The Bittersweetness of Leaving Work

It's my next-to-last day at work.  Really just winding things down, getting my files in order to pass on to someone else, etc.  (Don't get me started on how hard it is to do something that simple.)

I sent out a message earlier this week telling the people I was most connected to that I am retiring.  I have received almost 100 responses that have been really touching.  People remembered incidents that I hadn't thought about in years (and a few that I will never forget; too bad confidentiality restrictions keep me from sharing those), but that apparently made a difference in their lives.  The comments came from many different people; engineers I have worked with, user experience people I have worked with and who have worked for me (Melanie's gratitude that I believed her story that she was late for work one day because she was rescuing a bunny in Golden Gate Park cracked me up), technical women I have mentored or just discussed the challenges of working in our field with, and random people I have interacted with over the last eight years. Another comment that had me chuckling was the former intern who told me that his professor said that he couldn't get course credit for his internship unless he had proof that he had introduced himself to me during that summer.  I hadn't thought of myself as sort of an exam. I really am welling up at the realization that I had made a memorable impact on so many people.

Of course, they all made an impact on me -- that's why I sent them the farewell note.  Every one of those incidents was one I remembered, even if I didn't recognize that it was more than a minor exchange at the time.  One of the things I have enjoyed most at Google is watching a bunch of young, often fresh out of school engineers, designers and researchers grow into risk taking, passionate, more-than-competent, effective professionals.  Knowing that I played a small part in their development is extremely gratifying.  And knowing that they valued my input, my experience, my perspective (maybe my wisdom, but I'm not sure they always got that) makes me feel good too.

I am going to miss all these great people.  I am accustomed to having access to lots of really smart, competent, congenial people to share the load on projects. While knowing that I am losing access to my main source of that energy is not enough to pull me back to the workplace, I will need to figure out how to re-create something similar in my retirement -- whether it's help with things I take on, or just a set of people to chat with over coffee/lunch that make me feel connected to the world and that help me focus my thinking.

Tomorrow is R-day.  I've left jobs before, but this is definitely different.