Last Updated on 22/11/2021 by Sunaina
Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, is stepping down after three years with the business. Friedman first joined Microsoft when the business bought Xamarin, which he co-founded. When Microsoft purchased GitHub three years ago, he took over as its CEO.
Friedman is now returning to his entrepreneurial origins. “With everything that we’ve done in mind, and more than five excellent years at Microsoft under my belt, I’ve decided it’s time for me to return to my startup origins,” Friedman writes in a blog post on GitHub today. “I’m embarking on my next adventure: to assist, advise, and invest in the founders and developers who are shaping the future using technology and solving some of our generation’s most pressing challenges.”
GitHub’s chief product officer, Thomas Dohmke, will now take over as CEO on November 15th, and GitHub will continue to function as an independent Microsoft-owned firm. Julia Liuson, who has been elevated to head of Microsoft’s developer division, will report to Dohmke.
That represents a shift in Microsoft’s GitHub organisation, since Friedman previously reported to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Cloud and AI leader. Julia Liuson was at the core of a recent contentious.NET modification that sparked an outcry from the open source community and caused the firm to rapidly reverse its decision.
While there were some early concerns about Microsoft acquiring GitHub, the corporation has maintained the business functioning independently without making substantial changes. Friedman responded quickly to the termination of a Jewish employee at GitHub earlier this year, conceding that “major mistakes were committed.” Microsoft also recently announced that GitHub now has 73 million developers, a 2x increase since the firm purchased GitHub in 2018.
