Leaving Red Hat - a 20-years page has been turned

After 20 years of an Open Source led career at JBoss and Red Hat, I have decided to leave this family and explore a new path.

My journey at JBoss and Red Hat

This is a long and not an easy page to turn because it defined me in so many ways. I joined JBoss when it was a relatively small but growing startup; they made noise ten times bigger than their size. This has been the best decision of my career as I embarked on a journey of learning with the best and of inventing Open Source middleware.

I have contributed to many Open Source projects, the first and career defining one being Hibernate. I have contributed to standards (Bean Validation, JPA). I have started Open Source projects; some caught fire like Quarkus, others less so. Every time, with the passion to help developers work better.

More in the shadows, I have helped organisations grow by defining, developing, championing, and guiding technical directions (all Open Source propelled). And more fundamentally, I have helped people in their career journeys, sometimes their personal ones.

All of this was possible because of this magical place, a nurturing and empowering environment. So many thanks to Red Hat, many thanks to JBoss and many, many thanks to this long list of talented people that I professionally grew up with over these years.

But I felt it was time to try something new, not to rest on my laurels.

What’s next for me

Well, my future won’t look like sitting on a beach drinking coconut juice, though I am planning to get back to doing more sport than in recent months 😊.

The app dev industry has no idea what it will be 3, 5, or 10 years from now. Generative AI is shaking everything up; nobody really knows where it is heading. Sure, that’s scary but is is very exciting !

Beyond the small angle of developers, how applications will be built using Generative AI to better help their fellow humans is yet to be defined. In my opinion, there is no such thing as GenAI apps, but there are apps using GenAI in our future. I have opinions, but I want to give myself time to explore, let ideas bloom, and ground them in reality.

Anyway, if you are writing GenAI-based apps, stay in touch 😊.