After leading engineering.com to its present position as the leading publication in the industry (okay, I admit bias), John Hayes, is leaving to join some financial company. Most readers of engineering.com will be surprised to learn that John—while looking, acting, writing and in general behaving like an engineer—studied finance. So, he may be going home to roost, as it were. But during his time here he led an online publication that served over 2 million engineers a month with up-to-date information on a variety of engineering disciplines… and he grew quite enamored with the profession.
On his way out, I asked him what he would miss the most.
John Hayes on his island, somewhere in northern Ontario.
"I'm going to miss having a front row seat on technology," he said, without hesitation. It was from that seat that John and engineering.com interviewed Elon Musk and Bill Nye, who famously taught our then tech editor Shawn Wasserman how to tie a bow tie—a skill he relayed to many a rapt audience.
We, the rest of us on the engineering.com team, wondered what it took for him to guide us, the captain of the ship, past the rocks we would have dashed on, the many attempts at profit, the very expensive videos, the collaborative engineering way ahead of its time, the dozen other uses of a million-dollar domain (yes, that is how much we paid for www.engineering.com).
“Also, I did put a fantastic team together,” he says. Adrian Nash is the ultimate in sales. Jim Anderton is second to none in his knowledge of Manufacturing. And for design, we brought in the biggest name in CAD: Roopinder (the author blushes). Dave Murphy and his Eng-Tips forums is stacked with the highest concentration of engineering expertise on the Internet.
We wish him well. For those who wish to keep up with the indefatigable John Hayes, you can do so on his LinkedIn page.
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