Google's Go Team's 12-Year Technical Lead Russ Cox to Step Down, Austin Clements to Take Over
TapTechNews August 5th news, the 12-year technical lead of Google's Go team, Russ Cox, suddenly announced his resignation. In the golang-dev group email on August 2nd, he announced that from September 1st, Austin Clements will take over as the technical lead of Go: including Google's Go team and the entire Go project. And Russ Cox himself will not leave the Go project.
Go (also known as Golang) is a statically typed, compiled language developed by Google, which was officially open sourced in 2009 and has become one of the important tools for global developers.
Russ Cox introduced that Austin is currently the technical lead of Go core, which includes the compiler toolchain, runtime and version. In addition, Cherry Mui will take over these core areas.
As for why he resigned, Russ Cox explained:
A technical lead - like any leadership position - is a service role, not an honorary title. I have led the Go project for more than 12 years, serving everyone and striving to create the right conditions for them to do their best.
Large projects like Go definitely benefit from stable leadership, but they can also benefit from changes in leadership. New leaders bring new strengths and new perspectives. For Go, I think more than 12 years of stability for a leader is enough; now is the time for new people to take on this role.
I think the BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) model is not healthy for individuals or projects. It doesn't create space for new leaders. It doesn't provide room for the project to grow.
I think Python has benefited greatly from Guido's (the father of Python) resignation in 2018, and I have been thinking for years that we should eventually change the Go leadership.
Russ Cox said that he will deliberately step back from the decision-making level to create space for Austin and others to move forward, but he will not disappear from the project. He can still talk about Go design, review CLs, answer obscure historical questions, and do his best to provide help and support. He will still advocate for Go throughout the industry and will explore the progress of the Go industry at GoLab in Italy in November.
Russ Cox will shift his focus to more work on the AI projects Gaby and Oscar (Open Source Contributor Agent Architecture), and try to contribute in the Go issue tracker.
TapTechNews noticed that in the following email replies, George Adams, the head of the GoGroup at Microsoft, Andrey Bokhanko from Huawei's Advanced Software Technology Lab all expressed their gratitude to Russ Cox.
