i made a very hard decision this year
a month ago i left a job i held for several years, a job that took me through a winding road of launching a product, going through an acquisition, lots of high points and lows...but ultimately i got to end the journey on my own terms, on my own time. i couldn't have asked for anything more, especially given the state of the world. i'm so very proud of my work at glitch and fastly, and it's special how i got to be one of just a handful of people who can say they have grown and lead millions of developers in creating the web and community! it was a lot of fucking work, though, and i need a break.
i've not not had a job since i was honestly way too young to be working, so not working intentionally was, and still is, a scary idea for me. the longest i've been without employment was a week i took off between bocoup and fog creek. i'm turning 40 in february and for once i actually am in a privileged position where i can and will wait to see what i do next. even in this time of unknowns of what's ahead of me, i am very excited about my potential. it took a lot of work to get there, to allow myself to not be scared and enjoy the fruits of my labor for once. i had to both trust my instincts but push myself hard out of an uncomfortable comfort zone.
fastly was not a culture fit for me and it was dimming my shine - which is fine, healthy to keep an eye out for, and not really any major indictment on my former employer - so please don't be weird. my shine is my responsibility to maintain and grow, and if i feel like i don't fit in somewhere and that feeling continues for well over a year, then that's a sign that there's no path for me to grow in that environment. even nature agreed it was my time to go: the gourd from last halloween that had been sitting on my desk finally started to rot on my last day.
i was debating even acknowledging me quitting on here, but live laugh blog is my lifestyle blog and glitch was a dominant part of my lifestyle for many years. and it will continue to be: this blog is hosted on glitch and i love being a part of the community. i imagine i'll fall even more in love with it now that i do not have to feel entirely responsible for whatever happens next. but for now my job is GTL - gym, therapy, laundry. i want to add blogging and making art again to that list. getting this all off my chest and into markdown™ is a significant step towards me finally work towards doing that.
over the past month i've worked on processing this major lifestyle change and trying to create new habits that are not workaholic-coded. i may have failed a little bit along the way - but our apartment has never been cleaner or more organized. every day truly is a winding road! i go to the gym and do aerial yoga quite regularly, and i've started saying yes to invites to hang out and see shows - things i couldn't do as much because it used to take all of my energy to be a director-level employee at a public, enterprise corporation with such a large community and a shitty thyroid. by the way, if you've ever wanted to invite me for a coffee, now's probably the time. don't invite me to apply for a job though - i'll let everyone know when i'm ready; i have a bunch of healing, writing, karaoke, videos and art to do.
when i told anil it was time for me to leave, i started journaling a bit to process the flood of emotions that spilled over once it was official that i was making this change. most of what i journaled were versions of answers to questions i knew i'd get and wanted to be ready to answer genuinely and with the right amount of vulnerability - an important part of my day-to-day work that i applied to my personal life. i'm sharing with you here an entry i wrote a few weeks before my last day, untouched since then. fastly had just done (piss-poorly announced, imho) layoffs and i knew i'd get flooded with the question i always get and hate, but regardless deserved an answer because most of the time it comes from love:
Is Glitch safe? I’ve gotten this question weekly since we were acquired over two years ago and my answer remains exactly the same as it was before Fastly’s layoffs last week: “As far as I know, Glitch isn’t getting shut down.” The team working on it is so smart, motivated, funny, imaginative, hopeful and caring. Everyone in the community - including myself - are and have been in very good, capable hands. If the higher ups were to decide to, at any point for any reason, shut down Glitch - something that is well within their power to do - I believe that would be very bad for their business and the developer landscape overall. But as far as I know, Glitch isn’t getting shut down. There’s no better opportunity than now, I guess, to acknowledge that being constantly asked if a thing I’m working on (but don’t own) is getting shut down is actually really demoralizing, and that’s something I’ve been carrying and looking forward to removing from my daily mental load for years. I encourage those whose go-to question is this, when they get the chance to talk to the builders of anything they use, to…come up with something else to ask. Make a feature request, ask what we’re excited to be currently working on…literally anything else. If I knew something was going down with Glitch, I’d say so in the way that I do with anything I communicate - especially things related to Glitch, as so many smart and lovely people are involved: with intention, discipline, transparency and compassion.
my only addition to this is that i want everyone to know that no one is more anxious about and invested in the future of your favorite thing than the people who are actually working on it.
i am not sure what i want to do next when the time comes to get a new job, it may or may not be the same thing i was doing a month ago. i am confident that my gift of gab, empathy for the user and builder, understanding of systems and community, and ability to type code and prose fast without looking at the keyboard will transfer to something helpful to society. but for now, society is not my priority. my priority is my own physical and mental health. then it's pumagreg and my loved ones. then it's society or whatever.
i am blessed to have community and support from so many people - from my glitch teammates, my partner andy, my therapist, the group chat™, and my collaborators in art, life and work. this includes anil dash, who gave me this role to basically create for myself and has been one of my biggest advocates and coaches. after several years of getting to see me cry at work so many times, it was perfect that my last cry as a fastly employee was in response to him presenting me with an incredible going away gift - if you know you know but, sheryl, call me and i'll happily explain!
the last thing i have to share is from my goodbye post on the work slack on my last day. most of it was me listing out everyone i worked with and appreciated, and i won't make that public for their privacy, but i did close with this important message from and for me:
Finally, I'm grateful for myself for being hot and smart and allowing myself to take a break to get even hotter and smarter - real ones know. Anyway, thanks a billion and I'll see you's all on LinkedIn and glitch.com/@jennschiffer 👽
it's been a whole month so i'm ready to drop "quitting my job" as a personality trait. i'm also done deep cleaning and reorganizing all of my home office space. my next challenge is taking in all the ideas and wishes i jotted down over the past several years and chipping away at the ones i never could do because of my past circumstances and finally make something new. i appreciate all of you who continue to follow me, i can't wait to show you what i create.
xoxo jenn
p.s.
