I’ve recently been informed by a good friend of mine that it appears Cory Ondrejka has been fired from Linden Lab. For those of you who do not know, Cory is the CTO of Linden Lab, and the person to thank for the Second Life scripting language. Thanks to our friends at Massively, I’ve been able to get a copy of the email sent out by Philip Rosedale (CEO of Linden Lab) to the Linden Lab employees.
“Cory is going to leave LL. He has been with us for 7 years, and was the fourth person to join. So this is a big deal. Cory has been a huge part of the company, having designed big parts of SL, hired many people, contributed greatly to the culture, and given a powerful voice to SL and LL. Among other things, he had the original design idea for the love machine, single handedly wrote the scripting language, and got us all doing A&Os back in 2001. Losing him will be hard for the company. I will miss him a lot. What’s worse is that ultimately his leaving is my decision.”
The email also states the reasoning behind Philip’s decision.
“Cory and I have differences in how we think Linden should be run, differences that in the past few months have become irreconcilable. These are tensions that were more manageable when we were smaller, and there have been times that they have helped us do great work together. But now, as we change and grow as a company, I feel that we need a different set of strengths in engineering leadership. I strongly believe that this is the right decision, although not without pain, for both LL and Cory. Of course, I’m not going to go into the details of these differences. This is one of those times when, in having me as your leader, you will also have to trust me in my decision.”
In a statement Philip made recently, he’s confirmed the fact that Cory is going to be leaving by the end of the year - but he has not, however confirm that it is his own decision.
Thanks to Massively, I’ve gotten the statement that Cory made to the Linden Lab employees, and it is as follows:
“Trying to sum up 7 years of work at Linden is an impossible task. All nighters at the Linden Street office. Gaining 20 pounds but then losing 70. Flying 350,000 miles on Linden travel. Recruiting and hiring many of you. Creating a programming language that now had 2.5 billion lines of code written in it – note to self, next time spend more than one night designing language. Changing the world.
It has been an absolute thrill working with all of you on Second Life. When Philip looked across a rickety card table in November of 2000 and told me that we would do more than build a great product, we needed to build a great company, too, I knew it would be a wild ride. Through the peaks and the valleys, Philip’s ideas challenged and inspired me. They often led to solutions I would never have considered and helped to make Second Life what it is today.
I continue to believe in both Second Life and Linden Lab, but Philip and my visions for the future of Linden Lab are divergent enough that he decided to lead in his own way. While I will miss all of you, I have confidence in engineering - in all of you - to adapt and excel going forward. You are a phenomenal collection of talents and I know that both Linden Lab and Second Life will be hugely successful.”
as Tateru Nino stated on Massively, “Ondrejka is obviously being sensitive, proud and diplomatic. It also gives the impression of ‘fired’ rather than ‘quit’, but he’s definitely going out in style, as a leader. This is a classic ‘creative differences’ situation, and Ondrejka’s handling it very professionally, with positive messages, reinforcement and motivation.”
The statement made by Philip does not state that Ondrejka is to be fired - but after reading the emails sent to all of the Linden Lab employees; it’s hard to believe anything else. Cory’s been a huge part of Second Life’s creation and development - and without him on the team, it’s hard to say what the future holds for Second Life and Linden Lab.
Thanks so much to moo Money and everyone at Massively for helping to inform us of this horrible news. I’ll keep you updated as best I can as more is uncovered.
