He has been quite a significant member of a project (Go, or portions there-of, and possible other things I'm not aware of myself) that has impacted people here through their use of the language, and has affected other languages/frameworks less directly.

Leaving Google means he won't be working (at least not directly as he is currently employed to) on that stuff, so the interest is from two angles: what affect might this have on the direction of the projects he is leaving, and what is he moving on to influence next.

Me leaving my current job wouldn't make HN because I don't have any such significance. I'd wager the same could be said of almost everybody, but, demonstrably, not him.

It's not just anyone, it's Brad Fitzpatrick. He created LiveJournal and is the author of many free software projects such as memcached, PubSubHubbub, OpenID, gearman, and Perkeep.

A user shared it and 39 other users voted it relevant.

It's not about Leaving Google, it's about bradfitz, who is an awesome well known engineer.

people are saying golang but some of us knew brad before go. remember livejournal? memcached? that's your guy. amazing and inspiring person. i wish him all the best!

Brad is a notable software engineer and has built a number of things that people on HN have used.

was wondering this as well