Hello, Goodbye
I don’t write often, at least not for anything public. And I would hardly call this public, as I tell no one about this blog. I’m an avid journaler, sort of. I am an avid voice note taker, would be a better way to phrase it. I find great comfort and clarity in taking the time to get my thoughts out of my head and into some medium. It calms me, it smooths out confusion and helps me understand how I am feeling while letting me explore thoughts fully to better form opinions. To that matter, writing for a (possibly) public audience adds a new dimension to this process.
Anyway, on to the point of this post which is to memorialize my decision to move on in my career. I have been at this place for over three years and have truly loved my experience. What I have learned in that time far exceeds any educational or professional experience I have been through, thus far. I am eternally grateful for so many people and for good fortune (as things could have gone a very very different way had I chosen another at that time…).
As much as I have learned professionally, I have learned about startups and company building. Sadly, I have also learned a great deal about what not to do. That is the point of this post. Exploring what I have loved and what dismays me about building a company and the choices that I have observed along the way.
So, why make this my first blog post? Why be so open, yet so secretive? Because I am struggling to process how I feel. Because I started today (July 2 at time of writing, but it may take me a few days to write this) by putting some negativity of yesterday behind me and within an hour of work, ran right into a wall. It was the type of situation that, not to be dramatic, shellshocked me. I have been battling thoughts of leaving for some time, now, and recent events have pushed me over the edge. I am struggling to come to terms with it, truth be told. I have not been able to get much work done this week and find myself wasting time to pass it. So, this is a bit of an attempt at therapy, I suppose.
Over the course of my tenure at this startup, I have come to love the chaos. The feeling that we have some collective mission and it has yet to come to fruition. The feeling of having a real impact every single day that you go to work parallels little. In a prior life, I played the corporate game. What I could never come to terms with was being just a cog in the machine. That the job was a process built long before I got there and one that would remain unchanged long after I left. For so many people, that job would have been great. Security and stability is right for some people. Predictability appreciated. But for me it was a waking nightmare. Immediately after making the extreme jump from safe and stable, I felt right at home. At first, I didn’t mind the product shifts, and deprecations, and pivots, and left turns and right turns - it was part of the process! It’s what being at a startup was all about! But, they never stopped. And people grew weary, and leadership took their eye off the ball, and things are breaking down.
Unfortunately, it has been a slow burn of several major issues that have finally come to a head. I think the worst of them (worst meaning the one that most hurts our chances of success) has been the isolationism and breakdown in communication between leadership and the rest of the company. Walls have gone up, moats dug, and shields activated. And by that, I mean that it is quite evident that the core of leadership has entered into an echo chamber that consists of themselves and the board. Around our core founders, the board and the C suite, there exists a firewall through which no opinions or dissensions may pass. Outside of those walls, a moat in the form of a VP layer has been steadily dug over months of hiring. Many of these people are great, several of them have been awful placements, but none of them fit the culture of the company I once joined. And that leads me to the last piece of this puzzle - the bloodletting. The company I joined is not the company I work for now. Yes, there are still many of the same people in place but the core pillars of what made the company culture have moved on.
We work in a nascent, unique industry. Domain knowledge really really matters. Yet, time and time again, across all teams, hiring has prioritized individuals that have the requisite technical skills over those perhaps a little less skilled but native to what we do. In a few cases, that is fine. When it becomes a pattern and when the industry insiders are leaving to start their own company or to join another exciting team, then it becomes a problematic pattern that exerts a force on the company culture. It introduces a blindness and an inability to appropriately measure priorities. It slowly morphs the company in ways that everyone but the company can see - outsiders on twitter and discord feel that something is not quite right and gradually we become foreigners in a strange land.
This is when things are most dire, because not only has leadership cut themselves off from those of us left from the old guard, not only have they introduced a self-reinforcing sense of what is right, they have they let the soul of this company walk away.
Early this week, the last pillar fell. While I had been wrestling with my future at this company, I did not realize until then that part of me was in this fight because he was as well. This guy brought me in, he stood for the company I joined and what we could become. I took the news hard, it was like the mask melted away and denial quickly reached acceptance. That company is gone. What I thought that company could be, is dead. And I really believed in what that company could be and this hurts.
I have cut my teeth here. I have learned so much over these 3+ years and I do not want to have to leave, but I know that I must. While an end, also a beginning. This is a chance for me to reflect on all that I have learned in those years. To put it down in writing to myself, in my resume, in applications, in outreach, in conversation and in thought. When it comes to life's big decisions, I do not take things lightly. I am fortunate enough to be approaching this from a position of strength and want. I am excited for what comes next because the last time I went through a process such as this, I dug deep and found what motivates me, what matters to me and what I needed in a career. This time, things won't such a drastic shift. I need not reinvent myself or learn a whole new profession or make up for mistakes of old. This is simply the first step of many in my next journey.