An Irish Goodbye
Drawing our Irish adventure to an end. Seeing what has changed. Finding our next adventure.
We leave Ireland at the end of June, 2017, and it is a different place than we have arrived to. An openly gay man named Leo is their Taoiseach (Prime Minister). Same sex marriage has been legalized.
A growing campaign called Together for Yes is building a case to repeal the ban on abortion (that is successful a year later in a 2018 referendum that removed the eighth amendments constitution ban on abortion).
Social change feels prominent everywhere with the general sentiment (in Dublin, at least) that it’s about time. A new generation with a global perspective and contemporary sensibilities seems to be springing forth. The breadth of ideas coming home from the Irish diaspora, the presence of so many folks in Ireland of international origin, the improved wealth and education and mobility of Irish people all seems interconnected to the wider world.
I read a novel like Snow by the great Irish writer John Banville that is set in Wexford in 1957, and Ireland is barely recognizable, like a grandparent in their wedding photos is barely recognizable to their grandchildren.
The perpetual gap between protestants and catholics that infected Ireland for decades as The Troubles and split communities and killed so many feels like a lifting hangover. Sure it’s still there in the inheritances of institutions and in family histories and in stories and in the entirety of the education system. But church is an occasional ritual for most now.
Catholics comprised 94.9% of the population in the 1961 census and 69% in the 2022 census, with only 28% attending church regularly. 26.2% of marriages in 2022 were non-religious civil marriages. The phrase ‘Cultural Catholic’ gained some prominence for its ability to describe folks’ familiarity to Catholicism, though without adherence to its practices. There are churches everywhere but The Church has receded.
I am in London on June 23, 2016 when Britain decides to brexit the EU. People walk around bewildered the next day in the capital. How could this have happened?
When I return to Dublin a day later there is a mirthful glee at the folly of the old enemy and a slighter bewilderment and a small pending question: what could this mean for Northern Ireland? Talk of reunification starts up in pubs and on call-in radio shows and is quickly dismissed. How might we go about doing it now? What could be the reason? Tosh.
In short: lots has happened in all facets of life. When we arrived my son was 2 and splashed in puddles all the way along the street. When we leave my son is 4 and rides a push bike down the back-lane hills. He wants to place his own order when we go for lunch. He insists on including a babyccino in our order at the Ranelagh coffee kiosk we call The Man in the Box.
And At Slack Dublin
The Slack we leave behind in Dublin lives in a different world from the Slack we started with.
Slack Dublin has grown to 62 employees in a new office that occupies a full floor in a glass and polished-metal complex. We walk through metal detectors at the main doors flanked by security guards. We rise among a bank of elevators, members of the mobile phone class, checking notifications while balancing compostable take-away containers. We sit on aeron chairs and eat lunch while working. We have come a long way from Stone Upon Stone Upon Fallen Stone.
Johann has taken the reins and started to run the Slack sales team as he wants. He fits in among the sales leadership immediately and has worked with some of them in previous roles at other companies. The world of enterprise software again proves small and hard-earned reputations travel far.
Quarterly numbers and quotas and territories and accounts pepper conversations as a sales-focused culture rises in prominence. Talk starts about opening additional European offices in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm. The business grows and goes on.
After a short time of transition I decline the weekly global sales leadership call that happens at 9 pm local time. Johann is off and running. The business grows and goes on without me.
A Time of Change
We called our performance reviews Feedback @ Slack. I wanted to include some contemporaneously source materials from those days to keep myself honest about the experience and to get some distance.
It is a time of change. By the time I write my own personal performance review (and the reviews of my team) around May, 2017, I see it. Everyone else is going great. But I’m not sure what’s going on with me.
Reflecting on this time and reviewing my notes, I see two stories at once. The first story is full of achievements and facts to support those achievements. We’ve achieved big, hard goals and prospered as we strove to achieve them. Numbers for annual recurring revenues and billings are through the roof. We’ve added new team members in both leadership and individual contributor roles. We’ve done well!
The second story shows up in my notes only in a very muted fashion, and only really at the end. My transition to a new role had been a challenge. I did too much wandering for my own taste, and too much waiting to take on the task of finding my own path. Recognizing my own foundering, I had hired a career coach named Janine who helped a lot. She brought me back to my values and I felt a lot of reassurance from our work. But I also felt a sense of loss.
Looking back I think that sense of loss mostly resulted from a loss of status and clear direction. I had been somewhat important and I had pushed toward clear goals. Now I was less important and had to figure out some new goals. I had been involved in the middle of things. Now I was on the periphery. I had been a part of a team and now I had to figure out what to do as an individual.
I had doubts too. New people had come in and changed how we did things for the better. I wondered: Had I failed? Had I done a poor job?
It’s hard to think so, and yet I did wonder. I’ve tried to be transparent about both my successes and failures. Standards — my own and Slack’s — were high. On balance, I’d like to think my work measured up. And mostly I think I can be satisfied that it did measure up. But still, I regret that it wasn’t a complete win.
I can review the numbers and facts and see the wins. I can remind myself once more that good decisions come from experience and experience comes from poor decisions. I can reconnect with the terrific people I met and worked with. Yet, not captured in there are the small losses. Such is life, I suppose.
Years later I read the following passage from an Irish writer and it strikes me as exactly right:
“You can’t correct the mistakes of a lifetime. You are your own past. These things happened, you did them, you have to accommodate them inside your skin and go forward. Even if you could — and you couldn’t, can’t — there was no going back.”
— Niall Williams, This is Happiness
And so onwards we go.
Feedback @ Slack
“Is there anything else you’d like to add?” is the last question of the Feedback @ Slack form. So many, many things crossed my mind. What could be useful here?
My wife’s wise and excellent voice also crossed my mind saying: Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by you? Does this need to be said by you now? Right. Suppose not. Once more, onwards.
Instead of any of my half-baked ideas of what I could add, I stick to the facts:
I’ve transitioned to a new role as a Senior Technology Strategist, reporting to Marnie Merriam, and am very keen to get started and completely focused on my new role after completing relocation back to Vancouver, Canada in July, 2017.
So there it is: I’m getting a new job. I’m getting a new, new, new, new boss. We’re going home.
What was a Senior Technology Strategist? And what was Executive Programs? Good questions! I had them as well as I started the role. I had some clues and, better yet, I had a chance to find out. To define what they meant.
When Stewart asked me way back at the start of our Irish adventure in our first All Hands meeting broadcast from Dublin to Slack globally, “You’ve been here opening the office for a few months now, what have you learned about Slack from opening in Dublin?” I said it was the people that mattered most. And it became more true as we lived and and worked in Ireland.
It’s the people that mattered most. It’s the people that made the difference. It’s the people I remember. And it’s the people I miss the most. Thank you to all of them.
Up next — Meet the New, New, New, New Boss: Getting to know Marnie and Executive Programs. Cramming to the end. Learning to do by doing.
It’s these moments of inner reflection that I like the most in your story. They also seem to be accompanied by your wife’s “wise words”, and/or Stewart’s questions - like you are taking them in and chewing on them. With the benefit of time looking back on them, to me - this is the good stuff.