Willie Walker's Weblog

Around this time each year, I tend to reflect on who I am, where I am, and where I want to go. With the economy tanking and Sun having more layoffs, I had a lot to think about this year.

A brief history. Soon after I joined Digital Equipment Corporation a little over 20 years ago, I saw it start shrinking from about 130,000 employees to just about half that size. Towards the end of my time there, I don't believe a week went by where I didn't see a group or two gathered around the coffee station. The discussion was always the latest news about who had either been sold to another company or "right sized", which was the euphemistic term for being let go during the DECxecution era. The coffee station was also a hot spot because there was usually more than enough early retirement cake to be had on any given day.

Seeing good friends leave and having the Sword of DECocles hanging over my head for almost 10 years was emotionally tiring. I stuck it out, however, because DEC continued to fund my work on X Windows Accessibility. This work included the Remote Access Protocol (RAP), which is one of the first approaches to an accessibility infrastructure for the desktop. X Windows development was also about as close as I could get to open source development at the time. Many thanks to my management at DEC for supporting this work for as long as they did.

DEC eventually decided to drop its graphical desktop work, so my work went with it. I stayed at DEC and did a short stint with a team working on a 64-bit port of some god awful garbage Windows networking code - the people on the team were great, but the work itself was a small step above self trepanation. That's when I knew what flowed in my veins: if you cut me, I would bleed accessibility.

Enter Sun, which was ramping up on the Java programming language. My good friend, Earl Johnson, recruited me and Peter Korn to do the design and implementation of Java Accessibility. It was a great way to carry forward a lot of what I had learned with RAP and it also represented a bold move from Sun -- Sun had the foresight and courage to make accessibility considerations from the early days rather than retrofitting it at a much later date. Cool stuff.

Fast forward almost 12 years. During that time, Sun continued to fund, lead, and innovate in open source accessibility, with GNOME being the poster child for accessibility that was "built in" rather than "bolted on". It is also well known that Sun has gone through some hard times, unfortunately forcing it to add the word "RIF" to the "Executive's Guide to Euphemistic Layoff Terms and Phrases". One of the recent RIFs hit really close to home, causing a drop in my morale. I continued to focus on making OpenSolaris Accessibility happen and moving GNOME Accessibility forward, however, since the best thing you can do during times like these is focus on what you can control.

As Sun announced even deeper cuts, I began to focus even more on what I could control. I cannot control my job security at Sun, for example, but I am currently lucky enough that I can control whom I work for. I interviewed with a creator of a very popular and successful Windows assistive technology. Of all the Windows assistive technology providers, this company receives my highest praise and respect for creating the world's best product for what they do, for having wonderful corporate values, and for having a great team of people. It was a dream job.

The company made me an offer and then reality hit home. I was 95% sure I was going to take the job, so I began working on an exit strategy to help keep GNOME Accessibility going after I left. I started creating the exit strategy by writing down the various touch points I have in the space. As a result of that exercise, I had a revelation similar to the one I had when I was working on that 64-bit port nonsense at DEC. To relate it to Christmas, you might say my heart grew three times that day.

I also do it because Sun supports it. Bill Vass, who is Sun's COO and President of Sun Microsystems Federal, recently blogged about OpenSolaris 2008.11 Accessibility, which I worked hard to make happen this year. For me, OpenSolaris 2008.11 is proof positive that compelling open source accessibility is an achievable goal. It helps validate the work we've been doing for years, and it helps heal the aches and pains of 60-80 hour work weeks to make it happen. I also worked with many other teams inside Sun to achieve this goal and saw that accessibility really is a core value at Sun.

So, I have decided to stay at Sun. While layoffs may hover over my head, Sun currently supports the work which is part of who I am and where I want to go. For me, that's a great place to be.