Mozilla is Alienating Businesses and Education with Firefox

Downside of Firefox

Firefox has been really destroying its chances of being deployed to organizations. Why is that you might ask? Well Firefox was used widely back in the version 3.xx but now, they are up to version 12. Version 3 was released back in June of 2008, we are now in April 2012 and they are now up to version 12.

Frequent Updates are the Demise of Firefox

This rapid “major” update schedule means that organizations have to perform testing (for applications and penetration testing), develop new system images for workstations, create new virtual apps for shops that use that technology-such as BMW. I quote major because many of the updates could be considered by many to be minor. This results in a major amount of money to be spent every time Firefox gets updated.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is still supporting IE6 from years ago, Mozilla provides very limited support.

Is Firefox going away? Not any time soon, but they are going to lose market share. Institutions cannot support this behavior.

If someone from Mozilla is paying attention to me, how about acknowledging the operations people in the world exist and you might want to make them happy. After all, they recommend web browsers not just to the businesses but to friends and family. The users in the businesses are going to be biased to use the same web browser at home and at work. If the business is using Internet Explorer, more likely than not, the employees will be using that at home as well.

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IT Jobs – How to keep yours.

I just saw that the number of back-office IT jobs in both Europe and North America is supposed to go from 4 million today, down to 2 million in 2014. Lets face it, we are an eclectic gathering of eccentric people on many ends of the spectrum.

And yes the jobs are going places where the incomes can be a lot less. Five programmers must be better than one really good one, right?

So here is what I am recommending to stay afloat through this temporary rough patch (I give it a decade but no more than that). I have given this advice to some people and it has worked for them.

1. Never stop improving your skills. This is very, very crucial. Why would someone want to keep a Commodore 64 for their office computer? Learning will not just help you, you need use it in your current job. Now if you are Java programmer, you don’t want to learn C# because then other members of your team will not be able to follow your work but learn different libraries within Java.

2. Help others. The people that hoard their knowledge don’t make it very far and certainly will not keep their job. The only thing they have going for them is a very small area of expertise that others can easily learn or work around. If you share your knowledge people will need you for your sage advice and for your technical ability.

3. Be active in the community. Not just in your company but elsewhere (i.e. user groups, forums, conferences, blogs). From a networking perspective alone, there is much to gain from learning from peers. Learning things from people with different careers can also be very useful!

4. Become an expert. You need to become an expert in an area where no one in your group has much knowledge.

Of course, no job is bulletproof but this will make you last longer than most people in your organization. With the steps I provided here you should have no problem getting a job with another company.