On Saying Goodbye

First, an update to yesterday’s post, I did, in fact, get sick. Now on to the main event

Transitions

Transitions and saying goodbye are always weird. When I was leaving Stack Overflow after 8.5 years, my first real job transition where I was deeply embedded and in a senior role, my coach Chris told me two important things:

1) even for very senior people, rarely should a job transition last more than a few weeks once you announce it to the team, longer than that and it leaves everyone in a limbo state

2) and even more importantly, as soon as you announce a departure, everything changes.

I remember feeling so thankful for those insights when after announcing my departure I was almost immediately cut out of everything. Not in a malicious or anger driven way, but simply in a “we have to figure out what our world looks like without you going forward”. In a departure that you planned, you have the luxury of having already processed and grieved what is changing, they’re being thrust into it with (likely) no warning.

As someone who often worries about how I’m being perceived or what others think of me, walking into the office one day to find a strategy meeting going on about a business that I ran, without being invited or told it was happening, would have been really anxiety inducing. Fortunately though, Chris was well experienced in this area and eliminated any of the surprises.

This Time

I’m of course thinking back to that time seven years ago (literally exactly seven years, what is it about me leaving roles in October) because this last few weeks have been ones of transition, saying goodbye to my full time role as CEO of Stacks Labs and the people I’ve worked with for the last 5.5 years.

In many ways, this time was much easier than the first one, I made the decision many months ago that the time to transition had come, and then it was just a matter of deciding where things needed to be that I felt would leave things in the place that I wanted them. In particular that meant shipping an updated version of the network and giving the leadership team time to really gel and find the operating cadence for the company. Plus figure out who would take over as CEO.

For those of us who feel inseparably wedded to the companies we build, it can feel impossible to separate - how can things possibly carry on without us? But the reality is that companies and their people are incredible resilient and adaptive (at least the good ones are) and to quote Jeff Goldblum, life, uh, finds a way.

The group that I worked with there has been truly wonderful, especially in an industry that can be filled with people who give it a less than shining brand. The Stacks team has always been the best of crypto - pushing to unlock new innovations, building transparently, taking the compliant routes, and trying to deliver something that truly brings value to the world’s economic order.

And so as I close out this chapter, I’m able to look back fondly and think about how much I’m proud to have done there. How much I feel I grew as a leader and a person. How excited I am for what lies next for the team. And how excited I am to take myself into what comes next.