Edible Apple

And that makes 6. Following in the footsteps of Paul Miller, Ross Miller, Josh Topolsky and Nilay Patel, two more Engadget editors have called it quits. In a blogpost published late on Wednesday, editor Chris Ziegler announced that he was leaving what he described as his dream job.

Much like the slew of previous departing editors, Ziegler makes a point of noting that he’s not leaving due to any undue or unwanted influence from AOL.

“As I said in my letter of resignation to [Josh],” Ziegler writes, “I think that one of the trickiest things we all face in the course of our careers is knowing when it’s time to move on. It’s nearly impossible. I don’t pretend to have that down to a science, but I do believe that we’ve got a new generation of editors coming onto the site that are going to do great things. I just want to see what else is out there, find other challenges to take on. That’s it. No conspiracies, no hard feelings.”

Also leaving Engadget behind is editor Joanna Stern who tweeted the following yesterday.

“I wrote a long personal blog post about the fact that yesterday was my last day at Engadget, but I decided to just tweet this instead.”

Resignation by Tweet. Employment 2.0 in full effect.

And so, in a short span of time, a grand total of 6 Engadget Editors have thrown in their hats and collectively called it quits. Though each and everyone has claimed that the controversial AOL Way has ultimately had nothing to do with their decision, 6 editors up and leaving can’t be a coincidence. Are the former Engadget folks planning to start something new? Are the 6 departures really nothing more than 6 writers looking for new opportunities? I mean, something seems fishy when Nilay Patel turns down an opportunity to become the editor in chief for one of the most widely read tech websites in the world.

Again, it’s been repeated ad-nauseum that Engadget wasn’t subject to the whims of AOL executives, but perhaps their departure was a preemptive strike against moves they knew AOL was planning to make. And to drive the point home, with 6 top editors leaving within a 2 month time frame, it’s only reasonable to assume that there’s a lot more to this story than we’re privy to at this moment. Time will tell, I suppose, but as one of the premier gadget blogs on the web, the new team at Engadget has some big shoes to fill.