Daniel Voyager breaks the news that Esbee Linden, Project Manager for Viewer 2 and more latterly, Snowstorm, is to depart Linden Lab on Friday the 21st January.
Esbee came in for a lot of criticism over the amount of spin she placed around the premature release of Viewer 2, and for various posts relating to the tweaking / damaging / breaking of Search under Viewer 2, although it should be said she, Q Linden and Oz Linden have pretty much kept to their SLCC 10 promises around Project Snowstorm, which has been well worth the effort.
Doubtless, when the news breaks, some will be cracking open bottles of bubbly stuff and toasting the “demise” of Viewer 2 – and will be waking up to hangovers and disappointment when their celebrations prove far too premature. While it is possible that this may wrong-foot Viewer 2 development in the short-term – as it appears that Esbee is leaving because she’s received an “offer she couldn’t refuse” from elsewhere rather than being given the royal order of the boot – I doubt it will result in a significant change in tack where Viewer 2 is concerned; and frankly, it shouldn’t. Viewer 2 is far from perfect – but then, so is Viewer 1.x; and while there are still rough edges that need to be smoothed and refined, 2.4 is a far superior product to 2.0 – just as 1.23.5 is far superior to 1.15 (or even 1.18)…
I had no direct dealings with Esbee myself; I did point the finger at her a couple of times for the aforementioned corporate spin in some of her posts, but I did listen to her and Oz and Q at SLCC 10 and found all of them to be a lot more aware than perhaps they’d been given credit. So like Daniel, I wish her well in her future endeavours.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 