New Relic’s top Portland exec quits as outlook cools

The top Portland executive at New Relic quit Monday amid an executive shake-up and diminished outlook for one of the city’s largest technology employers. The San Francisco company’s stock fell sharply.

Chief technology officer Jim Gochee was one of New Relic’s first hires and a key reason why the company made the unusual decision to base its engineering department in Portland shortly after its founding a little more than a decade ago.

Gochee was a close friend and former colleague of New Relic’s founder and CEO, Lew Cirne. Gochee lived in Oregon and didn’t want to move to the Bay Area to run engineering when Cirne tried to lure him to work at his startup, so the company put its engineering offices in downtown Portland and put Gochee in charge.

On Monday, New Relic announced that Gochee and chief revenue officer Erica Schultz had resigned. The company named board member Michael Christenson president and chief operating officer.

In the same announcement, New Relic cut its sales forecast for the year below $593 million. The company had said in August that sales would top $600 million. That’s up from $479 million last year, but Wall Street had been counting on much faster growth.

The August forecast was a major disappointment that sent shares down nearly 30 percent.