I have made the decision to leave GitLab after just a little more than seven years with the company. It is going to be really hard writing this without resorting to some platitudes, and it is also going to be really hard to convey what this time has meant to me. How ubiquitous the Tanuki has been in my life can be summed up in one picture:
In case one picture is not enough, here are few thoughts which probably make this one too long for #team-member-updates:
I still recall how anxious I was – with regard to my English proficiency – in 2017 when interviewing for GitLab; piling jig-saw puzzle boxes on our coffee table, so that no interviewer had to look at my nostrils.
Never would I have thought that I will do more than 70 interviews for GitLab and I would be the one (trying) to calm people’s nerves. Looking through the list of people in whose hiring I was involved leaves me with a feeling of pride; seeing that most of them are still here and doing an awesome job every day.
Over the years the job has been (mostly) interesting, but the real joy is working with so many talented people that take exceed in their craft. Everyone is kind in their interactions, family and friends do come first and people really do take an interest in each other. Those interactions – every day – helped me to foster my skills and more importantly grow as a person:
- Being able to move up, sideways and downwards the career ladder: stepping up to management, back to individual contributor, without the fear – at any point – that these moves would end my career
- Trust placed in my ability to run department wide initiatives even though I was “just” an Engineering Manager
- Ability to contribute to other projects outside my “day-job”
- Allowing me to organise an amazing get-together-grant event in Leipzig
#the-great-escape– I am still happy that no one died because I didn’t tell them about the weir - Foundation of the German Works Council and seeing the GmbH grow from seven to more than 160 employees
- Countless coffee chats and real-life meets in NL, DE, UK, DK, PT, ZA and the US (oh, and meetups, and conferences, and the travel grant in the “early days”!)
- Gain a better understanding of what diversity really means and in the process learning a lot about my identity as someone from Germany, with roots in the former East
When I was contemplating the move away from GitLab one former team member told me two things:
- he hardly knows anyone who moved away from GitLab and is happy. Hard pill to swallow, just shows how amazing place of work GitLab is.
- you shouldn’t run away from something, but towards something.
And this is what I am doing:
Smaller company, more real-life meetups again and different tech stack, different things to learn and expand the horizon.
Also, apparently they have no Slack channel for #dad-jokes yet.
This is where I am going to thank all of you for being part of my life.
From the bottom of my heart: Dankeschön!
Please stay in touch, schedule coffee chats, and let’s exchange contact info.
If you ever are near Leipzig, please do check in!12
As a parting gift, let me impart some wisdom:
The treasure isn’t USD $77.
The real treasure is the friends we make along the way.
(and the posts in#stonks-and-memes)
Eipi