Nat Friedman is stepping down as GitHub CEO with Thomas Dohmke replacing him.
Friedman cofounded Xamarin and served as the company’s CEO before it was acquired by Microsoft. When Microsoft later acquired GitHub, Friedman moved over to helm the new acquisition.
In a post Wednesday, Friedman said he is stepping down as CEO to go back to startup roots. He will retain the title of Chairman Emeritus.
I’m moving on to my next adventure, and Thomas Dohmke (currently Chief Product Officer) will be GitHub’s next CEO. I will become Chairman Emeritus, which fulfills my lifelong ambition of having a title in Latin. My heartfelt thanks to every Hubber and every developer who makes GitHub what it is, every day.
Dohmke had high praise for Friedman’s leadership and promised the company would continue its developer-first approach.
I cannot wait to begin this journey as GitHub’s new CEO and continue to make GitHub better for all developers. We will remain customer obsessed, working to support teams of all sizes and projects of all scopes—from students that are just learning to code, small and really big open source projects that span the globe, to the world’s largest enterprises. And of course, we will continue to operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud.