I'm leaving my position as IE platform Group Program Manager…

…HA!  Gotcha!

I’ve been juggling multiple roles on the IE team for a while.  With the release of IE7, I decided (with my management’s support, of course) to focus my energy on the design of the IE web developer platform as the lead platform architect, rather than managing the platform program management team as group program manager.  This means I won’t have anyone reporting to me, but will oversee the design of the entire IE platform from the perspective of web developers.

Obviously (since I chose it) I’m excited by this opportunity; I’ll have more time to focus on the big picture of our platform and how the pieces fit together.  I’m going to be sad not to manage people for a while, since I really enjoy helping my teammates develop their careers (though of course I will continue to do this through mentoring).  However, I’m very pleased that my cohort Doug Stamper will be taking over the management of the core of the IE platform program management.  Doug and I have worked together for a couple of years now, and there’s no one I could be more comfortable working with or to whom I would be more confident handing over my people management responsibilities.

Note that this is a bit different job than the usual Microsoft “Software Architect” position – I'm focusing on designing the platform that web devs use on IE, not designing our own codebase.  I will remain in the Program Management team, and though I expect I’ll be poking my nose in the code more often to understand some things better, I won’t be directly responsible for coding duties – we have a couple of great Software Architects and a great dev team who are much better at that than I am.  I’m still working out exactly what this position will mean, of course.  (For the curious, this isn't a promotion or a demotion - in fact, I don't know (or much care) if my official title will change or not, either.)

So rest assured – this doesn’t mean you’ll see less of me, or that I will have less of an effect on the IE team as a whole – likely quite the opposite.  I will continue to speak publicly, and hopefully will get to blog more often, etc.

-Chris