The father of PowerShell is leaving Microsoft: after nearly 23 years, he was demoted by Microsoft for inventing PowerShell

Well-known Windows PowerShell inventor and Microsoft's Modern Workplace transformation CTO Jeffrey Snover revealed a month ago that he was demoted by Microsoft for working in PowerShell. A month later, on June 27, he announced on Twitter that he was about to resign from Microsoft.

Here is the original tweet:

“After 22+ awesome years at Microsoft (18+ of which were awesome in a good way ), it is time for me to try something new.

I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to work with such incredible people and to work on things that matter.

My last day will be Friday, July 1st.”

Previously, Jeffrey Snover has worked with the tech giant for nearly 23 years, and July 1 will be his last day at Microsoft.

In the tweet, Jeffrey Snover thanked the company and colleagues, and hinted that some of his years at the company weren't great.

23 years of "up and down" at Microsoft

Snover officially began his tenure at Microsoft in 1999 as a co-architect managing product and technology, a position he held for ten years.

During this phase, he invented PowerShell, an object-based distributed automation engine that can also be used as a scripting language and command-line shell.

PowerShell isn't just the management and configuration framework for IT Pros, it's the glue that DevOps, developers, and IT Pros use to manage, configure, and automate servers and services. Whether it's cloud, on-premises, or a combination of the two, PowerShell is the cross-platform management tool that does it all.

It wasn't until August 18, 2016 that Microsoft fully embraced the technology and made it open source and cross-platform.

Despite what happened in between, Snover was promoted to Distinguished Engineer (L70) in 2009 and became Chief Architect for Windows Server and System Center. He has held this role since then until 2015, leading the creation, advocacy and execution of the entire Windows Server and System Center technology strategy. , and serves as a technical advisor and approver of the Microsoft Common Engineering Standards Program.

In 2015, Snover became a technical fellow at Microsoft, leading the Enterprise Cloud group and the Microsoft Azure stack.

In 2016, Snover became the lead architect for the Azure infrastructure and management team.

In March 2018, Snover became Chief Architect for Azure Storage and Cloud Edge. His team is responsible for Azure Stack, Operations Management Suite, System Center, Azure Portal, Azure HW and PowerShell for Windows and Linux.

In 2019, Snover served as the architect of Microsoft's Office 365 Intelligent Substrate platform.

In 2020, however, everything has changed significantly. Snover became the CTO of Microsoft's Modern Workplace transformation program during the year. The program is designed to help customers leverage the Microsoft 365 technology and suite of productivity tools to increase efficiency and productivity in hybrid work environments.

Was demoted by Microsoft for inventing PowerShell

In May of this year, the venture capitalist Peter Thiel put forward a view that led to Snover's approval. On Twitter, Snover said: "While I was prototyping the later PowerShell, a friend reminded me that this is exactly why people get fired. I didn't get fired. I was demoted." I've been demoted by Microsoft for inventing PowerShell.

Snover said Microsoft had initially been less interested in the PowerShell project and had demoted him as a "reward" for the effort.

Although Snover held on to his position, his rank at Microsoft was downgraded from L69 to L68. In response, he said: "They tried to lower me to L67, but I ducked."

It is understood that L69 (or 69-level) ranks are assigned to VPs or equivalent roles, while L68 refers to partners; L65 to L67 usually refer to lead software development engineers or equivalent.

Then in 2022, Snover finally decided to leave Microsoft. He also admits it wasn't an easy decision: "I bet it's going to be hard for me to leave after so long. I've been plagued by some strong emotions lately. It took me a while to realize I was going through grief."

Indeed, Microsoft has filled some of the positions Snover has held over the past few years after switching from Windows servers to the Azure program. For example, Wilfried Schadenboeck, who is currently the Chief Architect of Azure Infra, and Eric Charran, the current Chief Architect, together oversee the infusion of Microsoft platforms and services to support customers' digital transformation efforts.

At present, Snover has not announced his next plans or goals for the time being. We will continue to pay attention to more progress of Snover and related events. If you have any views on this event, you are also welcome to exchange and interact in the comment area.

Reference link: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/tech-general/news/jeffrey-snover-quits-microsoft/#:~:text=Jeffrey%20Snover%2C%20the%20Father%20of%20PowerShell%2C %20Leaves%20Microsoft ,Jayant%20Chakravarti%20Senior%20Assistant%20Editor%2C%20Spiceworks%20Ziff%20Davis