Changing jobs… from Purism to Mercedes Benz

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Oh dear, time passes fast! And I just recognized that I have neglected my blog – a lot! And while I just moved my blog server I thought I could also give an update.

So first news first, short version: In mid of May 2024 I basically got fired by Purism. The little longer version is that this was a story unfolding over a couple more months before already. Back in May 2023 my billable hours had been drastically reduced already, for reasons you can probably imagine (hint: it was not due to me requesting it nor lack of actual work). Then in May 2024 my billable hours got reduced to zero (yes, zero, null, nada, 0) hours, effectively putting me out of work. Not only that, this came basically one day to the next, I got a brief one-line message on May the 1st (labor day – you get the irony?) via Matrix from the CEO telling me that effective immediately my billable hours are reduced to zero and that I would be relieved from my position as CTO. No word of excuse, being sorry or anything. Just that, very simple.

So after about eight years with Purism and almost seven of them working as CTO, this was it, one day to the next. It took me a bit to let this sink in. I am honestly still hurting, a bit at least. I think what hurts most is the feeling of not being really valued. All that talk before about „the incredible work you are doing“ and so on, obviously worth nothing, not honest, just bla bla. Very disappointing. In those seven years I was the one creating all still current, as of today, Purism hardware products, the Librem5, the LibremMini, Librem14, Librem11 and so on. I managed these projects including suppliers, developers, engineers, everything.

And one day to the next, it’s all meaningless.

And since my hours had already been reduced significantly for the prior 12 months leading to this reduction to zero and Purism still, as of today, owing me substantial amounts of money I had to look for a new job, quickly!

And I got lucky! A good friend of mine pointed me to a job listing looking for an „Open Source consultant“, in the Stuttgart (Germany) area. I did apply and what shall I say – I got the job!

So now I am working in the FOSS governance and compliance team at Mercedes Benz vehicle R&D. This is a significantly different work environment than I am used to. For the past almost 35 years I worked in businesses with no more than maybe 40 people. Now there are 140.000 ! Not only that there are a lot more people, this of course also means that the way of working is totally different, a lot more processes, multi level decision making, much higher barriers for pushing something to the outside of the company and so on.

The good news though is that my new team is great, they helped me a lot to find my way around and to explain everything to me. For quite some time I felt like a total newbe and idiot, not able to contribute anything anywhere since I lacked too much background information. But I am getting there! The other good news is that, from what I perceive there, that they really want to do it right, at least the parts that I now happen to have a bit insight into, i.e. FOSS. I sadly can not talk about it in detail publicly, but at least as far as that they have pretty sophisticated processes and tools in place to be and stay FOSS license compliant. And with a company acting world wide, with tens of thousands of employees and hundreds and thousands of suppliers, this is not an easy task! There are now dozens of people working pretty much exclusively on FOSS compliance topics, from engineering to legals, procurement etc. That’s pretty amazing to see! And I am now a humble contributor as part of the vehicle (passenger cars) development facility.

The only really pretty tough downsides for me are that a) I am now pretty far away from engineering and b) that I have to use Windoze and all kinds of proprietary tools for my work there. But maybe, but only maybe, I can help pushing more FOSS into the offices too… maybe… I’m most definitely trying 🙂