From one door to another

Last week I gave 2 month’s notice – I’ll be leaving Flickr in January.

When Stew and Cat asked me to join Flickr in January of 2005, I felt like it was time to go and do something different, so I said yes.

Five years (and four billion photos) later, it’s again time to go and do something different. It’s hard for me to describe what a blast this has been. Our goal was to kick ass, and I think we did. Flickr has served as the  backdrop of some of the largest changes in my life, and the work I’ve done there is essentially tied to those events in my memory.

During my time here at Flickr, I:

• moved house
• saw the company get bought by Yahoo!, and worked out that whole transition thing
• got married
• had a daughter
• co-invented a pretty well-received office sport
• wrote a book
• had a son

In addition to building, scaling, evolving, and generally being as loud and fast as we could possibly be with the original Ludicorp team, I had the absolute privilege to hire and work in the trenches with some of the greatest people on the web. I also had the chance to work with some of the smartest people at Yahoo, who I’ll continue to have relationships with even after I leave. Yahoo has treated me well, and I’ve learned more here than I have at any other company.

The reason I stayed here for five years wasn’t for the accolades (or the vesting). It was because I worked with people who care about building something that people care about.

This also happens to be the same reason why I chose my next step: Etsy. They care, and it shows.

I still have a little more time here at Flickr to rock a bit more, but I’m excited to work with my friend Chad again on something that matters. I’ll be running the Ops group there, where they’ve already got superstars.

Chad wrote some more about it here.