Big shake-up in the developer universe: GitHub’s CEO, Thomas Dohmke, just dropped the mic and announced he’s stepping down by the end of the year. Yep, after steering one of the most iconic platforms in tech (and a Microsoft-owned powerhouse, no less), he’s packing his bags — not for retirement, but to go back to his startup roots. In his own words: he’s ready to “be a founder again.” Translation? The man’s not done building cool stuff.
Now, here’s the interesting twist: Microsoft isn’t even planning to hire a new CEO for GitHub. Instead, leadership will report directly to a squad of Microsoft execs. Think of it like The Avengers, but for corporate oversight.
In his farewell blog post, Dohmke painted a pretty rosy picture:
- Over 1 billion repos and forks (that’s a lot of code)
- 150+ million developers building, breaking, and fixing things on the platform
- AI projects have doubled in just one year
- And GitHub’s adoption across companies, from tiny startups to Fortune 500 giants, is basically unmatched
It’s hard to argue with the numbers — GitHub really is thriving. But the timing of this move is… curious. The company’s facing increasing competition, especially in the AI-for-developers space, with players like Google and Cursor rolling out their own fancy code tools.
So, is Dohmke leaving GitHub at the top of its game, or just before a new era of AI competition really heats up? Either way, his next move will be one to watch. And for the dev world, this marks the end of a GitHub chapter — but probably not the end of Dohmke’s influence in tech.
Because once a builder, always a builder.
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