Leaving for Microsoft
To put developers first
This post is dedicated to my wife Mallory. Without her patience and support to allow me to pursue my endeavors, I would not be where I am today. ❤
Today, with a ginormous lump in my throat, I gave my current employer my 2 weeks notice, and informed them that I would be leaving Nebraska, to join Microsoft in Seattle, Washington. 😍
I will be joining the EdgeHTML team as a Program Manager for F12 DevTools. (tl;dr I’m gunning to be the Paul Irish of Microsoft 😂)
I’d be lying if I said it felt like the odds were not stacked against Microsoft, the Edge Platform, and its DevTools. But I accepted this position for a reason: Developers come first.
A year ago today, I had just joined the webpack organization as their newest maintainer. Little did we know that we would see webpack grow in downloads by 1600%. I did not believe that we would raise almost 100k in sponsorship from the community in half that time.
Since I joined, and we formed the core team, all of the maintainers agreed that we needed to put our users first to succeed.
It started with completely rewriting our documentation, and continued with shipping version 2, speaking at conferences, creating an incredibly active publication, and giving insight and rights for users to be able to have a say in the tool they depend on.
Webpack, to me, represents everything I love about open source. We have always been the scrappy grass-roots-community-driven open source project. The project of people. With no ulterior motives, or business incentives, we found our success by always putting our users (developers) in the driver seat.
This is the shift that Microsoft has made
If you have ever used VSCode, TypeScript, Visual Studio, XAML, or the Universal Windows Platform, then you’ve already had the same feelings. When you focus on Developers, your platform succeeds.
But what about webpack?
By joining Microsoft, I will have more time to spend on Open Source, and especially, webpack. Not only is Open Source being embraced and adopted at break-neck pace [with ChakraCore, TypeScript, VSCode], but the new F12 DevTools itself relies on Open Source projects (including webpack) to build and ship its interfaces and functionality.
A seat at the table
What excites me the most is having a chance to represent developers by bringing specifications that focus on users and the tools they use. I want to help land features that not only make Edge irresistible for webpack users, but for all modern tooling. Putting Developers First.
So thank you, Mutual of Omaha for believing in me and supporting every ambition that I ever have had. I will miss Nebraska so much but its time for a new adventure!!!!!!
PS: If you live in the Nebraska area and would like 7 beautiful happy egg-laying hens, please reach out as they sadly won’t be able to make the trip with us 🐔
See you in Seattle,
Sean
