Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Economist on Mitchell Baker

Posted by Zonk on from the lizard-wrangler-and-fox-driver dept.

Sara Chan writes "The Economist has a story about a trapeze artist who, in her spare time, is the Chief Lizard Wrangler at a non-profit. You perhaps know her as Mitchell Baker, leader of Firefox." From the article: "Ms Baker gradually found herself the leader of this project. Perhaps this is because she is a somewhat unusual member of the Netscape diaspora. For a start, she is a woman in a community populated, as one (male) colleague puts it, by geeky males with 'spare time and no social life'. Ms Baker herself has never even written code. She studied Chinese at Berkeley, and then became a lawyer--her role at the old Netscape was in software licensing. On all technical matters, she defers to Brendan Eich, her chief geek."

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. More about her... by skochak · · Score: 5, Informative
    Trained as a lawyer, Baker coordinates business and policy issues and sits on the both Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. In 2005, Time magazine included her in the 2005 Time 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker

    --
    This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
  2. well... by know1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    even though she doesn't write any code, they figured having a woman telling the developers what to do would be the best way to get them to obey as they were used to taking orders off their mothers/wives

    i kid, i kid, posting this from firefox, keep up the good work guys

  3. Re:Amazingly socially unsophisticated. by ajnsue · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is the best thing I have heard in a long time. A person who is not slick or commercial - becoming an effective leader of a succesful project. Makes you think that competency had something to do with her accomplishments rather that self-marketing.
    This and the sentencing of Ebbers and other CEO's makes me think that maybe the Earth is slowly being returned to its correct ethical axis