One year ago this month

My professional world started to crumble a year ago this month. That was when my manager of 4 years told me that he was moving to another team. 

What followed was 6 months of misery for me and for my team. During that time I felt that I understood how live bait felt, a hook piercing some part of their anatomy, struggling to find a way to escape; the stress of the situation so awful that the pain was unimportant. Now all that has faded

While I did attempt to follow all the apparent options available to me at work, to fix what I saw as a bad decision, destined to have equally bad repercussions, nothing worked. I had a remarkable team of extremely talented engineers. More than that, they were my team. We were a team. We balanced each other perfectly. Any one member jumping off would throw the entire team out of balance, eventually all of them would have to jump too. I warned my chain of command that this is what I predicted would happen. They didn't believe me, or if they did, they didn't care. 

After four months of fighting I looked beyond the career I was enjoying so much, and the people with whom I worked that were all my close friends; I looked at my alternatives and I considered giving up. I made the mistake of mentioning what I was considering and before I knew it, I was retired. The decision was pretty much taken out of my hands. I was making too much noise and being a nuisance. I had to go. I described that, and my eventual exit from Amazon, here. 

For my team, it doesn't give me any satisfaction to know that my predictions were correct. The team is no longer. I am very happy for each of the members of that small team, that they have almost all found positions where they can continue to grow and help make Amazon's customers happy. For those few that are left behind, I am sorry, but they are adults and I know they will be able to take care of themselves.

For Amazon, I have nothing but contempt for those people who refused to listen to me, refused to consider me of any value, but I have let it go for the most part. I do still smile with some amusement every time I hit a bug on the homepage and no, I don't report it - I have no responsibility now to do so. No doubt there will be more in the future. I don't really care. It is a release to not care.

For me, I am wallowing in a retirement that I probably would never have moved into without that rough shove from behind. At first I was worried that I would quickly become bored. That has not happened. My days are so full that things constantly spill over into the next and the next day, with no need to work late into the night, no pressure or stress to complete that chapter, that embroidery pattern, bake those cakes, catch those fish, and there is always tomorrow to take the boat out. 

To quote Marilyn Monroe "...sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."