72 Hours at Mozilla

written on Thursday, 24th June, 2010

On Monday, my internship at Mozilla started, and I can tell you how great it is. Since everything is open source anyway, I am actually encouraged to blog and talk about my work there.

Mozilla has more than a hundred people at its headquarters in Mountain View, while even more contributors work from all around the world. There are more than thirty other interns here, involved in various projects from mobile development, to metrics (such as myself), to developer engagement. I am going to write more about the data integration project I am working on, but first I want to give a quick impression of what an internship at Mozilla entails.

There are various benefits that help you to relax when you need to, and to focus on your work otherwise. For example free snacks and drinks (even beer) are provided for everyone, there are some big screen TV sets (yes, I watched the German team advance in the World Cup today, wooot), as well as pool and ping pong tables.

Also, there are lots of small conference rooms, so whenever you need some quiet for work and/or a phone call, you can find a spot, or just hang out at Ten Forward which is like a bar, a living room and a cinema in one. Funny thing: All conference rooms are either inspired by the Star Trek series, or pick up on classic internet memes. Other than Ten Forward, there are for example Holodeck (where new interns are trained), All your Base and the Bikeshed.

Every Monday after the all-hands meeting there is free food for everyone, and every Wednesday evening there is Intern Movie Night (we watched Primer tonight: great, but mind-boggling). Yesterday, I was at lunch with the Metrics Team: There is some great seafood to be had in mountain view.

In July, there will be the Mozilla Summit in Whistler, Canada. I will make sure to write about that, too.