My reasons for leaving Apple had nothing to do with this decision. I was already no longer working on Rosetta 2 in a day-to-day capacity, although I would still frequently chat with the team and give input on future directions.
Just went through that thread, I can't believe this wasn't a team of like 20 people.
It's crazy to me that apple would put one guy on a project this important. At my company (another faang), I would have the ceo asking me for updates and roadmaps and everything. I know that stuff slows me down, but even without that, I don't think I could ever do something like this... I feel like I do when I watch guitar youtubers, just terrible
I hope you were at least compensated like a team of 20 engineers :P
As his longtime colleague, the one thing I would want people to know about him and this decision is that Soumith has always viewed PyTorch as a community project. He consistently celebrated the contributions of his co-creators Adam and Sam, and he extended the same view towards the Yangqing and the Caffe2 crew that we merged into PyTorch. At the very beginning, by Soumith's highly intentional design, PyTorch was aimed at being truly developed by and for the AI research community and for many years that was the key way in which we grew the framework, FB PT team, and the wider community. At every single stage of PT's lifecycle, he always ensured that our conception of PT and its community grew to include and celebrate the new people and organizations growing what was possible with PT. He's an incredible talent magnet, and thus more and more smart people kept dedicating their blood, sweat, and tears to making PT bigger and better for more people.
I've worked with some very well known and highly compensated leaders in tech, but *no one* has done the job he has done with ameliorating a bus factor problem with his baby. PT has a unique level of broad support that few other open source technology can reach. In a world of unbounded AI salaries, people who want to move AI research methods forward still freely give their time and attention to PyTorch and its ecosystem. It's the great lever of this era of AI that is moving the world, *due in large part* to the strength of the community he fostered and can now let continue without his direct involvement.
His departure is the end of an era, but it's also operationally a true non-event. PyTorch is going strong and can afford to let one of its creators retire from stewardship. This is precisely what success looks like in open source software.
He deserves our congratulations and our thanks. Enjoy your PT retirement, man.
Hope him the best!