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OH: It’s not personal, it’s just mconnor

At first I laughed at this, but it (and a succession of other things) prompted me to write something that’s considerably overdue.  Around nine months ago, it was confirmed that I’ve been living with Asperger Syndrome, which explains a great many things about how I act, how I treat people, why I fail, and why I succeed.  I’ve managed to succeed much more than I’ve failed, through a combination of skill, hard work, and a lot of luck, much of that while living in the world’s biggest fishbowl.  But along the way I’ve hurt feelings, caused anger, and brought a lot of frustration and tension into the lives of many people I respect and care about.  Almost all of it was unintentional, and unconscious, and often the responses, especially the angry ones, have been bewildering and upsetting.  But at least now I know why.

Living as an undiagnosed aspie isn’t especially awesome.  I don’t read people well, without distinct effort and focus.  I especially don’t do well in large social situations (a key factor in some of my infamous episodes), but I just thought I wasn’t especially well-adjusted.  I tend to not self-censor, and say things without really thinking them through.   A really big one is that I tend to argue points strongly, and express opinions in very certain and definitive terms.  (I’m still working on that one…)  Hardest of all, I can come off as anti-social and cranky, but those who know me best know I’m a big teddy bear.

On the other hand, there are some aspects that are really helpful.  I can grasp really complex and chaotic systems (like how software gets shipped).  I often notice details and patterns that others don’t.  I can handle doing grindy tasks for long periods of time, without it driving me crazy.  I can focus on things to the exclusion of others to get things done under pressure (that one cuts both ways, to be fair).  I don’t think I’d be where I am today without some of those traits.

Since I’ve been diagnosed, I’ve also shifted my day to day focus to Labs, especially Weave, which was a transition into a less rough-and-tumble environment than the Firefox critical path.  This has been a challenge for me, but it’s also been a learning experience.  Being blunt and aggressive is something I’ve had to tone down, and working with a lot of people who aren’t used to me has taught me that I need to modulate my approach.  For anyone interested, there’s a few key things that matter in living with AS in a tricky world:

1. I need to slow down my responses, and be much more intentional about what I say and how I say it.  I will throw things out there, and I may not even mean what I say to be definitive, but that’s how people take it anyway.
2. I need to listen more than I talk.  Something I learned from John Lilly a while back is “argue as if you were right, listen as if you were wrong” but that only works if there’s an established trust relationship, and I don’t always apply my best judgement.
3. I need to be honest with myself about my limitations and my mistakes.  Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s okay.  But I need to accept and own the problems I create, and I need to work to not repeat them.

Ultimately, AS is a blessing and a curse.  I like my brain, I like who I am 98% of the time.  The other 2% sucks, and while I’m working on that, change is slow when it’s brain wiring.  In the meantime, I want to work even better within Mozilla, so I would like anyone reading this, who interacts with me, to keep a few simple guidelines in mind:

1. WYSIWYG – I put my cards on the table right up front, as much as I can.  If you’re reading ulterior motives into my behaviour, you’re probably getting it wrong, but please feel free to call me on it, I may not realize it.
2. If I upset you, I almost certainly didn’t mean it, and telling me would be very helpful for me to continue to learn.  I know it’s hard to call people on social gaffes, but I will thank you for it (even if it’s hard to hear).
3. Not understanding is hard, so I’ll often ask lots of questions if I don’t understand.  That often comes across as arguing with someone’s choices, which is unfortunate and damaging.  Again, call me on it if you think I’m doing it.
4. I probably shouldn’t ever talk to press without a grownup around.  Just sayin’.

I suspect some of the people reading this post also have AS.  Jeff Atwood has written about AS on Coding Horror, it was in Wired a long time ago, and it’s not exactly news.  But I have learned a lot from having it confirmed, and from learning about how it impacts, and how I can adapt.  I’ve quit drinking (it’s just not a good idea), I’m in a healthy relationship now, and I’m constantly working to get better.  It’s a process, and often a frustrating one at that, but I am determined to make the best of it.  I would encourage anyone who identifies with what I’ve written to seek out a diagnosis.  It doesn’t mean you have to change who you are, but it gives you the opportunity to change how you affect others, and if you’re anything like me, that’s what really matters most.

For quite some time I’ve been exploring ways to scale up ownership to meet the scope and pace of our front end work.  One of the key elements of Firefox’s success has been the concept of an “application czar” with overall authority for keeping the app coherent and development moving in a focused way.  The concept of the application czar has been successfully combined with the module owner role since 2002, and we don’t have a better model defined as of yet, so we’re not going to change that now.  However, changes do need to be made to continue to make progress, so I’m implementing a set of changes to how we do things that will push more responsibility to more people, which is great for our forward growth, even if it’s going to feel a little strange at first.

Overall, the intent is to give the sub-module owners more responsibility for driving their area forward in line with our overall goals.  This means identifying pain points (technical and user-facing) and building a plan to solve those problems will be the responsibility of the sub-module owners.  Obviously the technical and product leaders will continue to work with these individuals, but it will be the responsibility of sub-module owners to drive this work forward.  Dietrich Ayala‘s ownership of Places over the last two years is a fantastic example of how this should work in practice.  In line with this change, I’ve named new owners for a number of sub-modules.

Another important change I intend to make is to the role of a module-wide peer, since the traditional role is somewhat unclear in a decentralized model.  The closest we have in Mozilla to the idea of cross-module oversight is Brendan, and he doesn’t have any official peers.  Given this, I contemplated doing away with the old concept of peers entirely, and treat the reviewer list as peers in the despot/policy sense.  However, I have concluded that it would be very beneficial to have peers to help with the technical and product oversight role, especially guiding and mentoring people who are learning how to scale up.   To this end, I’ve asked Vlad and Gavin to act as peers under this new model.  This is not just a technical role, but has responsibilities related to product direction and stewardship, which we’ll evolve over time as we get used to this model.

Beyond that, we’re going to add five new (and long overdue) reviewers to various areas (and add/merge some areas).  Ehsan Akhgari, Ryan Flint, Dao Gottwald, Jim Mathies, and Johnathan Nightingale will join the reviewers group with various areas under their care.  They’ve all been playing key roles over the last months and years, and it’s high time we start rewarding them in the traditional Mozilla manner: more work and more responsibility!  Please join me in welcoming everyone to their new roles.

I’ve already updated the official review docs to reflect these changes, so as of now, this is official.  Please let me know of any concerns via email or in the comments.