My Next Adventure

"Google has signed Fiddler engineer Eric Lawrence to a lifetime deal in what one source familiar with the negotiations said is a fairly ordinary hiring.

“We are excited to add Eric to our lineup,” Masko Askov said. “He is a talented player who we feel can make significant contributions to our Chrome team.”

A company spokesperson would not say how much Google paid."

(in all seriousness, congrats to Mr. Lawrence).

* I prefer second dumbest in case we need a fall guy

I'm not sure going back ever seems like the right move. You aren't necessarily opening yourself up to more opportunity in most cases, returning to a former employer, and as your comment indicates, you may find things have changed in ways you don't like while you were gone.

It is my understanding that the IE team appreciates Eric's post-employment bug reports because his visibility gets them bumped up the priority chain[1]

[1] I asked him and that's what he told me.

As it turns out, they made a great offer for me to return in 2014, but they don't allow remote work and we're staying in Austin. I have many friends in IE/Edge and wish them all the best.