Here are two recommendations in addition to those on my LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/pierresaslawsky)...
=======================================================
Andy Anderson was the project manager at LodgeNet when I developed a secure multi-tab WebKit-based web browser on the Macintosh for use in a kiosk application that will be deployed in hotels and hospital rooms. LodgeNet is the largest provider of in-room entertainment systems in America with 1.8 million guest rooms.
He spontaneously sent this email at the end of the project.
=======================================================
From Andy Anderson <andy.anderson@lodgenet.com>
Sunday, November 21, 2010 5:48 PM
Pierre,
It has been great to work with you. In my experience, it has never been this easy to work with a contractor on any project. Your attention to the timeline without sacrificing quality is truly remarkable. I thank you for all the work you have done for us. We will talk tomorrow.
Thanks again.
Andy
=======================================================
Daniel Glazman is CEO at Disruptive Innovations and Co-Chairman of the W3C CSS Working Group. In this email, he was answering a request for references from Andy Atkins, Director of Engineering at Netflix.
=======================================================
From Daniel Glazman <daniel@glazman.org>
Re: Reference Check of Pierre Saslawsky
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:34 PM
Andy Atkins wrote:
> I’m a hiring manager here at Netflix following up on a reference check on Pierre. He has you listed as one of his references. Could you answer a few questions for me (and if doing this via phone would be easier, please let me know.)
Hello Andy,
Via phone is ok but I'm based in Paris France, so nine hours
ahead of you... That means you start your work day when I'm about to
leave the office. Here's my office number, if you can call me tomorrow
thursday _before_ 9:15am your time since I have an appointment in town
at 9:30am your time : +33 1 3451 0722.
> - What would you consider to be Pierre’s strengths?
I met Pierre when we were both employed by Netscape in Mountain View,
working on the Layout and Style Engines of Mozilla Gecko, the rendering
engine inside Firefox.
Pierre is an extremely talented engineer, who has a deep knowledge of
not only the protocols and languages of the Internet (and I am not
speaking of the Web only here but also SMTP, NNTP, etc.) but also of
the internals of a rendering engine like Mozilla's Gecko. Individuals
with such a knowledge AND the ability to improve it, add new features,
track performance hits and rearchitecture drastically things to shape
the best tool on the market are rare, very rare. Pierre and I are both
members of that tiny community, and it's probably not exagerated to say
that it's a so tiny community that we all know each other around the
globe, at least virtually.
And in that tiny community, Pierre is even more special than others
since he represented Netscape in the CSS Working Group at the W3C, the
World Wide Web Consortium. He directly contributed to the standards work
done in our Group (I am the co-chairman of the CSS WG) and the
forthcoming CSS 3 standard. Pierre is well-known in the community of
standards' gurus and we do regret his active contributions.
Pierre is also a wonderful team player, perfectly integrated in the
Silicon Valley culture and work habits, always ready to help,
instrumental when the team tries to focus on hard tasks. He also has,
and that's rare enough to be noted, a technical vision. He 'sees'
the evolution of the core technologies he's working on or with.
He loves learning new technologies, working with them, improving them.
> - Where do you think he needs to improve? Examples?
To be honest, it's very hard to find something to answer here. I wish
all my employees here had the same expertise and were such talented team
players... That's probably why he's in the Bay Area and not in France
anymore ;-)
> - How flexible do you consider Pierre with regard to work assigned, development environments to use, etc.?
Pierre has, as far as I know, always exceeded expectations at
Netscape. I can testify on that since I peer-reviewed him twice during
our tenure at Netscape.
Just like in every highly technical and market-challenging context, we
had hard deadlines. Pierre was immediately able to cope with the
assignments and dive into work for the greatest benefit of all.
> - Would you work with him again, and why?
YES! As you know, geeks rely on trust. And I do trust Pierre...
And same thing as a manager, I would hire him immediately.
Working with him was a pleasure because you know he will always give his
best, be friendly and funny, cool and well organized. He's also able to
work at the office, remotely if needed, in an international distributed
environment like the one we had at Netscape. And again, he's one of the
very few understanding standardization and that implies a structuration
of thought and a logical and practical sense that are both rare.
If you're interested in Pierre, that's probably because of his work on
browsers' rendering engines or his work on mail user agents. In both
cases, you should really put Pierre on top of list of your hiring queue,
for a technical or managerial (or both) position. And I do regret he's
so far away from my company and willing to stay in the Bay Area because
I would hire him myself to work on Mozilla otherwise.
Feel free to call me on the phone tomorrow if you have any extra question.
Best regards,
Daniel Glazman
--
CEO @ Disruptive Innovations
W3C CSS Working Group, Co-Chairman