The executive who oversees Microsoft’s developer tools and services, S. Somasegar, has announced that he will leave the company after 27 years. In a series of tweets, Somasegar, who is usually called by his nickname Soma, said he plans to pursue other career opportunities.
Today, we shared the news that I have decided to leave @Microsoft and pursue the next phase of my career.
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
2/ It has been an absolutely great journey – working with such an amazing team and building great developer technologies.
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
3/ Thanks to @scottgu @satyanadella @BillGates and so many other wonderful people I have worked with over the years.
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
4/ I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished together over the last many years for the @Microsoft developer ecosystem.
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
5/ Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the @Microsoft developer ecosystem and been such an important part of our community.
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
6/ Looking forward to all the great things that @Microsoft will do for developers in the years ahead. @VisualStudio @dotnet @code
— S. Somasegar (@SSomasegar) October 8, 2015
ZDNet first broke news of Somasegar’s departure after obtaining an internal memo. In it, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Executive vice president Scott Guthrie said Microsoft hopes to announce a transition plan in the next few weeks. A Microsoft spokesman told TechCrunch the company currently has no comment.
Somasegar is a familiar name to Microsoft followers because, as the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division, he was in charge of engineering and marketing developer tools and services, including Visual Studio, Team Foundation, and programming languages. After joining Microsoft in 1989, Somasegar contributed to eight Windows releases before joining the Developer Division.
He also oversaw Microsoft-owned sites like MSDN, a community for developers, and news portal TechNet.