Ben Buckman.net

[This is an abridged version of the original post.]

Today was my last day at the company I've worked at for the last 13 months.

I was looking the other day at a photo from the company retreat in November '08, two months after I started. Of the 17 people around the table, eight are no longer with the company. That picture speaks a thousand words.

I'd like to write all the reasons why I left (and initially wrote some of them, without naming any names), but I'd like to have some timbers of past bridges still standing in my life, so I'll allow myself to be censored. The truth has consequences which is why it's so often hidden, spun, bullshitted.

The simple version is that I was ready to leave a while ago. This was a consulting shop that billed clients hourly, for work that (as a developer) was usually technically boring and repetitive, that couldn't break out of the short-sighted system in which an hour saved in efficiency was an hour lost in revenue. It was an environment that couldn't financially support out-of-the-box ideas, cutting-edge innovation, long-term value creation. The egos and opacity of management decision making proved the myth that small companies are necessarily flatter and more nimble than large ones. Change was too slow for my patience; lists of action items made months ago were reviewed bi-weekly but never implemented; and I didn't have the political knack or patience to wait for the tide to turn.

In the last weeks, after I told management I was leaving for a better offer (which they didn't try to counter-offer, on the philosophy that unhappy employees are better let go), I was stabbed in the back by a colleague with the support of management, so that poisoned the departure.

In the end, it came down to money. This wasn't a bad place to work, but it wasn't particularly good either. It was just a job, like any other. In business, employees are valued financially at the end of the day, so with an offer from another company for significantly more money, there wasn't much contest. Even if the other job has the same BS as the last one, it's a much better deal. And all indicators suggest it'll be much, much better: it's a big company but half the people I met worked there for a decade or more; management of the department seems highly competent and creative despite, or maybe (imagine!) because of creativity- and innovation-encouraging management from higher up the corporate ladder.

I start on the 12th. I'll have a week to unwind a lot of bad energy that's built up these last few months, and I plan to use it well. I'll be thinking a lot about the best book I've read recently, David Whyte's The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. The world needs more companies that engage people's creative souls, that don't prioritize branded messaging above the truth, that look beyond tomorrow.