It’s a momentous week here at The New Stack. You’re reading our last weekly newsletter of 2025 — and our 500th weekly newsletter overall. It’s been 500 weeks of stories, insights and conversations with our community.
And it’s my last newsletter. I’m retiring and come the turn of the year, a new editor in chief will be leading TNS. In early January, you’ll learn mored about that new leader and their vision for The New Stack’s future.
As a publication, we’re grateful for your readership, your viewership, and your fellowship when we see you at tech events around the globe. We’re grateful for your ideas for how we can serve you better, and even for your feedback on our (hopefully infrequent) missteps.
I’ve been at TNS since the spring of 2021 and have been its editor-in-chief for just over two years. My tenure has overlapped with a revolutionary change in how software is built, deployed and managed: the emergence of generative AI. The introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 in late 2022 was a momentous change, akin to the introduction of Kubernetes in 2014 — the year TNS was founded, catching a wave that keeps rolling.
Over its decade-plus, TNS has caught a number of waves as they’re rolled through the industry. Remember serverless? What about low-code/no code and “citizen developers”? Pour one out for the blockchain. And then there’s platform engineering and WebAssembly — trends that rose, dipped and seem lately to be gaining traction once again. Vibe coding seems poised for that cycle now.
I leave with gratitude for this adventure — for our kick-ass staff, and especially for my friend and colleague Joab Jackson, who recruited me to TNS, and to publisher and founder Alex Williams, for hiring me. Alex has been my partner in steering us through the fast-moving AI wave, one whose impact is beginning to wash away less nimble media companies.
We’ve stayed strong and steady, and that’s because of you.
So, what’s next? For me, at least for a while, travel and time with friends and family. For TNS, new leadership as the tech world turns from cloud native to AI native.
The wave is going to keep getting bigger, but TNS will continue to help you navigate it. Stay in our boat, and you’ll have fun storming the castle.
— Heather Joslyn, editor-in-chief, TNS