It is with a mixture of bitter and sweet that I am officially announcing that I'm leaving Commerce Guys for a new position elsewhere. I have really enjoyed the last 3 (nearly 4) years at Commerce Guys. They have been an amazing place to grow both as a person and as a programmer. During my time there I've had the opportunity to work on numerous big projects and interesting technical challenges. Commerce Guys funded me to work full time on Drupal 8 as an initiative owner for months on end, and without that investment of time, I personally wouldn't have grown so much, nor would I have been able to contribute to Drupal 8 to the same degree. I cannot stress how great of an experience working there has been for me, and I'm thankful to all the people there who made that possible and made my own time there so enjoyable. I look forward to seeing them do great things.

As for my future, I am actually moving to Acquia. An interesting job position opened up there that will allow me to be the interface between Drupal's developer community and Acquia. This is especially interesting to me because it makes me part of the feedback loop that is intended to help Acquia understand what portions of Drupal developer experience are in need of improvement. In this role, I'll work in whatever capacity I have at my disposal to help mitigate these issues and improve Drupal from a developer experience perspective. In addition to this I'll function in the same capacity for various Acquia product offerings, and I find that very exciting as well.

In truth most developers want to escape client work, and despite what you might think, that is impossible if you want to continue development. We can only strive for better clients, whether that is literally a higher quality client, or whether you manage to make yourself your primary client, we always have clients. In many ways I think this move makes YOU my client, yes you. The whole of the Drupal community will be my singular client. I’ll interact with you at different levels, we’ll talk personally, we’ll talk corporately, we’ll interact at camps and cons. I’ll try a few things and I’ll probably fail at a few things, but I took this position because Drupal is really important, and I want to be a part of crafting its future in whatever capacity I might have available to me. This job opens that up in ways I hadn’t considered before, and that’s very exciting. Technically speaking, this is a marketing position, and I know that’s weird for a developer, but this is no mistake, I’ll just be marketing DX improvements, and gathering information about where DX is lackluster so that we can craft a better solution, together. I look forward to this role and this work, and I hope you do as well.

Kris “EclipseGc” Vanderwater