The People of :slack:

There are a lot of people at Slack these days. More than I know. More stories than I can tell. A few stand out.

In April of this year, my spouse and I decided to get divorced after about 12 years of marriage. For those who have not gone through the process, this can be mildly traumatic and may cause a minor impact on your work performance. Me, I was a zombie. For about six weeks or so, I’d show up at work, go to meetings, do pretty well participating appropriately at meetings, but if I was not in a meeting I basically stared off into space. I wasn’t really doing my job other than attending meetings. Thankfully, most of my job is meetings, but partnering with recruiting is a big part of the rest. At some point my recruiting partner came to me and said “hey, you’re dropping the ball and that’s really unlike you. I’m worried about you. Are you OK?” I told him what was going on with me, and apologized, and told him I was unable to do anything other than meetings. And he told me how sorry he was I was dealing with this and said “hell, that’s no problem” and set up bi-weekly meetings with me where we’d go into a room and I would just do whatever he needed done, until I was through this crisis. And I felt cared for.

When I joined Slack, I was assigned an on-boarding mentor. He had joined Slack a month or two before I had, and was also a Director. I remember telling him about the time I unfortunately reacted too quickly to a perceived (and it turned out incorrect) hiring bias and lost some social capital, and he, concerned, Slacked me his phone number and said “if you ever feel like you’re going to lose your temper like that, call me. I don’t care what time of day or night it is.” It felt like he was volunteering to be my AA sponsor. And I felt loved.

I started talking to people at Slack in March of 2016. For 3–4 months I chatted with Nolan, and Keith, and Ross, and Richard, and left every conversation with a Slack person thinking “damn, I want to work with this person.”

Honestly, though. I already wrote that blog post.

I came to Slack because of its people. I came to Slack because everyone I talked with impressed me with their humanity, and desire to do fine works. And then I came here, and met some new people.

I met facilities people who fly helicopters and protect our nation in their spare time. I met lawyers who could do something else but loved coming to work in the morning so much they’d never give it up. I met chiefs of staff who care deeply about helping the people they support become better — humans, leaders, everything. I met technical program managers who would have broken their back to help the teams they worked with be more effective and deal with less drudgery.

I met an intern, who after her first internship at another company thought that maybe tech was not for her, and gave tech one last chance by taking an internship with us … and is starting as a full-time employee in 2020.

I met a brilliant software engineer who my team interviewed, and someone carelessly misgendered, and who was so profoundly gracious she came back to us and said “hey, this can be a teachable moment,” and as a result of which we changed our interview process (but also? She’s a pretty great software engineer).

I met Julia Grace, who interviewed and then hired me and who turned out to be as profoundly gifted as a leader as her reputation claimed. I worked for Julia for only about 10 months, but those ten months changed me. I’ve respected very few of my leaders as much as I’ve respected her; as a result, I also argued with very few of my leaders as much as I argued with her, in her staff meetings. And each time she’d tell me later how much she appreciated the pushback and the modeling of active engagement. I will miss Julia terribly.

I met a Senior (at the time, she’s now Staff) engineer who at our first 1o1, knowing nothing about me, fearlessly said “your organization’s promotion rates are really low. Why is that?” which caused my whole organization to become more focused on growing people and promoting them. Every promotion in my organization in the last 18 months — and there’ve been about ten or so of them — is at least partially due to her tireless, selfless, efforts and bravery.

I met, and got to work with, Robby Kwok, Slack’s SVP of People. I met Robby when, during the process of coming aboard, I told Slack “I will accept your offer as is, but I would love for you to accommodate my special parental leave situation” (I was dealing with an out of state adoption at the time). A day later I was having a video chat with Robby, and left that conversation knowing in my bones that Robby believed in People Over Process, and that Slack believed in fairness (“We want to make sure whatever we do for you as a Director we would do for anyone coming to work here,” he said). That belief in Robby’s values was validated again, and again, and again, while working at Slack. An HR organization totally aligned with his values is an amazing thing to see, a profound force for the Good that humans can accomplish.

I met Arquay Harris, who handed my butt to me at my interview, and submitted 👎feedback (all of which was right). I was incredibly grateful to consider Sabry Tozin a mentor at Netflix when I worked there, and I was incredibly lucky to have Arquay hand me my ass on a regular basis at Slack. Her non-stop advocacy for data, her vulnerability and willingness to talk about her experience as a senior woman in engineering, a senior Black woman in engineering, was something I did nothing to earn, and transformed me.

I worked with thoughtful, passionate, product managers. I worked with data scientists and analysts hungry to understand better how we could make the product better for its myriad users. I worked with some humans who were new to the industry and some who have a decade or two on me. I met people who had been at Google. I met people who had been at San Quentin. I got to break bread with people from totally different backgrounds than mine, and totally different life experiences from mine, all of whom were open, and vulnerable, and generous with their time.

The people of Slack are Human, and Good. They are unlike any other I’ve worked with. I know too few of them, and I love them.

I’ll miss you, friends.