviously, this would be a wonderful device for lots and lots of reasons. There are some challenges to figure out, so I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to take a look and start helping solve problems.

I’ll also say that this is a fascinating, hopeful way to start a project, and I’m optimistic that great stuff will come out of it.