*dusts off the blog*
While I may not have written anything for my own blog in nearly a year (mea culpa), I was recently invited to write a guest post for Zendesk’s blog. My company uses Zendesk for our support tickets, and the two companies have a tight product relationship.
We kicked around some ideas on topics to write about, and landed on “Why having new employees answer support tickets could be the best thing your company ever did“. Go check it out!
(Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, huh?)
Most days, I commute to work via Caltrain, which is its own daily set of adventures. For instance, this would’ve been a bit of a problem for me today:
Nb319 has been cancelled due to an apparent electrical problem. T07:15—
(@caltrain) June 01, 2012
However, today, I drove in, since I was going to be staying a bit late at the office. The drive from Los Gatos to San Francisco is usually pretty uneventful, since I leave the house early enough to miss most of the traffic.
I’m heading north on 280, cruise control set just shy of 80 mph, hanging out in the left-most lane, minding my own business. A Nissan Pathfinder came racing up behind me, tailgating me, which is never fun when you’re going that speed. I flipped on my turn signal, indicating that I’d get out of his way just as soon as I could comfortably pass the Toyota Prius to my right. The Pathfinder jackhole, however, was far too impatient for my safe driving. He darted into the gap between me and the Prius, as I was just starting to change lanes, forcing me to swerve back into the left lane.
The jackhole pulled parallel with me, and held up a NY Yankees hat to his window as if to shove it in my face, then stepped on his gas pedal and swerved in front of me, forcing me to hit the brakes so I didn’t clip his bumper. Then he sprayed his windshield cleaner, which of course has the effect of spraying MY windshield, before speeding away at a much higher rate of speed than I was going.
All because I have a Boston Red Sox license plate holder on my car.
Stay classy, Yankee fans…
The auto-generated 2011 in Review post was from WordPress, talking about what my site did in 2011.
Here’s what I did in 2011 that really matters:
Everything else was just icing on the cake 
Happy New Year to you and yours, may your 2012 be as good as my 2011. And may my 2012 be even better!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
One of the many reasons I’m proud to now be working at Twilio is the way the team honors those who came before us. Check out what the team added to the website last night.
How many boxes does it take to pack up six and a half years of employment? It turns out that the answer is two.
I finished packing up all my things from work today, with tomorrow being my last day at SugarCRM. I also spent a good portion of the afternoon cleaning up the files on my laptop, removing personal files and accounts. When it’s all said and done, the only things left are one more message in my inbox, one more meeting with my boss, an exit interview, and a going-away lunch with the crew. I’m ready to put it all to bed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve left a company, but it’s the first time where I feel like I haven’t wrapped everything up cleanly, with a clear transition in place. When I finally left Netscape/AOL, it was because my business unit was closing down, and there wasn’t anyone left to hand things to. When I left Sun Microsystems, there were other people doing the exact same job as me — albeit in different product lines — but they certainly knew what to do in my absence.
However, with SugarCRM, there isn’t an immediate replacement coming in to do my job. In fact, my job has been a mixed bag of responsibilities, sort of a jack-of-all-trades position. I pretty much molded it to me after taking on the current role, and my varied experience with the company was my calling card. I’d seen it all, so I could cover anything that came my way. While there are other people in the company who could certainly fill my shoes, they’re in other critical roles that would leave just as big of a hole if they were to leave. Institutional knowledge goes a long way when you’ve been there for nearly the entire life of the company.
On the other hand, that won’t be my problem once tomorrow afternoon rolls around. I’ve tried to tie things up, leave things in an okay state. Inevitably, there will be things that fall through the cracks. Hopefully, it’ll all be a memory in a couple of months.
2011 has been a pretty big year for me, and there’s still more than three months left. First it was my girlfriend moving in with me. Then it was my girlfriend becoming my fiancee.
And now I’m happy to announce that I’ll be starting a new job soon. This coming Tuesday will be my last day with SugarCRM. A week from Monday, I’ll join Team Twilio as their new Director of Support.
I’ll get my first real taste of Twilio later this week at the first ever Twilio Conference; no better way for me to learn than to attend two days of Twilio goodness prior to my official start date. If you’re going to be at the conference, say hi to me when you see me there!
