Letter of Resignation
Hi Everyone,
I am writing this to let you all know that I'll soon be leaving you and this wonderful company.
I really appreciate the opportunity given to me to serve this esteemed organization. I am thankful to you all for your guidance and support throughout my tenure here. I've met some wonderful and extremely talented people here. And I will surely miss working with you. I wish the company and its staff members continued success and good fortune.
I wish to say a few words about why I'm leaving. I always found it frustrating when people I've worked with would leave without saying a word beyond the obligatory pleasantries. I think we all stand to gain greatly from more transparency in these matters.
And why are people so quiet about the reasons they change jobs, anyway? Why are they so hesitant to tell why, really, they are leaving? Is it not because of fear? Fear of burning a bridge or two? Or maybe they are just practical people: no sense in arguing or complaining; can only hurt you. Maybe they just want to avoid, repress, forget - forcibly remove from any further conscious thought the very notion of having worked wherever they've worked. To simply move on.
And so what does that make them? Cowards? Reasonable? Well adjusted? Obsequent? Where, in all that, do honesty and truth hide?
Why are you not burning bridges to places you don't want to come back to? No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
Back to me. A realization: I have failed to find a suitable position within this organization. A position that would allow me to reach my potential, and to contribute to the organization as much as I could. Or have I? Perhaps the organization failed me? Am I being merely polite in saying I wanted to contribute to the organization when I'm really trying to say I wanted to feed my ego with accomplishments, using the organization as a contextual background, a prop? Who the fuck even care about the place they work at, really? People care (rarely) about *their* work, and themselves; not about their jobs and employers. Whoops, there goes a bridge (or two).
I found myself marginalized, almost from the outset. Being classified as "hard to work with" due to events that were later categorized as "mismanagement" and "unfortunate" meant I'd spend most of my time working on non mission-critical assignments and projects. Who would trust me, after all, to deliver results. It took several months for me to even hear the words "hard to work with" said outright by our director of engineering in a private talk, but of course the general sentiment was abundantly clear.
I found that in this organization, the very few make all of the important decisions, leaving the very many to implement them. Perhaps your esteemed CTO would beg to differ on this, as he made proclamations to the effect of believing in flat organizational structure multiple times on miscellaneous podcasts. Maybe it does look flat when you’re so high up.
Taking active part in this circus meant engaging in endless bike-shedding discussions. Bro, who cares if the shed is blue or green; we can't even decide how many windows it should have on our own, let alone decide that we don't even need a shed because we don't have any use for bikes.
In private, I was given the impression that my opinion matters and that my wishes would, and most certainly should, be respected. I heard about the importance of working together. I witnessed endless proclamations about the importance of open & honest communication. Of compromise. But in practice, you never sought people to work with; you wanted people who would work for you. You didn't want to solve problems together; you needed people to implement your ideas. You didn't communicate honestly and in good faith; but engaged in doublespeak, and manipulated.
Whether to ignore these words as the cries of a misfit or to treat them seriously, as symptoms of systemic issues with the organizational culture - is up to you. It's not like any of this is news to anyone working here.
p.s. Fuck you, Dennis.