{"id":621,"date":"2022-07-13T12:55:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T19:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/?p=621"},"modified":"2022-07-13T13:17:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T20:17:27","slug":"outreachy-interns-to-mozilla-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/outreachy-interns-to-mozilla-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"From interns to employees: How Mozilla\u2019s partnership with Outreachy opens doors"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the tech industry has long struggled to attract a diverse workforce, that problem is even more acute in the open source community. In one <\/i>2017 survey<\/i><\/a>, just 3% of respondents identified as women and only 16% as ethnic or national minorities, compared to 21% and 38%, respectively, of programmers overall. At Mozilla, we are <\/i>committed to improving<\/i><\/a> diversity, equity and inclusion within our organization and beyond, and in 2013, we started a partnership with <\/i>Outreachy<\/i><\/a>, an organization that connects people from underrepresented groups with three-month paid internships in open source. We have since hosted more than 100 Outreachy interns, each of them paired with at least one volunteer mentor<\/a>, and many of them have gone on to join our team full time.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Irene Storozhko\u2019s path to Mozilla started with a simple search on YouTube. A Vancouver, BC-based translator at the time, she was learning JavaScript in hopes of starting a career in software development, and stumbled upon a talk by Anjana Vakil\u2060 \u2014 now a prominent speaker and advocate, and then an Outreachy intern with Mozilla.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to her LinkedIn, and I was so surprised,\u201d Irene remembers. \u201cI thought only very experienced people got to give talks at conferences, and here was someone who had just started learning, like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irene looked into Outreachy and found the application process for Mozilla\u2019s next cohort was starting in about a month\u2060, in September 2016. She applied right away.<\/p>\n

For Lloan Alas, Outreachy was less an inroad into tech and more an opportunity to build community\u2060 \u2014 and to conquer impostor syndrome. He\u2019d worked as a developer for several years and even established a nonprofit, a networking community<\/a> in the Riverside area of Southern California, when he became an intern in the spring of 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking for validation, and for mentorship,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I\u2019d qualify at first; then I realized that some of the projects were based on technology I was already familiar with. The idea that my code could be used by millions of people \u2014 I was very excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like all Outreachy candidates whose initial applications are approved, the next step for Irene and Lloan was a monthlong \u201ccontribution period,\u201d where potential interns work on tasks like bug fixes and documentation to help mentors get to know them and understand what they can do. They were both ultimately accepted, but Lloan says contributing would have been worthwhile either way.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if I hadn\u2019t been selected, that was a great experience,\u201d Lloan says. \u201cIt helped me understand what it felt like to work remotely. We were communicating a lot with the mentors and establishing that relationship, and I met some of the other candidates. Two of them also went on to intern, and we became pretty close\u2060 \u2014 when we went to Mozilla All Hands, we hung out all week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because she was new to the field, Irene and her mentors decided she would spend the first week learning more about some of the technologies and languages she\u2019d use, along with completing Mozilla\u2019s onboarding program to help her understand the technical stack and development environment. Then she began her project: migrating the GitHub integration for Taskcluster<\/a>, a continuous integration framework for automatically testing Firefox releases.<\/p>\n

For Lloan, a change in Mozilla\u2019s roadmap meant he had to wait longer to dive in on his primary project\u2060 \u2014 but he gained more time to explore while he and his mentor, Developer Tools Engineering Manager Jan Odvarko, decided what he should work on instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started looking for bugs I could fix all over \u2014 the console product, the network product. Anything I could understand,\u201d Lloan remembers. \u201cJan had a list of things they\u2019d wanted to do but hadn\u2019t had time for, and he wanted to find something I felt passionate about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, they settled on building search functionality for the network panel in Firefox. Because Jan is based in the Czech Republic, nine hours ahead of California, Lloan would often compile questions for their daily chats. But the time difference also made for a streamlined process; if he pushed code at the end of the day, he could wake up to Jan\u2019s review. He also worked closely with other team members, including Nicolas Chevobbe, the lead for the Firefox console.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was never a time where someone said, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re not my intern,\u2019\u201d Lloan says. \u201cI always felt welcome to ask questions \u2014 and they asked me questions, too! We all have different experiences, and something different to contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irene also met regularly with her mentors, and says their support helped her build confidence. \u201cIn the beginning I would get really nervous working on a project, and they always took the time to talk with me and relate their own experiences \u2014 the things they\u2019d struggled with when they were starting, and that they\u2019d had a lot of the same worries. That helped me calm down and feel like, \u2018Okay, I can do this. I can be an engineer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the delay getting started, Lloan was able to complete his search functionality project; Mozilla extended his internship for a couple of weeks so he could finish it up. Irene, too, wrapped up the Github integration and even had time for a \u201cbonus\u201d project: She proposed creating a form users could fill out to get a ready-made configuration file for their repositories, and her mentors told her to go for it.<\/p>\n

Near the end of her internship, Irene also got to deliver a \u201ctech talk\u201d to the Taskcluster team on what she\u2019d learned \u2014 a full-circle moment, given that a talk had initially led her to Outreachy. But she says the highlight of the three months was traveling to Toronto to spend a week with her mentors and other teammates in person. \u201cThat was so fun. We\u2019d work together, and then we\u2019d all go out and eat together. It was awesome,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Lloan\u2019s favorite internship moments were also tied to a trip; because they were at Mozilla during the company\u2019s in-person All Hands in Whistler, Canada, he and his fellow Outreachy interns were invited to attend. \u201cIt was wonderful,\u201d he says. \u201cYou go into different rooms and people from different teams are working on things or chatting, and you can sit anywhere you want and just join in. Where else can you do that? It was very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

That openness and transparency, he says, even extended to sharing feedback on All Hands itself. When the leadership team sent out an email asking for comments after the event, Lloan shared how much he\u2019d enjoyed the experience but also pointed out he\u2019d been one of only a handful of non-white people in attendance. \u201cThey thanked me for speaking up and said it was something they were working on, which honestly is one of the things I like so much about Mozilla,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re upfront about needing to improve on diversity and inclusion, and I see what they\u2019re doing to make that happen. I appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Lloan says that when he decided to join the company full time two years after his internship, Mozilla\u2019s culture was a big part of the reason why. \u201cEveryone here is focused on trying to help others. There are very smart people on this team \u2014 people at the top of their field who could be working at larger companies. But they choose to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irene also joined full time about 18 months after completing her internship, though the offer came as a surprise at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team didn\u2019t have the headcount to hire me at the end of my internship, and I\u2019d found another job, but I kept contributing and was invited to All Hands as a volunteer,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the meantime, someone had left the team, so they had an opening \u2014 and when I was at All Hands, they asked if I\u2019d like to join.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irene accepted, and while she\u2019s since switched from Taskcluster to GeckoView<\/a>, she says many of the things she learned during her internship are still serving her well today \u2014 from navigating a large code base to handling potentially challenging conversations like code reviews. She\u2019s even become a mentor in Outreachy herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a wonderful intern a couple of years ago who implemented a new algorithm to make the parser in our Taskcluster library more robust. It was really fun to work with her, and that project is still in use today,\u201d Irene says. \u201cMentoring is also such a great opportunity to grow your leadership skills. I\u2019d love to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lloan is settling into a longer-term role at Mozilla after a couple of moves to new teams, and is keeping busy with his nonprofit and pursuing a Ph.D. \u2014 but he hopes being a mentor is on the horizon for him, as well. \u201cWe\u2019ve already had another member of the nonprofit go through Outreachy, and I\u2019m looking forward to getting involved directly again someday,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether you\u2019re a candidate, an intern, or a mentor, it\u2019s a great opportunity for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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