šŸ‘ˆ back to kenneth.io

Joining Microsoft, and relocating to Vancouver in Canada

October 2015

Itā€™s now almost a year ago I decided to leave Citrix and take a break. Back in December 2014 there wasnā€™t any bigger plan, other than I needed a break to reflect how I should be spending my time going forward.

2015 has been amazing

The past year has been an amazing adventure, where Iā€™ve traveled and explored 14 new countries. Iā€™ve had time to write more open source, and make more tooling-related experiments. Iā€™ve spoken at new conferences and gotten to know new communities. Iā€™ve meet so many new wonderful people, through my travel adventures but also through new networks like World Economic Forum, where Iā€™ve become one of the Global Shaper's.

The most important thing during 2015 has been that Iā€™ve had the time to take a step back and reflect on what I really wanted to do going forward.

Making it easier to build software

During this process it became clear that ā€œmy missionā€ since the early days been about empowering people to build software.

Looking back, I joined Podio to empower non-technical people to build their own work tools, by using Podio as the platform to build software. And when looking at the projects Iā€™ve been doing in my spare time, and the talks Iā€™ve given at a number of conferences, it became crystal clear to me, that the next thing I should be doing, had to be about making it easier to build software.

Back in June, I remember sitting in Harajuku, Tokyo, where I after several months of constant travel, just wanted to find a coffee shop with working internet and write code - Just. Write. Freaking. Code.

This was the indicator that I was about time to return to ā€œdaily lifeā€ and find something more meaningful to do, so I started outlining potential scenarios for what ā€œmaking it easier to build softwareā€ could look like. Could I do this in a startup? Could it be a grant-based open-source project like DAT? What about joining an established vendor? Maybe Something completely else?

Joining Microsoft to build the next generation of DevTools

Every option was on the table, so I started reaching out to my network to explore each of them, and during this process I came to the conclusion that the best option was to join an established tooling vendor who already had a significant reach. This narrowed down my search, and after many interesting conversations with the majority of the browser and tooling vendors, Iā€™m happy to announce that Iā€™ll be joining Microsoft as a Program Manager with a focus on DevTools and Remote Debugging.

In my role Iā€™m going to focus on the overall web development workflow, which in real-life involves multiple tools from many vendors. My mission is to unbreak our daily web development workflow, make it simpler and more efficient. When looking at the modern workflow I think thereā€™s room for much improvement, as I donā€™t think our existing tooling has managed to solve some of the most fundamental issues, that Iā€™m seeing developers face each and every day.

Iā€™m really excited to be joining Microsoft, who I think, after many years of unfocus, have re-invented itself under Satya Nadellaā€™s leadership, by finding itā€™s roots of focusing on empowering people to build things.

With Microsoft Edge, Microsoft has been quite clear about investing into the web again, and by joining Microsoft Iā€™ll joining one of the world's most respected tooling vendors. When combining this re-investment into the web and the solid experience of building tools, I truly think Microsoft is the vendor in the best position to move our web tooling forward.

Iā€™ll be joining a team of brilliant people like Rey Bango, Andy Sterland, Christian Heilmann, Mads Kristensen and many others who I'm exicited to work with. Iā€™m really looking forward to spend my time making it easier to build for the web, regardless of the used platform and browser.

What, wait, relocating to Vancouver?

Yup. In January 2016, Iā€™ll be relocating to Vancouver, Canada, so I can be in the same timezone, and be close to the team in Seattle. Once Iā€™ll get my american visa, Iā€™ll be packing my things and be headed to the Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

This means Iā€™ll be leaving Copenhagen, Denmark, where Iā€™m born and raised. This is going to be quite a change, but after many months of recent travel, and after working on-and-off in San Francisco, the timing feels right, and Iā€™m sure thereā€™s going to be many amazing adventures ahead.

The fun thing about Vancouver, or Canada for that matter, is that I never been. So Iā€™ll be relocating to a city and country which I never visited, but based on what friends and the internet are telling me, Vancouver should be an amazing city. Much like Copenhagen, but with some incredible nature surrounding it.

Living in Vancouver probably means I'll be starting to explore the nature some more. Maybe it's time to mountain bike again, or maybe time to learn how to snowboard?. Canada and especially British Columbia looks stunning, a bit cold, but I'm kinda used to that here in Copenhagen.

What will happen to RemoteDebug?

RemoteDebug wonā€™t become a Microsoft project, and will continue on itā€™s own. I hope to incorporate the ideas and concepts of RemoteDebug into the Microsoft products and projects Iā€™ll be working on.

What about ColdFront Conference?

Daniel and I are still wrapping up this year's ColdFront, which was a smashing success, so we havenā€™t decided what will happen to ColdFront now that Iā€™ll be leaving Copenhagen. Maybe ColdFront will continue, maybe it wonā€™t. We simply donā€™t know.

So the next coming months Iā€™ll be busy wrapping things up here in Copenhagen. This is why I recently stepped down as CopenhagenJS organizer, and why Iā€™m not longer an active part of Prototype, but thatā€™s all for the greater good.

Thereā€™s a new adventure ahead, and it's gonna be great!

/k