Saying farewell gracefully

So, you finally did it. You decided to quit your job. Now what?

I was recently in this situation. Somehow the internet knew this was a thing and Medium, Apple News, and even Twitter seemed to know that I was in the market and that I might like reading articles about quitting and/or moving on. Either that or it’s confirmation bias and everybody else is doing or thinking about the same thing.

After 10 years at Google I decided to call it quits and move on to a different challenge. I would be lying if I didn’t feel beat up by 2020 or that I hand’t felt like I needed a change. I don’t think I was burnt out but I certainly was stressed out. Two days into my vacation and I’ve already decided that my favourite place in the world was in bed and that I’ve somehow been looking forward to not being under any pressure to meet a deadline, solve a problem, and draft another email. This is my body telling me that all those years of not getting enough sleep is going to stop, and somehow that I was going to make up for it in two days.

Enough background though, that’s not the point of this article.

After a certain amount of time in a single company, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll work with people and have professional or extra-curricular relationships with them. It could be something seemingly simple as seeing the same faces as you walk through the halls, or as deep as having regular activities with them outside of work. Whatever the case may be, you’ll have different levels of connections with…