It was difficult to say goodbye. And it was humbling.
When I told them, some folks got a serious look on their face as if to imply, Oh what are we going to do? Some folks gasped. Others offered congratulations. They all were supportive and happy for me (at least as far as I could tell), and that made saying goodbye easier.
The hard part was answering the questions, What are you going to do? and When do you start?
The what question was hard since the new job will be C#/.net, which means that I’m going over to the dark side. The mitigating factors here are that the people and the work really seem great, and the developers do their Windows development in a virtual machine on MacBook Pros. I’ve been telling folks that this is a compromise I can live with.
The when question was hard since we were going to Hawaii. Truth be told, this was a vacation that we have planned for a long time. Indeed, it was supposed to be our fifth anniversary trip five years ago. Still, telling folks you’re going on a vacation to Hawaii the day after you quit is difficult to do: not only is he leaving, but he is running away.
I said those goodbyes in late March and early April. I sent out a suite of farewell emails. I archived all my data and tried to summarize the various loose ends and balls-in-the-air that my successors will inherit.
Then Trudy and I boarded a plane bound for the topics. In a way, we couldn’t have planned it better.