[This post was non-public when first posted.]
On Monday I gave my 4-weeks notice — it was not well received. Jonathan didn’t try to talk me out of it though. He said knowing me it wouldn’t do any good since I give things lots of thought before acting on them. He did, however, throw out the idea of a leave of absence.
As a rule, a 3-month leave of absence is the most they do which I said was a non-starter. It’s going to take them much more than 3 months to address some of the systematic issues that has me burnt out and leaving. Jonathan and HR are in the process of seeing if EMC will do a year’s leave of absence instead. We’ll see how flexible EMC wants to be.
The most flattering part of all of this is management’s view that my departure is going to be very impactful to the org from a morale perspective. I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s flattering all the same.
I also discovered this week that 3 other well-respected and long-tenured people are leaving in the next few weeks, which makes me sad for Isilon and a bit guilty for being a 4th.
Digital Ramblings 
Not sure how I feel
On the one hand, I also quit and was offered various things to make my time there better. On the other hand, I’m glad I left and the business didn’t fall apart without me.
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What does “not well received” mean? I think it’s valid if they feel sad and see if they can work something out to mutual benefit. But if someone tries to guilt you into staying, or makes you feel bad about choices, well…. that points to some of the problems that may exist already.
Our person here who is leaving has been open about it for a few weeks now. The management essentially said, “Is there anything we can do to change your mind?” And when the answer was no, every conversation I’ve seen has been the manager asking about what cool things the person is going to do, and when, etc. It’s clear that he’ll be missed – we all adore working with him – and it’s equally clear that we all support and encourage his leaving. He’ll always be welcome to come back.
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“not well received” was most certainly in the first sense — Jonathan felt sad that I was leaving. He certainly didn’t try to guilt me into staying.
They’ve offered me a 12-month unpaid leave of absence. It would include health insurance. They have no ability to halt stock vesting, so my stock would continue to vest but they are writing up a claw-back policy so that if I don’t stay a year after returning from the LOA they would get the stock/money back. I haven’t seen any firm details on that yet.
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