Leaving GDS never easy

Jul 20, 2014 · 2 minute read

The following is the email I sent to lots of my colleagues at the Government Digital Service last week.

So, after 3 rather exciting years I’ve decided to leave GDS.

That’s surprisingly difficult to write if I’m honest.

I was part of the team that built and shipped the beta of GOV.UK. Since then I’ve worked across half of what has become GDS, equally helping and frustrating (then hopefully helping) lots of you. I’ve done a great deal and learnt even more, as well as collected arcane knowledge about government infosec and the dark arts of procurement along the way. I’ve done, and helped others do, work I wouldn’t even have thought possible (or maybe likely is the right word?) when I started.

So why leave? For all the other things I do I’m basically a tool builder. So I’m going off to work for Puppet Labs to build infrastructure tools that don’t suck. That sort of pretty specific work is something that should be done outside government in my opinion. I’m a pretty firm believer in “government should only do what only government can do” (design principle number 2 for those that haven’t memorised them yet). And if I’m honest, focusing on something smaller than fixing a country’s civic infrastructure is appealing for now.

I’ll let you in on a secret; I didn’t join what became GDS because of the GOV.UK project. I joined to work with friends I’d not yet had the chance to work with and to see the inside of a growing organisation from the start. I remember Tom Loosemore promising me we’d be 200 people in 3 years! As far as anyone knows we’re 650+ people. That’s about a person a day for 2 years. I’m absolutely not saying that came without a cost, but for me being part of that that was part of the point - so I can be a little accepting with hindsight.

For me, apart from all the short term things (side-note: this job now has me thinking £10million is a small amount of money and 2 years is a small amount of time) there is one big mission:

Make government a sustainable part of the UK tech community

That means in 10 years time experienced tech people from across the country, as well as people straight from university, choosing to work for government. Not just for some abstract and personal reason (though that’s fine too), but because it’s a a genuinely interesting place to work. That one’s on us.