Well, my last day at Google came and passed very much as I expected it would. I tied up all of my loose ends, went out to lunch at the Palo Alto Creamery and then spent the afternoon walking around the various buildings, shaking the hand of a lot of people with whom I’ve worked over the last few years.
Then, I collected a few items together and biked away from the building for the last time, with the strains of the Inspiral Carpets’ Two Worlds Collide in my headphones. Somehow, this song, playing at random, captured the mood of the moment very well.
Before I left, I managed to have a very brief chat with my boss, Marc. It turns out that neither he nor his boss wishes to accept my resignation. Instead, I’ve been informally offered the opportunity to keep my job and work remotely from Amsterdam. It seems they would rather deal with the inconvenience of having me work from the other side of the world than lose a senior member of staff.
Whilst I’m incredibly flattered by the offer, I’m currently unable to assess how I will feel about it three months from now. The last few years have been incredibly tiring and I have spent the last twelve months growing accustomed to the idea that I would be leaving the company. Accordingly, my head is filled with exciting plans for the future, none of which involve the demands of holding down a full-time job.
On the other hand, Google is one of the most dynamic companies on the planet and has realised just a small fraction of the endeavours with which it will dazzle the world in the years to come. Many people would give their right testicle for the chance to work there, so wouldn’t I be crazy just to turn my back on the place and walk away, even if I no longer need the money?
It is with these thoughts that I now wrestle.
I’ve proposed to my boss that I embark on a three month unpaid sabbatical, at the end of which I would either make a firm commitment to continue working for Google or shake hands and go my own merry way. I have yet to discover with what kind of reception my proposal will meet.
Even if I were to decide that I would like to stay with the company, there would be a lot of details to work out. Apart from salary and secondary benefits, would I work from home or bike into the local office each day? What work would I do? Exactly what I do now, a subtle variation or something wildly different?
It makes no sense to speculate at this point, since I know neither whether this offer will continue to solidify, nor whether I will have any interest in it once Sarah and I have started to live our new life in Amsterdam, with the myriad new opportunities and distractions it will offer.
We’ll just have to wait and see what develops.