On leaving TED
How do you leave a dream job? I don’t know. Perhaps you start by waking up.
I was employee #38 when I started at TED in 2010. At that time TED’s brand was on the rise for the mass. Unbeknownst to me, it was also a private club to the smaller community of 1000 or so intellectually curious movers and shakers of the world. My hiring was unconventional. I came in on the recommendation of a dear colleague for an opening role of interaction designer. I shared with then Executive Director of TED that interaction design was about 10% of what I could offer. She agreed to hire me for the role I pitched instead — which was to build a product discipline into the fabric of TED’s organization.
Fast forward to 2017, TED’s brand has become a household moniker, so much so that Kendrick Lamar dropped it in his lyrics around the same time Hillary Clinton used it to soothe her presidential election defeat. Meanwhile I’ve built 2 teams (still going strong), raised and killed 5 official TED pets (RIP jellyfish), threw pool parties and after parties at staff retreats, and almost got everyone on a single unified messaging platform. Today’s TED staff is filled with so many fresh faces, contagious energy, and great vision for evolving the ideas platform further. If I were to ever leave a place I love one day I want to leave it better than I found it. I feel really good that now is that moment.
As to why I’m leaving.. I’m leaving because despite the prestige and impactful mission, TED isn’t my dream job. In fact, I don’t know what my dream job is. My career so far has been defined for me. Graduate from a good STEM school. Start coding. Then manage some coders. Then branch into design. Then manage products. Great, now go manage product managers and designers. Balance spreadsheets. Grow revenue. Grow audience. Reduce spending. And ultimately keep stakeholders happy. Rinse. Repeat. It feels like I’ve purchased a guided tour to a city and I’m sitting on “that bus” that stops at one photo-op stop after another looking at pre-packaged views. I don’t know what my dream job is because I never gave myself the chance to define it.
“So you’ve watched too many TED Talks,” said Chris Anderson in our exit meeting after my meandering answer. “I think you’re right.” We both smiled and gave each other a really long hug. Maybe one day I’ll come back with a revelation that my dream job is what I’ve had all along. For now though, I want that chance to go figure it out.
Maybe your career accomplishment isn’t about an outcome.
Maybe it’s about a feeling.
I heard this wisdom from a dear friend. He said, “ Maybe we aren’t meant to be doing anything special. Maybe we fall into doing what we do because it just so happen to be in front of us. It’s easy to look back at what you’ve done and say ‘yea, I was meant to do that’. Hindsight can make us feel like we are destined to do something when all we’re really doing is chasing how we want to feel. Think about it. Imagine you’re 65. You’ve retired. You’re telling your grandkids stories. Are you going to go over the details of how cloud storage transformed data industry or are you going to talk about that group of friends you met at work in your twenties and somehow stuck with you forever? I don’t know about you, but I know what’s important to me.”
I can’t thank everyone enough for the adventures in the past 7.5 years, and for “all of the feelings” that came out of it. To all the full-time staffers, the extended family in Denver, Portland, Nashville, and my trusted advisors in Cali: high-fives to all of you. The products I worked on will over time be replaced by newer, better stuff. What will never go away is my pride to have been a part of an amazing organization, and to have, in a small way, touched some of your lives for the better. On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
The playlist that got me reflecting on my career:
Ideas blog: Finding our way to true belonging.
TED talk: Forget the pecking order at work.
Master of Scale: Handcrafted / the AirBnB story.
DVD: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.
and, most illuminating TED talk: A lyrical bridge between past, present, and future.
