eBay's tech chief quits

NEWS The head of technology at eBay has stepped down in the midst of a major technology upgrade of the online auction site. Chris Hjelm's departure, announced to eBay employees in an internal memo this week, comes just over a year after he joined the company. Hjelm, who was a vice president and senior staff member at eBay, has relinquished his duties in order to pursue "other career opportunities," according to an eBay spokesman. He had been instrumental in improving the availability and scalability of eBay's website, the spokesman added. Hjelm will continue working with the company over the next several months to help with the management transition, but not as an official employee. Hjelm's departure was "amicable", the eBay said. Although Hjelm had played a central part in the introduction of eBay's next-generation V3 system architecture, his exit won't have an impact on the project, which is still in progress. eBay began its V3 upgrade, expected to enable real-time updates to eBay's data warehouse and to provide minute-by-minute updates for listings, about a year ago. "There is a solid management team at eBay that can close ranks and carry on anytime a member of senior management team decides to move on," the spokesman said. "It's an advantage of the deep bench we have here at eBay." Responsibility for the project is spread between several senior eBay staff, including chief operating officer and former technology president Maynard Webb, who will continue to oversee the project, which is some way off completion. "We're all extremely proud of the technology team's accomplishments and believe that with these changes, the team is well positioned for the future," stated eBay chief executive Meg Whitman in the internal memo. Hjelm's departure comes in the middle of an eBay effort to put an increased emphasis on site stability. The online auction site has been plagued with site problems, most recently seeing glitches in November as well as a nearly five-hour slowdown, outages and problems in March and April last year. eBay has not yet decided if it will hire a replacement for Hjelm. Picking up the slack will be Marty Abbott, who has been appointed vice president of technology, and Lynn Reedy, who was named vice president of product and software development and architecture. Both report to Webb. Alorie Gilbert writes for News.com