Wrapping up my journey at useB
On January 1, my move to Indent was confirmed, and I spent the month preparing to say goodbye to useB (a Korean identity-verification startup).
Since I'd been preparing to leave since December, there weren't any major problems wrapping up and handing over my work.
If anything, I spent the time frantically looking for things we could still finish together before my last day.
Maybe it was lingering guilt about leaving my junior colleague behind on their own, but I tried to set them up with as much as I could, only to quickly realize there wasn't actually that much I could do.
I also wasn't sure whether someone on the way out should be freely saying "do this like this" and "do that like that," and I didn't know what goals useB would be pursuing in 2023, so laying out guidelines was probably the best I could do.
Leaving behind what went well and what failed
There were two things I had in mind while writing the handover document.
They were "context and failures."
If I'd tried to share everything about setting up the blog, being active on LinkedIn, and all the other things I'd tried, January would have been over before I finished.
I figured that for any piece of work I was leaving behind, simply conveying "why we did it" would count as success.
And rather than deciding the path forward for them, I focused on laying out "the roads I'd tried that turned out to be dead ends."
This was clearly work a capable person could pick up and continue, and I thought that if I spelled out every step from 1 to 10, I'd actually be limiting their possibilities.
That approach seems to have been a decent attempt, because I heard they were absorbing the work and pushing ahead faster than I'd worried.
It drove home that the company keeps running without me, and that capable people find their own way just fine.
They're doing so well it's almost bittersweet. I'll have to buy them a meal next time we meet, or let them buy me one.
A happy departure, a great finish
As with relationships, parting ways well when you leave a job really seems to be something that only works when both sides put in the effort.
Even so, this time it was a success.
After the move was decided, I thought long and hard about the right stance to take when announcing my departure, as someone leaving behind the people I'd run hard alongside for a year to take on a new challenge.
useB had to keep running hard through 2023 without me, so I concluded that leaving as quietly as possible was the right thing to do.
Instead, I updated my LinkedIn right away, as people at my company tend to do.
Most useB folks aren't on LinkedIn anyway, and since my next destination was settled, I wanted to take my eyes off recruiting-related channels.
Even so, people cheered me on at the end, shared meals with me, and left me with lovely gifts, which made it a happy departure.
Maybe it was thanks to the mindset of "I'll be a good teammate first"?
They recognized my year of effort and told me I'd do even better at my next place.
In particular, CEO Kim Sung-soo, CFO Lee Myung-hoon, CTOs Chae Seung-wan and Yang Dong-hyun, and CISO Hwang Hee-jun
all traded cheerful jokes with me as I gave my "discharge report" on my last day.
I won't be there, but useB absolutely has to do well in 2023.
Because it's where I was!
