I would guess this is a well-coordinated (with mgmt/HR) leave, and he has probably already announced it internally. Not sure why any employer would be upset in that case.
Wrong guess. "Bittersweet" is a clear negative and ofc not well coordinated assessment of his off-boarding to a 300K audience. Or writing a farewell all in small caps. Life is too short to feel bitter.
Meta couldn't care less but all future employers or affiliates did notice this.
I always wonder how people such as Dan don't get tired / jaded / bored of working on the same thing for many years. I've noticed a trend in my life where I can't stay attached to a single project for too long and I lose interest. In a way, it's potentially made me a jack of all trades and a master of none but like, that sounds fun to me. I don't know how I'd be able to dedicate my life to something so much I'd be a master at it. I'd get interested in something else well before then!
Is it that there are two extremes of this type of thing? One extreme are people who are always flip flopping, never getting good at anything and the other is people who dedicate their lives to one thing. I wonder what causes someone to be on a particular level in that spectrum? Is it personality? Is it just that the "master" has found their calling and the "jacks" have not yet? Or is it that both have found their calling? The jack loves to be a jack. The master loves to be a master.
> I can't stay attached to a single project for too long and I lose interest.
I'm the same way. I'm good for about 5 years, tops, before I just need to do something different. But I've known lots of people who were the opposite of me. They prefer not to change projects and would be thrilled to stay on the same one forever.
Different people have different needs, and I think that's a wonderful thing. Especially when I see people happily doing important work that would have me wanting to slit my wrists in no time.
There's a wide range of mini-projects within the project. I've been able to practice very different skills over these years so it didn't get boring for a long time. But like I mention in the thread, I'd like to try something new :)
> don't get tired / jaded / bored of working on the same thing for many years
It's called golden handcuffs, it's hard to end yourself a FAANG compensation and working on React is more prestigious than writing the docs of some internal ad system.
This is a whole thread (not a single tweet). Unfortunately Elon Musk's Twitter no longer shows threads to logged out users. :(
For convenience, I'll copy and paste the entire thread here:
1. i feel bittersweet sharing i’m leaving my job at meta in a few weeks. working in the react org at meta has been an honor. i am thankful to my past and present colleagues for taking me in, letting me make mistakes, helping me see my strengths, being kind, and sharing their time.
2. for the past three years, i kept saying i’d leave “in a year or so” but the moment never felt right. i wanted to (1) finish the new docs and (2) see a broadly usable Suspense data fetching integration shipping. after years of work from the team, both have shipped this spring.
3. i felt hesitant leaving earlier because not too long ago, leaving meta used to mean leaving the react team. that would feel too sad for me. but it is not true anymore. react has become a multi-company project, and there are several independent engineers on the team too.
4. i am staying on the react team as an independent engineer, similar to @sophiebits and @sebsilbermann . this means that i will not be actively sponsored to work full-time on react by any company, but i will stay involved in the team’s work and attend our meetings.
5. the exact nature of my future involvement is not yet clear to me. when i started on the react team seven years ago, i used to mostly write code. however, my teammates often outshine me at that, and i found myself gravitating to doing other things over time.
6. one of the things i naturally gravitated towards was explaining things. i practiced writing on http://overreacted.io, and later @rachelnabors inspired me to write http://react.dev together. i poured my heart into that project, but i bit off a bit more than i could chew.
7. what happened is that my standard for writing has gone higher but my writing ability did not. i find it difficult to write now because i can’t match the standard in my own head anymore. this will probably go away with time, but i need a little break from writing words.
8. sometimes people think i write a lot of code for react, but i haven’t been doing that for a while. aside from co-writing the new docs, the rest of my contributions in the past few years have mostly been community glue work: being a bridge between the community and the team.
9. although i enjoy this type of work, it is not sustainable to do on my own, and it has taken a toll emotionally. at some point being a single point of failure stops being fun, and i was feeling that i’m failing both the team and the community. we needed to learn to scale it up.
10. over the last year, we’ve been building a new wing of the react team focused on community glue work. i trust @Eli_White @kmiddleton14 @lunaleaps @mattcarrollcode @rickhanlonii to carry this torch in a sustainable way. i will stay very closely involved. https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1644373027692462086
11. on the engineering side, i fully trust @en_JS technical leadership at Meta and @sebmarkbage technical leadership at Vercel. currently, only two companies are sponsoring employees to work full-time on React, but we’d like to onboard contributors from other companies in the future.
12. finally, a little personal note. this is not a part of some kind of a grand plan. i don’t do “plans” and “goals”. i just had a hunch that now that the things i care about are not going to fall on the floor, it’s the right moment to try something new and feel like a beginner again
13. idk what i’ll do next yet. might do some youtube, some consulting. i do feel a bit itchy to write some product code in react with a fast iteration cycle outside of a...
The new React docs are without a doubt the best docs I have ever had the pleasure to read. Your blog posts on overreacted.io were a huge boon to me as a new front-end engineer and I've thoroughly enjoyed every talk I've seen you give (on YouTube). I took the JavaScript course you produced with Maggie Appleton, "Just JavaScript", and I now try to think about my mental models for everything I do, even beyond coding. I code in React every day and I'm having the time of my life, I just love it!
I just wanted to say thank you for all the great work you've done, and the absolute best of luck to you going forward! I have always enjoyed listening to your technical explanations and am very much looking forward to any possible YouTubes. Cheers!
18 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 55.8 ms ] threadI think if I made this type of announcement publicly, my company would ask me to leave immediately.
Meta couldn't care less but all future employers or affiliates did notice this.
Is it that there are two extremes of this type of thing? One extreme are people who are always flip flopping, never getting good at anything and the other is people who dedicate their lives to one thing. I wonder what causes someone to be on a particular level in that spectrum? Is it personality? Is it just that the "master" has found their calling and the "jacks" have not yet? Or is it that both have found their calling? The jack loves to be a jack. The master loves to be a master.
I'm the same way. I'm good for about 5 years, tops, before I just need to do something different. But I've known lots of people who were the opposite of me. They prefer not to change projects and would be thrilled to stay on the same one forever.
Different people have different needs, and I think that's a wonderful thing. Especially when I see people happily doing important work that would have me wanting to slit my wrists in no time.
It's called golden handcuffs, it's hard to end yourself a FAANG compensation and working on React is more prestigious than writing the docs of some internal ad system.
For convenience, I'll copy and paste the entire thread here:
1. i feel bittersweet sharing i’m leaving my job at meta in a few weeks. working in the react org at meta has been an honor. i am thankful to my past and present colleagues for taking me in, letting me make mistakes, helping me see my strengths, being kind, and sharing their time.
2. for the past three years, i kept saying i’d leave “in a year or so” but the moment never felt right. i wanted to (1) finish the new docs and (2) see a broadly usable Suspense data fetching integration shipping. after years of work from the team, both have shipped this spring.
3. i felt hesitant leaving earlier because not too long ago, leaving meta used to mean leaving the react team. that would feel too sad for me. but it is not true anymore. react has become a multi-company project, and there are several independent engineers on the team too.
4. i am staying on the react team as an independent engineer, similar to @sophiebits and @sebsilbermann . this means that i will not be actively sponsored to work full-time on react by any company, but i will stay involved in the team’s work and attend our meetings.
5. the exact nature of my future involvement is not yet clear to me. when i started on the react team seven years ago, i used to mostly write code. however, my teammates often outshine me at that, and i found myself gravitating to doing other things over time.
6. one of the things i naturally gravitated towards was explaining things. i practiced writing on http://overreacted.io, and later @rachelnabors inspired me to write http://react.dev together. i poured my heart into that project, but i bit off a bit more than i could chew.
7. what happened is that my standard for writing has gone higher but my writing ability did not. i find it difficult to write now because i can’t match the standard in my own head anymore. this will probably go away with time, but i need a little break from writing words.
8. sometimes people think i write a lot of code for react, but i haven’t been doing that for a while. aside from co-writing the new docs, the rest of my contributions in the past few years have mostly been community glue work: being a bridge between the community and the team.
9. although i enjoy this type of work, it is not sustainable to do on my own, and it has taken a toll emotionally. at some point being a single point of failure stops being fun, and i was feeling that i’m failing both the team and the community. we needed to learn to scale it up.
10. over the last year, we’ve been building a new wing of the react team focused on community glue work. i trust @Eli_White @kmiddleton14 @lunaleaps @mattcarrollcode @rickhanlonii to carry this torch in a sustainable way. i will stay very closely involved. https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1644373027692462086
11. on the engineering side, i fully trust @en_JS technical leadership at Meta and @sebmarkbage technical leadership at Vercel. currently, only two companies are sponsoring employees to work full-time on React, but we’d like to onboard contributors from other companies in the future.
12. finally, a little personal note. this is not a part of some kind of a grand plan. i don’t do “plans” and “goals”. i just had a hunch that now that the things i care about are not going to fall on the floor, it’s the right moment to try something new and feel like a beginner again
13. idk what i’ll do next yet. might do some youtube, some consulting. i do feel a bit itchy to write some product code in react with a fast iteration cycle outside of a...
Best of luck to you in the future, Dan!
Yeah, they got a bit better but still not remotely close to Svelte's.