Stack Exchange co-founder Jeff Atwood announced that he is leaving the company to spend more time with his family, including his twin daughters Maisie Jane (5lb2oz) and June Adeline (5lb 7oz) who celebrated their 0th birthday (and joined Twitter) last Friday, to the great joy of their parents.
It has been a great honor for all of us to have worked with Jeff over the last four years as Stack Exchange grew from absolutely nothing to a world-changing resource with over 30 million monthly visitors.
When I first met Jeff, I told him that when Stack Overflow was built, it would become a standard part of the programmer's toolset... as important as an editor or a compiler. I'm not sure if he believed me at first. Heck, I didn't believe me. But I'll never forget the day it shipped, in August 2008, and I tried to ask my first question (something about a regexp for a URL that omitted the trailing dot) and found that it had already been asked, and answered, multiple times, and people had already voted up the best answer, and I knew right then that I hadn't exaggerated. And now it has been years since I've met a programmer that doesn't know and love Stack Overflow, and none of it would have been possible without Jeff's amazing contribution.
The company has changed a lot in four years: we've gone from nothing to 50 employees; we raised over $18 million in venture capital to fund our next expansion; we have a network of 80 Q&A; sites on topics from LEGO to cooking. That the company will continue to flourish in his absence is no doubt a testament to the great work Jeff did creating an institution dedicated to principles of making the Internet better.
Farewell, Jeff, we'll miss you.