Mr. Atwood

Yesterday, Stack Exchange CTO Jeff Atwood did the unthinkable, at least in Startupland where work is your life and companies are talked about and tended to with the same care as young children. On his blog Coding Horror, Mr. Atwood announced that effective March 1st, he would leave day-to-day operations of Stack Exchange, the beloved New York-based community-driven Q&A site for programmers, behind.

But not for all the usual reasons like starting his own company, starting a VC fund, or untold riches in preferred Facebook stock. No, Mr. Atwood did for actual human young children. Earlier this month, his wife gave birth to twin girls whose Twitter handle (@theladybabies) is probably better than yours.

"Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful," Mr. Atwood wrote, "But I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure."

Reached by email, CEO Joel Spolsky, who co-created Stack Exchange, told Betabeat, "We're really going to miss him. He did great work building a site that genuinely makes the Internet a better place to get expert answers. It grew from nothing to be in Quantcast's top 150 US networks and every developer relies on it every day."

The response to Mr. Atwood's heart-felt confession, which referenced Steve Jobs death as a wake-up call to entrepreneurs, seems to have struck a cord with his fellow technophiles who shared their thanks for building Stack Exchange and the wisdom of his decision on Hacker News, their personal blogs, and, of course, Twitter:

Sincere thanks to @codinghorror for the passion & love it takes to make the web better! "Farewell Stack Exchange": codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…

— Anil Dash (@anildash) February 6, 2012

An amazing reminder from @CodingHorror about what startups and being an entrepreneur are all about: family - j.mp/A3mcQe

— Tim Jahn (@timjahn) February 7, 2012

On Jobs the dad: "If you want your kids to know you, spend time with them. (Biographer unnecessary.)" deliberatism.com/blog/not-like-… via @codinghorror

— Brian Alvey (@brianalvey) February 7, 2012

Kudos to @codinghorror for not only building a great product, but for knowing what's truly important and acting on it: codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…

— Dave Greiner (@davegreiner) February 7, 2012

Thanks jeff - you have made the web better “@codinghorror: Farewell Stack Exchange codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…”

— Bijan Sabet (@bijan) February 6, 2012

Although @theladybabies have yet to weigh in on this development, we imagine their response is something like: "Yaaaaaaaaaay!" Well that or, "Feed Me." Babies, man. Such a one-track mind.