Mike Shaver (born February 17, 1977) is a former Engineering Director at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. He is also known for his work on several

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

projects. He has been involved in the development of many of the technologies that enable interactive web pages, such as the

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

language.

Background

Shaver attended high school at

Lisgar Collegiate Institute Lisgar Collegiate Institute is an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board secondary school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The school is located in downtown Ottawa by the Rideau Canal. History In 1843, a grammar school with 40 paying students was ...

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

, where he began working with Ingenia Communications Corporation, an Ottawa-area computer consultancy that later dissolved. His efforts saw him rise from a summer student who worked as a

system administrator An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as Server (computing), servers. The ...

and

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

to chief

systems architect The systems architect is an information and communications technology professional. Systems architects define the architecture of a computerized system (i.e., a system composed of software and hardware) in order to fulfill certain requirements ...

and eventually Chief technical officer (CTO).

Career

Shaver eventually left to work at

Netscape Communications Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape (web browser), Nets ...

and later zerøknowledge,

Cluster File Systems Lustre is a type of parallel distributed file system, generally used for large-scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a portmanteau word derived from Linux and cluster. Lustre file system software is available under the GNU General Publi ...

, and the

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

. Beginning as a visiting developer, he quickly rose through the ranks and eventually gained

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

fame by becoming a founding member of the

Mozilla Organization The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, operates critical infr ...

in 1998. He served as VP of Engineering and VP of Technical Strategy for the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, s ...

where he helped people understand, build, and benefit from an open

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

. He became associated within the discussions of web standardization and also performed gatekeeper role. At Mozilla, Shaver worked with

Mike Schroepfer Mike Schroepfer is an entrepreneur, technical architect, climate investor, and philanthropist who was the chief technology officer (CTO) at Meta Platforms between March 2013 and March 2022. In 2022 he transitioned to become Senior Fellow at Met ...

, who also later began working at Facebook. Shaver was also at the center of the "ten fucking days" imbroglio wherein he wrote on his business card "ten fucking days" referencing a recent ten-day turnaround for a security flaw from notification to releasing a fixed version of

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

. His intent was to show confidence in Mozilla's ability to quickly address security issues, but it was misunderstood as a general or official Mozilla policy. Shaver stayed at Mozilla for six years before he transferred to Facebook, where he became the director of engineering from 2011 to 2016. In 2016, Shaver returned to Canada and joined Real Ventures. His first investment was the startup called ''integrate.ai'', where he also serves as CTO. In 2022, Shaver began working for

Shopify Shopify Inc., stylized as ''shopify'', headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, operates an e-commerce platform for retail point-of-sale systems that offers payments, marketing, shipping, inventory management, transaction management, and customer eng ...

as a Distinguished Engineer. In October 2024, Shaver joined the

Ladybird Browser Initiative Ladybird is an open-source web browser developed by the Ladybird Browser Initiative, a nonprofit organization focused on development of the browser. It is licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License. An alpha release is planned in 2026, beta release ...

as a board member.

References

External links

Mike Shaver's Weblog, ''noise from signal''
* ''Shaverman'' webcomic,
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pg2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaver, Mike 1977 births Living people Mozilla developers Open source people People from Grande Prairie Lisgar Collegiate Institute alumni