In a bizarre bit of timing—Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6 are launching next week—Microsoft’s GitHub CEO Nat Friedman is leaving the company.

“I am incredibly proud of what we have all achieved together,” Mr. Friedman writes in his goodbye post. “GitHub has gone from a place to store and share code to a complete developer platform … Today, more than 73 million developers are building the future of software on GitHub, we count 84 percent of the Fortune 100 as our customers, and every year since the acquisition our business has grown more than the last.”

As for the why of his exit, Friedman says that “it’s time for [him] to go back to [his] startup roots” and “enable builders to create the future,” a vague explanation that Mary Jo Foley takes to mean that he’s heading into venture capital. Why Friedman couldn’t wait until Microsoft’s November developer launches were complete is unclear, but it casts a weird shadow of uncertainty over next week’s events.

Friedman’s departure is effective November 15. At that time, GitHub’s current chief product officer, will become its new CEO.

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