It’s with some sadness that I announce today that Paul Burdick is stepping down from his position as Chief Technology Officer, a role he has held for over four years, in order to pursue some personal goals. Although Paul will continue with us in a reduced capacity, he is being replaced as CTO by Derek Jones.
They say that in life, timing is everything. In 2003, fresh out of college, Paul was hired by the Oregon Wine Board to build a website using our first generation publishing system, pMachine Pro. That site had a number of needs that were not able to be met natively by pM Pro, so Paul, despite never having coded anything in PHP before, rolled up his sleeves and figured out how to develop those features. He then generously donated his new code back to our community, which is how I first met him.
I remember looking at his code and being blown away that he had only been coding a few weeks. He was a natural. He also happened to live in the same city as I did, and as luck would have it, my little company had grown to the point of needing some development help, so I offered him a job. Paul became employee number three. There was me, a guy named Chris doing tech support (who left the company years ago), and Paul.
At the time Paul came on-board, I was a few months away from unveiling ExpressionEngine, the secret new project I had been working on. In order to stay focussed on EE, I turned pMachine’s development over to Paul; a risky move for sure, given how little experience he had. To Paul’s credit, he took the challenge by the horns, dove head first into the code, and single-handedly developed the very next release of pM Pro. A natural indeed.
As good as Paul’s technical skills would become, his work ethic and commitment were even more impressive. Paul immediately became my trusted right-hand man, and for the past four years has been an integral component to our success. During those early years in particular, Paul was more like a brother than an employee. I can’t express how grateful I am that Paul emerged in our forums one day, and helped shape who we are today. I couldn’t have done it without his help.
A couple years ago, we had a similar good fortune in finding Derek Jones. He had been participating in our forums, having built a couple projects using our software. We needed to grow our team just as Derek’s career was transitioning, so we offered him a job. Similar to Paul, Derek was very new to programming when he started, but he had that special mojo that enabled him to learn rapidly and get productive very quickly. In less then two years Derek has gone from having little programming experience to becoming CTO of our company. Impressive.
Paul, and later Derek, taught me my philosophy on hiring: Hire people who are brilliant, who get things done, and who show great aptitude—and this is important—even if they don’t have a particular skill-set. Skills can be learned. The other stuff can’t.
So today marks a day of transition. Paul Burdick is leaving to spread his wings, tackle some new challenges, and meet some personal goals. And Derek Jones is emerging as the cornerstone of our technical team. Paul leaves a big void to fill, but fortunately we’ve had some months to make the transition internally, and he will still be with us in a reduced role, so our development goals shouldn’t be affected.
Thank you for all you’ve done for us, Paul. You’ll be missed!
