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Please describe your role and your work relationship to the promotion nominee (e.g., teammate, collaborated on project X, stakeholder, customer)
I was CEO and CPO of npm, Inc. where Nathan was hired first as a security engineer (via acquisition of Lyft Security) and then moved to a senior registry engineer position.
He was instrumental in performing many of the technical due dilligence tasks required to close the npm, Inc. acquisition.
We worked together directly on the npm CLI project throughout my time at GitHub, from 2020 through 2021.
Has the candidate demonstrated readiness for promotion? For EPD, Please reference the career ladders to comment on impact, results and behaviors?
Yes, Nathan has repeatedly demonstrated Staff Engineer behaviors, results, and impact.
He is an extremely competent leader on the projects where he contributes. He takes care to manage all of the technical and nontechnical impacts of technical and project management decisions, with vision and courage to make reasonable tradeoffs when appropriate.
He is unshakably considerate and professional in dealing with open source community members and other external stakeholders, and can both advocate effectively for the needs of the projects he leads, as well as take into consideration the needs of other teams impacted by his team's decisions.
He makes technical plans and choices with an eye towards business strategy as well as long-term technical maintenance costs.
What is one thing the candidate should focus on going forward to make themselves, the team, the org, or GitHub more successful?
This is difficult to answer, as I have not been working directly with Nathan since I left GitHub at the end of 2021.
Please share any additional feedback we should take into consideration for the promotion.
I of course realize that you are new to managing this team, but as the team's manager, you inherit its history, so please take this in the spirit of trying to help you in making the best decisions moving forward, and not as a personal criticism.
I remain unclear as to why Nathan was not promoted to Staff Engineer already, or even brought in at that level during the npm, Inc. acquisition, as was recommended by the npm executive team in 2020. This is a mistake that should be corrected as soon and as generously as possible. He has been doing Staff Engineer level work since starting at GitHub, and the fact that he has been so patient about receiving this promotion is quite frankly a courtesy that GitHub has not earned and ought to remedy.
Do you support this nominee's promotion? Yes or no.
Yes. This is long overdue.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or would like to schedule a time to chat.