A Realignment

A beautiful red fox that Nadia and I
spotted while working on a secret project
in Mt. Rainier national park.

No, I have not abandoned or forgotten about my blog!  I have been working behind the scenes on several long-term, high-quality projects that I believe will be far more compelling than anything I could have slapped together in the short term.  Suffice it to say that I myself am wholly on pins and needles¹ waiting for the results!  In this case, it is a question of having things done fast or having them done right.

The big news is that I am in the midst of a personal realignment of priorities.  As part of this realignment, my last day at Sage Bionetworks will be November 20, and I am starting as a software engineer at Google in Fremont on January 7.  The friends I've made there will be sorely missed, as I've had the privilege of working alongside some of the most brilliant, thoughtful and wisest people that I've ever encountered.  If you find the suddenness of this uncharacteristic of me and are concerned for whatever reason, I will discuss the rationale on my private blog.  So, if you are interested in some thoughts and details regarding my leaving Sage, let me know and I'll add you to the list of allowed readers.  I don't expect you to, though:  I am making the private post mostly for myself while the reasons are fresh in my mind and to commit some lessons to writing for future reference.

As a function of leaving Sage and starting at Google, I felt it was no longer accurate to have my blog's tagline be, "Open source software and open access research."  I am finished with academia for the foreseeable future, and the software I produce at Google would only incidentally be open source.  I am still profoundly interested in the open source and open access movement and I will continue participating on my own time, but it's no longer a full-time job.  I'm in the market for a new tagline, so if you have any ideas let me know.

Finally, I'm totally pumped about working at Google!  I've long loved their products, and this is an opportunity to help a lot of people and touch a lot of lives by making revolutionary, user friendly and high quality software!

¹This is an awesome pun, but won't make sense until one secret project is revealed!