Chris Lattner, Apple's head of developer tools and the creator of its uber-popular programming language, Swift, this week announced plans to join Tesla.

People leave their jobs for all kinds of reasons, especially when they are offered exciting new jobs at important, on-the-rise companies.

But someone in Lattner's circle of developer friends shared some insight at to why Lattner was calling it quits at Apple now, even as one of his major contributions, Swift, had really taken off. (Lattner did not respond to our requests for comment.)

This person said one big reason was that Apple's culture of secrecy was wearing on him, particularly because it was his job (and his life's work) to create open-source developer tools.

"He always felt constrained at Apple in terms of what he could discuss publicly — resorting to off-the-record chats, surprise presentations, and the like," the person told us. "Similarly, I know he was constrained in recruiting and other areas. Eventually I know that can really wear people down."

Not the first time

This wouldn't be Apple's first time losing someone in a big public way because it insists on secrecy over collaboration. As we previously reported, Apple's entire networking team quit within a one-week period back in 2015 when Apple asked the team to build a bulletproof network and then refused to allow it to collaborate with others outside the company in its field doing similar work via an organization called Open Compute Project. (OCP is led by Facebook.)

Not the only reason

Secrecy almost certainly wasn't the only reason Lattner left, though. His baby, the Swift language, is Apple's relatively new language for building Mac and iOS apps. Apple released it at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2014, and it quickly became one of the most popular programming languages around.

Source: Business Insider