Nilay Patel

It’s tomorrow.

Yes, I’m leaving Engadget as well. In fact, I’m already gone — my last day was March 4th. I hadn’t told anyone in order to afford our team the chance to transition in relative peace and quiet. Not that there’s anything quiet about an Engadget workday.

Leaving Engadget is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Not only am I leaving my current position as managing editor, but I’m also walking away from the opportunity to be editor-in-chief. That’s a pretty exclusive fraternity — I would argue that Peter Rojas, Ryan Block and Joshua Topolsky are three of the brightest stars in our industry, and simply trying to equal their unparalleled leadership of our publication has long been the goal at the end of my five-year plan.

In just four short years (and somewhere over a million words on 4,313 posts) Engadget has completely changed my life. It’s insane to think that I used to read the site to relax and slack off in law school, and even crazier to remember fanboyishly listening to Peter and Ryan on the podcast. Getting an email from Peter saying he was giving me shot to write for the site was literally a dream come true — a dream that only got better when I took a full time position just over a year later.

And what a dream it’s been. The Engadget team is peerless in the industry — a collection of some of the smartest, funniest, most passionate writers and thinkers I’ve ever encountered. Working at Engadget isn’t easy, but it’s also like having an endlessly amazing conversation with two dozen of your best friends. That goes double for our readers, commenters and peers in the industry — I’ve been privileged to have a front row seat as journalism transformed from a one-way street to a multichannel discussion, and all of you have made me a better writer, thinker, and person.

Ultimately, however, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not this five-year plan, but rather the next five years that are critically important if I’m going to keep growing and learning. Leading Engadget might be the culmination of one dream, but in my heart I know I need to find the next beginning. It’s bittersweet, but I feel surprisingly good about it.

All that said, it’s Saturday night. Pick up your super-complicated mobile phone and use it for what it’s meant for — connect with your favorite people and go have some real-life fun. (I recommend dancing.) I’ll see you on the internet again soon enough.