Month: February 2011

I Quit My Job Today

Ruben10 Comments

I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time it seems. I had thought of all kinds of scenarios for how I might do it and what I might say but nothing prepared me for what actually happened today. I’m still in a bit of shock and I haven’t processed everything yet but it’s starting to sink in right about now.

Last night I was extremely anxious about having the talk with my boss. I kept trying to come up with the right words to say but couldn’t think of anything at all. As political as the environment has been at my job, my boss has always treated me with respect and she’s always been good to me so I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. What actually happened was even tougher than I what I had imagined.

First, I came in to work and she wasn’t even there! Offsite meeting all day. Great.

A couple of hours later the other senior manager (I’m a senior manager) quit without warning or notice of any kind. Today of all days! He grabbed his stuff and told the project manager “I’m resigning. It will be a surprise to some people, but others should have expected it.”

Soon there was a rumor floating around that the other senior manager actually gave his notice and she was so furious that she told him to leave immediately. I have no clue if this is true but it certainly didn’t fill me with confidence at the thought of giving my notice a couple of hours later.

Anyways, my boss freaked out and cut her offsite meeting short. She came into the office and started running around and planning her next steps. Unfortunately for me her next steps included putting additional people under me.

She came into my office and closed the door. “I think Barry should be under you now. You know more about what he does and…etc.” I’m not 100% sure what she was saying at this point because I couldn’t believe what was happening. I snapped out of it long enough to realize that now was the time to tell her. So I did.

I told her, as gently as I could, that it probably wasn’t a good idea because I had decided to leave the company. I said that my business was doing well. Well enough to support my family and that I needed to focus on growing it even more. Her reaction? Well, I didn’t get thrown out  of the building which was great. She told me congratulations, and said that she knew that I would do great because I would be great at whatever I chose to do. She said that I had to do what was best for myself and my family and that she just wanted to see me be happy. Basically, she had nothing but nice things to say. Wow. I didn’t expect that but I was extremely glad it went in that direction.

It was a crazy day but in the end it all somehow worked out. My last day will be March 11. As I mentioned earlier, it still hasn’t 100% sunk in yet but I’m slowly getting there and I’m excited about what this means for my future.

Tomorrow is the Day

Ruben3 Comments

I’m quitting my job. Yep, tomorrow is the day that I give notice at my day job. I’m blogging about it to have a written record of the whole thing because it’s such a major event for me.

I’ve worked at my job for a long time — just over nine years. I can’t say that I enjoy doing what I do anymore. I’m a manager of a great team, which is satisfying in many ways. But I’m a senior manager so I don’t even get that much time to run my own team anymore. Nope, my day is mostly about going to meetings and shielding them from a very political environment. Not fun.

So while I’m super excited about leaving the job, I’m anxious and maybe a little nervous. I’ve worked there for a long time and I like some of the people. My boss has always been good to me but she tends to be unpredictable with things like this so I’m really unsure how she’ll handle it. I’m certain it won’t be an easy conversation and I’m not looking forward to that part. Either way, it’ll be a major relief to finally give my notice and have my own projects and products to look forward to.

Wish me luck! 🙂

Increase in Revenue and Possible Move

Ruben4 Comments

The first couple of months of 2011 have been nuts. Lots going on but not so much going on with Bidsketch — sort of. I say sort of, because Jan 18, 37signals blogged about my Highrise integration and tweeted a link to the blog post.

This resulted in a small increase in traffic that day and a few extra conversions so I was initially bummed. The surprising thing about it was that this increase in conversions has been pretty steady for about a month and has given me nice increase in recurring revenue. I’ve now hit a level of revenue that can pay all my bills being that I’ve cut down on a lot of my expenses.

This is the awesome and exciting part. The frustrating part is that I’ve not been able to put much time into development or marketing since I’ve had so much going on with the day job. But I’m working on that problem and I’ll write some more about it tomorrow.

The other exciting thing that happened is that I may be moving to Washington! Spokane to be exact. A transfer through my wife’s job needs to be 100% approved before we can make the big move but it’s looking pretty good so far.

If the move to Washington happens then we’ll be out of south Florida in a couple of months. We’ve been looking to leave south Florida for a while for many reasons. But mainly it’s the insanely hot weather and the people here. It’s just not for us. We need a place where we can enjoy nice scenery and four seasons.

Being that we have three dogs and two cats, it won’t be an easy or cheap move, but this is part of the reason why I’ve focused on cutting expenses and saving lots of money over the past few months. For now, we’ll be waiting to hear back on whether it’ll happen and hopefully we can look forward to enjoying a nice change of scenery soon.