Giving and receiving help at Mozilla

This is going to sound corny, but helping people really is one of my favorite things at Mozilla, even with projects I have mostly moved on from. As someone who primarily works on internal tools, I love hearing about bugs in the software I maintain or questions on how to use it best.

Given this, you might think that getting in touch with me via irc or slack is the fastest and best way to get your issue addressed. We certainly have a culture of using these instant-messaging applications at Mozilla for everything and anything. Unfortunately, I have found that being “always on” to respond to everything hasn’t been positive for either my productivity or mental health. My personal situation aside, getting pinged on irc while I’m out of the office often results in stuff getting lost — the person who asked me the question is often gone by the time I return and am able to answer.

With that in mind, here’s some notes on my preferred conversation style when making initial contact about an issue:

Please don’t send context-free pings on irc. It has been explained elsewhere why this doesn’t work that well, so I won’t repeat the argument here. If you are at all suspicious that your issue might be a bug in some software maintain, just file a bug and needinfo me. That puts us right on the path to documenting the problem and getting to a resolution — even if something turns out to not be a bug, if you’re seeing an unexpected error it points to a usability issue. For everything else, email is best. I do check it quite frequently between bursts of work (i.e. many times a day). I promise I won’t leave you hanging for days on end as long as I’m not on vacation.

These aren’t ironclad rules. If your question pertains to a project I’m actively working on, it might make sense to ping me on irc first (preferably on a channel where other people are around who might also be able to help). If it’s an actual emergency, then of course talk to me on irc straight away (or even call me on my phone) — if I don’t respond, then fall back to filing bug or sending email. Use common sense.

One of my new years resolutions is to also apply these rules to my communications with others at Mozilla as well, so if you see my violating it feel free to point me back at this post. Or just use this handy meme I created: