Earlier today, we heard that Yammer’s Chief Product Officer Jim Patterson, was planning to depart the company. We’ve confirmed with Yammer that Patterson is indeed leaving Microsoft-owned Yammer.
Patterson was an early member of the engineering team at Yammer and served as a director of engineering prior to leading the product team. Yammer’s Pavan Tapadia will become chief product officer.
Microsoft acquired Yammer in July 2012 for $1.2 billion in cash. The Yammer team was folded into its Microsoft Office division and continues to report to the company’s CEO and co-founder David Sacks. Yammer was just hit with layoffs two months ago, eliminating redundencies in sales and marketing.
Here’s the statement from Yammer:
We can confirm that Jim is leaving Yammer to pursue new opportunities. We wish him well and thank him for his contributions. We’re excited to announce the promotion of Pavan Tapadia to chief product officer. Pavan has played a key role in helping make Yammer the best-in-class enterprise social network, and we’re excited about his vision for continuing Yammer’s rapid product innovation and growth.
It’s only natural that there are some changes in leadership following an acquisition, but this is one of the first major departures for Yammer’s management team. One person who it looks like won’t be leaving anytime soon is Sacks. In March, Sacks said he had no plans to leave Microsoft.