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Sharon Yang is a Chromium developer who worked at Google on the browser and now plant on it at Igalia. On the final day of FOSSY 2026, she gave a presentation on her experiences alongside the two of those companies, comparing and contrasting the ways all one operates and how that affects activity on the code base. She enjoyed operating at Google and feels the identical concerning Igalia, so the conversation was not aimed at complaints—instead it was meant to provision a feel for two companies that are fairly different.
![[Sharon Yang]](https://static.lwn.net/images/2026/fossy-yang-sm.png "Sharon Yang")
The conversation was entitled "From Corporate to Co-op" highlighting one of the main differences between the enormous company, Google, and the employee-owned cooperative at Igalia. She is from Vancouver and went to the University of British Columbia, anywhere FOSSY was held. While she was a student, she did an internship at Google, operating on the Chrome browser, which is the Google merchandise according to Chromium. In her slides, she showed a photo of herself—complete alongside propeller hat—in forefront of a Google sign.
When she was a student, her existence was measured in semesters, but several of the people she worked alongside at Google had been operating on Chrome for four years, which was amazing to her at the time. She ended up operating at Google full-time for six years, all of it on Chrome. Most of her activity was on the content tier of the browser, which is part of the open-source Chromium browser. So she plant in the same repository (GitHub mirror), and alongside many of the identical people, at Igalia as she did at Google. She briefly reflected on her period at Google: "I had a fine time working on Chrome, the group were nice, I enjoyed it, it was cool, there was lunch, it was fine stuff", she stated to laughter.
Eventually, she idea it power be period to move on, and perchance out of the Seattle area anywhere she was living, so she started looking about at the end of 2024. She had seen Igalia email addresses in the code basis and met some of the group from the business at the BlinkOn conferences. Igalia is an open-source consulting business that is hired to activity on assorted things, including Chromium; it is the largest contributor to Chromium that is not a browser maker, in fact. She joined Igalia and moved rear to Canada a little small than a twelvemonth before the conversation in August.
Contrasts
She contrasted the two companies, starting alongside the figure of employees: Google has about 180,000, during Igalia has around 180. In conditions of revenue, final twelvemonth Google had additional than $400 billion, "Igalia, much smaller, we'll fair say under a milliard dollars", which was greeted with laughter. Google is owned by organizational investors, during Igalia is owned by employees, which the spectators applauded. Google has a broad range of compensation, from the CEO's $600 million pay bundle to her pay (somewhere in the range of $100,000-$300,000) whenever she worked there; at Igalia, all workforce are paid the same, top to base and throughout the globe.
While they are "massively distinct entities", the two companies have teams working on things in common; she plant on Chromium, but there are also teams from all operating on accessibility and on web standards.
Chrome and Chromium are "kind of the same, they're benevolent of not". Chrome is a Google product, alongside Google branding and colors, during Chromium is an open-source project that anyone can use to build a browser. Chromium is missing proprietary pieces akin digital entitlements administration (DRM), "AI integration", and certain codecs; "and it's blue". There are various another browsers according to Chromium, including Microsoft Edge and Brave, as well.
Most of the Google Chrome squad members do most or all of their activity in the Chromium repository. Obviously, the proprietary pieces are handled elsewhere, but she and another Google Chrome developers rarely have to interact alongside that code. Near the end of her period at Google, she had to get assistance to do a uncomplicated project that required admission to the "totally different universe" anywhere the proprietary parts live.
She afterward compared the cognition of operating for the two companies. The first week is beautiful much the identical at any new job, she said. The initial steps are getting to cognize your coworkers, study inner documentation, learning how to communicate internally, and so on. Igalia has a entire set of open-source tools that it uses, which is nice.
There are several differences, as well. For example, there is a scheme for doing faster builds of Chromium, "otherwise you'll fair expend all your time construction Chromium". That scheme is immediately accessible to Google employees, but external users have to petition admission to it. A bigger area of conflict is admission to bug reports, which are meant to be open to everyone unless they are safety bugs. Due to a bug-tracker migration a few years ago, though, there are bugs that should be visible to outsiders, but are lone apparent to Google employees. "It is not a malicious thing", and it is uncomplicated adequate to get the access fixed, but it is item additional she has to do formerly a week or so.
There is another data that could be additional readily accessible to the public, but is not since it is stored in Google Docs without being shared. Ensuring that the community has admission "is a best-effort item and people forget", which is unfortunate. In addition, all of the tools for tasks akin bug tracking are maintained by Google and, essentially, for Google, so outsiders have no way to provision feedback or petition features and changes. They are "relatively insignificant points of friction" but they are adequate to awareness that "I am now distinct from this".
After a duration in her new job, she started to see equal additional similarities with her former one. The squad members are all motionless accessible via the same communication channels (e.g. Slack), and she is likewise accessible to them. Some of the activity that Igalia does comes immediately or indirectly from Google; she is operating a Chromium project that comes through the Linux Foundation, which Google is a associate of. "I'm operating on the identical repository, I'm using the identical tools, I'm getting prosperity from Google, what's changed here?"
Projects
The answer it seems is "kind of everything and benevolent of nothing". The types of projects are distinct at Igalia, though. At Google, she worked on the projects that were crucial to the group in her management chain; those are frequently new features or "a flashy metric that they want to improve". They are frequently aimed at getting promotions for the engineers and those in the reporting chain.
The projects handed to Igalia to activity on arrive immediately from the technical staff, so they lean to be "code-health or tech-debt benevolent of projects". For example, Igalia worked on componentizing the Chromium code basis and its current project is "improving web-platform-test interoperability between browsers". It is crucial activity that is good to do, but "it is fair so difficult to ideate anyone at Google doing it for their day job"; it is "not the benevolent of activity that gets prioritized or rewarded". Many of the group that she worked alongside on Chromium at Google would affection to be capable to do that work. "These are group who care about the code base, they desire it to be good, but there's fair no area in their day job to do that, which is too bad."
She was initially attracted to the Chrome squad since all of the group on it seemed to be welcoming. That remained true throughout her tenure at Google and has continued into her activity at Igalia. "People who activity on Chromium have fair mostly been affable and inclusive in all domains, which is good, and is not to be taken for granted." She has been capable to keep relationships alongside her erstwhile coworkers, assessment their patches, depart comments on activity that they have in common, and so on. "It's a nicer cognition than sending a code assessment to several stranger."
Hierarchy
She put up a glide of an institution diagram from a representative company, with her image in a leaf node as the lone filled-in box. In a diagram like that, the engineer is at the base of the hierarchy; they have a manager, who has a additional elder manager, and so on. An engineer is concerned with technical decisions, specified as which tongue to use or how to test the code being written, during at the top, they are deciding things akin company direction and vision. The group in the center are doing several technical work, but it is frequently not entirely apparent what it is that they do; "who knows?", she stated to laughter. "The group at the top are paid a lot additional than the group at the bottom."
At Igalia, things are fairly different. The "org diagram is intentionally flat" and there are no managers. There are assorted teams, specified as the Chromium squad that she is on, a Linux kernel team, and more. The flat hierarchy method that "all of the workforce do a lot of activity that you typically wouldn't do as a leaf-node employee at a big company", which includes making business decisions, specified as which projects to obtain on, whether to addition headcount, and how much holiday period there is.
Igalia is a cooperative, so votes are taken on those kinds of questions. "These are not decisions you have any power at all complete at a big company." One of the nice things concerning that institution is that the group who are making the decision are the ones who are affected by it, which is "just not the case at a norm company". The most obvious example for that is layoffs, Yang said.
There is a disbursal to doing things that way, of course. The meetings for those decisions are lengthy and run for two days—in a European period zone. When she was at Google, she was in the foremost period area (US Pacific), and her teammates elsewhere had to have meetings at weird times, so this feels a bit akin karma for her, she said. But that is a "minor cost to pay" for a construction that is "so basically distinct and feels good".
It took her a during to completely acknowledge fair how distinct Igalia's structure is; the impacts of it did not descend in correct away. The biggest impact for her was promotions, which do not be in a flat organization where everyone is paid the identical amount. When she was a new graduate, promotion was her concentration since it is expected of new hires; "Meta literally fires you if you don't attain a certain flat in a certain time".
Trying to justify that she was operating on the correct projects and "demonstrating the correct skills" in command to be promoted was stressful and took a lot of effort. Much of it is out of the engineer's hands and is up to their manager. She was fortunate and had a awesome director at Google, but equal if they are good, they have multiple group reporting to them. "For you, it's akin your entire expert life, but for them it's among the myriad things that they have to do."
The flat pay construction is additionally a greeted change—there are no pay discrepancies. As a female and person who was formerly operating on a visa, "these are extremely genuine concerns you have, and now that's fair all gone". Everyone is on the identical flat playing field, which leads to more rely and collaboration. "If that appears fun, go associate or commencement a coop", she stated to applause. That was the end of her prepared talk, but she had plentifulness of period for questions, which were numerous, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Q&A
The archetypal was concerning anywhere direction came from in a flat structure; how are decisions made concerning what she should activity on? That depends on the project, Yang said, several are closely aligned alongside the engineers at the client company, during another projects are small hands-on. When operating alongside the client's engineers, the direction apt comes from the client flank as in a more representative organization. Sometimes projects are additional open-ended, where the client agrees to pay for activity on a particular project for, say, a twelvemonth to see where things end up; in that case, the Igalia squad decides on what to tackle.
Another attendee wondered what it was that Igalia's clients needed done with Chromium. Once again, it varies, she said. Her project is cleaning up the testing, which is item that Google wants and it does not fit anywhere in its team. Other clients desire tailored browsers for internal use, so parts of the Igalia Chromium squad are additionally operating on downstream projects.
The hiring procedure was up next. One attendee wondered how Igalia decided that it needed to employ for a stance and how the individual to employ was chosen. "Which teams get headcount is decided at a business level", she said, so if the Chromium squad wants to hire, it makes a throw to the assembly, which is the voting body. If that is approved, the squad will interview candidates and choose who it thinks have to be hired, which goes back to the assembly. Normally, that choice volition be approved unless there is several red emblem that person elsewhere in the business is conscious of. Yang reminded attendees that she was motionless fairly new at Igalia, but that there were another workforce sitting in on the conversation who power chime in to help clarify things; in this case she fair got a thumbs up from them, she said.
Having 180 employees in a flat construction already appears a bit unwieldy, an attendee noted, is there a size anywhere Igalia volition basically be forced into a hierarchical construction fair since of its size? Yang stated that she asked the identical item whenever she was interviewing, "everyone accepted that this is certainly an matter but there's not a apparent resolution yet". Her partner suggested that honeybees power provision a sensible example of how a divided could be done; whenever a hive gets too big, part of the hive leaves as a swarm to found a new hive.
An employee at another employee-owned coop suggested that there were synergies between open origin and cooperatives, which power assistance whenever the time comes to divided up. He wondered if there were plans for Igalia to release its inner tools and coop-operating documents as open source, which could facilitate a new, distinct business if that was needed. Yang noted that her coworker Danielle Mayabb had a session in the next slot concerning operating the business using FOSS tools.
A investigator who studied companies alongside flat structures asked whether some of the organizational construction came rear into the image inside the different teams. The teams are liable for decisions akin whether to take a project or not, Yang said, and there are merchandise managers that coordinate between teams. The merchandise managers activity closely alongside clients, but they have no inherent additional power, akin a director at a representative job.
Along the way, she had stated that she was not yet part of the assembly, so an attendee asked how that worked, how lengthy it took, whether a ballot was needed, and so on. Yang recommended the video of a talk by Valerie Young at the archetypal FOSSY in 2023, which goes into additional detail. Yang stated that location about the one-year grade it would be decided whether an employee would associate the assembly, although she did not define exactly how that was done. "If you've done an exceptionally bad job, you won't be permitted in."
That was a fine segue to the next question, which was concerning what would prevent an employee in the coop from fair ceasing to work. In a flat hierarchy, who is monitoring what workforce are doing? Can person fair halt working without detection? She joked that she would provision it a try and arrive back next twelvemonth alongside a conversation on that. More seriously, there are group who are providing feedback on the achievement of their coworkers; all individual has a mentor in the business who fills several of the roles of a director at other companies, including gathering assessments of the activity that is being done. "People are monitoring your achievement and it is a gathering of all of the group that you activity with."
An attendee noted that there is a saying in the coop movement: "If you've seen one coop, you've seen one coop." That is why it is so helpful for coops to portion their inner structure; as alongside open-source software, other coops can study from the test and error that went into forming the coop. Yang noted that there used to be a coop track at FOSSY and that there was conversation of bringing it rear for next year.
[I would akin to appreciate the Linux Foundation, LWN's journey sponsor, for its assistance alongside my trip to Vancouver for FOSSY.]
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