I Quit

I quit.

I resigned from my job today, and about the time you’ve finished reading this, I’m sure my access to email, Teams, Zoom, and other such products will have been unceremoniously removed. It’s part of the leaving process; that big “organizational bandaid” gets ripped off with nary a thought to the effects it may have on the person. After all, you’re an employee number, an expense to be rectified against a corporate P&L sheet, a “victim” of the attrition in the unspoken margins of the “Bain Way” headcount reduction programme.

There’s a specific gravity to having the agency to choose. Two days ago, I wrote about our societal agency and how people affront it using power and presence. Employment is another affront to personal agency because to live, you must work, and to work, you must live. When you’re caught in the terrible balance of this tension, you realize that your choices, your agency, and your volition are all tied up in the whims and fancies of the nameless faces on Wall Street and in Corporate HQ. Taking back your agency, your autonomy, and your personhood is a bittersweet but necessary function, and so, two words resonate louder than any other: I quit.

I considered the cost of this decision. The intricacies of obligations to my children, my spouse, the people who, necessary or not, have managed to ingratiate themselves in my life. I considered what was meaningful to me. I explored several options and had doors both opened and shut. In a way, this next move comes from the back of a napkin conversation, a “you should talk to Dave” moment where someone advocated for me without me even knowing it was the case. To receive the benefit of the doubt, even when interviewing with this company, after the bumps and bruises, learnings and learned helplessness of the current employer, is a heady thing that I don’t take for granted. I certainly crack a smile at the knowledge that I don’t interview “well”, being more prone to storytelling in the same delightful way I do in prose, but that people were able to see past it to the heart of what composes me.

I’ve got a lot to learn, a firehose to drink from, and the knowledge going in that things aren’t perfect, nor will they be. I’ll be building a plane as it’s flown, attempting to assemble Ikea furniture without instructions, and any other infuriatingly realistic adage you can think of. But I’ll be useful nonetheless, able to contribute to the greater good of a company striving to become better than last week in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace. I relish the challenge of usefulness, earning the paychecks I’ll receive, travelling more, deeper conversations, and intentional steps towards bettering myself and others.

I’ve been at my current employer for five and a half years, working with people I’d had relationships with over the previous eleven years. It’s a long time in technology land, where the average employment duration is measured in months, not years. I’ve soaked in what I can, and now it’s time to wring myself out and start all over again.

I’ve repeatedly written the following phrase from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks because it’s become the cornerstone of how I’ve chosen to live and interact with people around me, as imperfect as I may be. I’ll leave it with you here as my final adieu to what once was and as a welcome message to the future that starts Monday.

“If we focus on the ‘I’ and lose the ‘We’, if we act on self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on self-esteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else…We will lose our feeling of collective responsibility and find in its place a culture of competitive victimhood.” (Sacks, Morality, pg. I)

I don’t fear the unknown as I once did. I don’t fear the power of oligarchs and politicians as I once did. I don’t cower under the gaze of the social elite as I once did. I’ve come into my own, and it’s to my own understanding, ethics, and morality that I will stay true.

May you find the ‘We’ before the ‘I’ and take back what has been given away for so long.

May it ever be so.