Matt Cutts, the former head of search quality at Google, has announced he officially resigned from Google as of December 31, 2016. He has decided to stay on with the US Digital Service and has been appointed the director of engineering for that governmental department.

Matt Cutts first went on leave at Google in 2014 and decided to extend his leave shortly thereafter. Then in May 2015, he was replaced in his job by an unnamed Googler. After that, he confirmed he was still on leave with Google.

In mid-2016, he started working with the US Digital Service team, and he has enjoyed it so much, he decided to make it official. He is officially no longer on leave with Google. He is now the director of engineering of the USDS.

Matt wrote:

Working for the government doesn’t pay as well as a big company in Silicon Valley. We don’t get any free lunches. Many days are incredibly frustrating. All I can tell you is that the work is deeply important and inspiring, and you have a chance to work on things that genuinely make peoples’ lives better. A friend who started working in this space several years ago told me “These last five years have been the hardest and worst and best and most rewarding I think I will ever have.”

Matt Cutts was one of the first 100 employees at Google. He was one of the most well-known Googlers within the search marketing industry. He has spoken at many of our conferences and provided invaluable contributions to our industry and to Google. But it was time for him to move on and work on big government problems instead of working on problems at Google.

Matt shared this video to explain why he finds what the USDS does to be so important: