It’s been an exciting 2018 for Stack Overflow. In late spring, we launched our Welcome Wagon initiative to make the network more welcoming. In May, we shipped Stack Overflow for Teams and made our knowledge-sharing platform accessible to teams of any size. And September marked our 10th anniversary, which celebrated the 25 million answers to 16 million questions that have been viewed 12.3 billion times by developers.
We’ve grown the ways that we serve developers, and we’re growing our Executive team to support these initiatives as well our ever-expanding community. The team has two new members, and one of our long-time executives has a new role.
Our CTO, David Fullerton, was promoted today to President and CTO. This promotion recognizes David’s hard work and contributions over eight years (!) at Stack Overflow. David worked his way up through the ranks here. He started at Fog Creek as an intern; he spent years as a developer and then as a team lead at Stack Overflow before becoming CTO. He’s accomplished a lot and through it all, he’s demonstrated incredible servant leadership — a value that guides everyone at Stack Overflow. He’s the best person to help our company grow and evolve while remaining rooted in our mission to serve all the world’s developers.
We also have a new VP of Engineering, Mary Ferguson. With David in his new role, our Engineering team is in great hands under her leadership. Mary joined Stack Overflow at the end of September after spending over three years at Etsy, most recently as their VP of Engineering. She’s also had senior technology roles at Amplify Learning and Katzenbach Partners. Her career has been distinguished by the common goal of organizing engineering teams to keep them happy, healthy, and diverse. This is in exact alignment with Stack Overflow’s values embracing servant leadership and growing an inclusive and diverse organization.
Last but not least, I joined the company in June. Hi! I’m Khalid El Khatib, Stack Overflow’s VP of Marketing and Communications. I’m responsible for our marketing and advertising initiatives and for communicating company announcements externally and internally (like this one).
I came to Stack Overflow from a company called GLG. Before that I worked at Teach For America and at an advertising agency. In addition to my day jobs, I’ve long contributed to publications like PAPER, VICE, and OUT on art, culture, and LGBTQ issues. The common thread through my career is that everything successful I’ve worked on (website redesigns, app launches, even articles that have gone viral) was in large part thanks to brilliant engineers. I’m thrilled to be working alongside so many today and to help amplify their voices here. More than anything, I’m excited to be a part of what Stack Overflow is doing -- helping developers write the script of the future. It’s a bonus to have fantastic colleagues like David and Mary.
The three of us are deeply committed to growing Stack Overflow in a way that’s consistent with our mission and values and to making sure our community is at the heart of everything we do.
So, congratulations to David! Welcome, Mary! And more from me soon.