Kind of wish these sorts of career moves PR releases were announced like transfers/signings for professional athletes.

"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).

Sounds like a blast, good luck. I concur with the "dumbest person in the room" advice.

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

Interesting that Eric Lawrence didn't choose to go back to Microsoft. Though given how much vitriol he directs on Twitter at MSFT and the IE/Edge group he was part of, I imagine neither he nor they wanted him back...

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.

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.

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.

I've not seen too many cases where people going back has succeeded. It is certainly a different sort of relationship post partum.

Philip Su mentioned in the article runs the London Facebook office. I am just glad Eric is not joining that one :)