The anatomy of a goodbye

This week has been a very memorable one filled with a lot of nostalgia. The beginning of the week was the last day at work for me at Manhattan Associates, a place where I have spent the last 2675 days or 7 years, 3 Months and 26 days to be precise and clocked in more than a 100,000 kilometers on the commute using the office cab and developed many a friendships, skills for life, fair degree of prosperity in life not to mention the satisfaction of having achieved a lot professionally. While this has been a very satisfying stint for me personally for having got numerous opportunities to work with the best minds and customers in the supply chain management space and equips me for my next job, it also left me a little bleary eyed to part and say goodbye to so many wonderful friends and colleagues across the globe with who many a milestones were together achieved, successes celebrated and setbacks re strategized. The innumerable product releases, travel to customer locations, satisfying our internal clients, managing people, working on quality initiatives, traveling to campuses (NITs,IITs, local colleges) to meet the most enthusiastic and brilliant minds trying to lure them into joining us has best defined my years at Manhattan Associates. This again re emphasizes the fact that when people with a good skill set and even better attitude get together - Success is just another flagged cell on the on the MPP. As manager of fairly large teams, I have in the past replied passionately to goodbye emails and on odd occasions a nonchalant 'Thanks, Good Luck' also, to anyone who has sent me their farewell email. However, it was only last Friday that I realized that a lot of emotions go into writing one and however hard I tried to make it humorous, it ended up in a pathetically polite note (those who received mine will agree). Some recent ones that came into my inbox had plenty of humor in them - One of them likened his journey in the company to the tossed around and reincarnated Dude (call him AsokJoecool if you have to give him a name) while another one almost said where she wasn't going next and yet another one writing a scroll of honor of all and sundry who had helped him in his brief career so far.


While I did not really take long to compose my email, answering a few direct questions wasn't something I was prepared for and the toughest one amongst that was the 'What went wrong that you are leaving'. It took some composure before i said "well, actually nothing" as mine was more of a Just about time move to a larger organization where I hopefully get to learn more and enjoy as I have at Manhattan Associates for all these years.

To, the Ol' gang at MA - Bangalore & Atlanta, I am surely going to miss you - thanks for nurturing me and providing me the fish during the time i was learning to cast...