I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [208]
"Doug," he said, "I'm having a hard time slotting you. I don't really see where you fit. There doesn't seem to be a place for, 'brand management' in the organization as a functional role."
I could have made the case that I deserved one of the predefined jobs in product marketing and negotiated for the most senior position available. I had no desire to do that. I could have protested, tried to explain the value of my work, and insisted a slot be created for my function. I knew I would never be able to provide sufficient data to back that up. Instead, I agreed with him. There was no longer a role at Google for what I did. I would wind things down as Cindy had, and leave in two months.
I picked March 4, 2005, as my last day: "Three. Four. Five." I liked the architectural purity of it.
When the day arrived, I said my farewells. There were many people at my sendoff I hadn't seen in a long while. Larry shook my hand and wished me well. Charlie baked me a cake. Marissa surprised me by giving me a hug and saying she had always respected my judgment, though she hadn't always agreed with it. I surprised myself by admitting I felt the same about her.
I went back to my office to finish some edits on Sergey's letter for the annual report, emailed it to him, then shut down my computer and turned it in to the help desk. I cut up my corporate credit card and left it on my manager's chair.
My exit interview was brief and with an HR staffer I had never met before.
It was late when I went out to the parking lot and climbed into the Taurus. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. I sat for a moment, breathing. In my mirror loomed a large array of buildings occupied by a powerful global enterprise. Its logo stared at me from across a grassy embankment, a motley assortment of brightly colored letters on a white signboard.
I had started at a small startup as a big-company guy. Now I was leaving a big company as a small-startup guy.
I put the car in reverse, backed out of the slot, and drove home.
You Must Remember This
A cold fog wafted out of the open freezer in front of me. It was a week after my last day at Google, and Kristen had sent me on a night run to Safeway to pick up some milk for the next day's breakfast. As always, I was going off-list; picking up a few items with more sugar and fat than nutrition. I squinted at the tags on the shelf below the different brands of ice cream. What I really wanted was Starbucks Java Chip, but I only bought that when it was on sale. I reached for the Safeway store brand.
My hand froze, but not from the cold. "I want Java Chip," a voice said inside my head.
"It's not on sale," another voice answered automatically, in a monotone.
"It's. Not. On. Sale," the first voice replied with mimicking sarcasm. "So ...," it went on, spacing the words for emphasis, "what?" I picked up a carton of Java Chip and put it in my cart.
For the very first time, I was doing something differently because of Google's success.
Hitting the startup jackpot was like leaving Flatland, the world hypothesized in a geometry-based novel I had read as a kid.* In Flatland, the characters moved along a single, two-dimensional plane and only perceived objects as points or lines. That had been my life, and I had never realized it. Go to work, make money, come home, sleep. Repeat. Now, though, I had the ability to move in all dimensions. The tethering constraints of grocery bills and mortgage payments had been severed and I was floating free.
Some Googlers used their new freedom to change their lifestyles, their cars, their homes, their careers, their spouses. For me, all that open sky was disconcerting. I clung to the familiar to anchor myself. It was surprisingly hard to do that without a job.
I had practiced the marketing arts in one form or another for twenty-five years, and I didn't want to do it anymore. The position