It's weird. I left Microsoft a year ago this month but as memories go it feels like it was all a dream, like someone else's memory.
I'm not entirely sure why this is but I have my suspicions. I retain pin-sharp memories of much earlier jobs than Microsoft, so it's less biological, more psychological.
I joined Microsoft immediately after what had been the single most depressing and distressing period of my working life. In super-short form; I started my career in the cold hard world of late 1980's technology sales, took a shine to selling Pegasus accounting software to small businesses, did well as a salesman, joined Pegasus in a sales role in 1995, progressed to being managing director there in 2003, had an absolute blast and then Pegasus' parent company was a acquired by the private equity backed Infor in 2006.
And then it all got quite dark. The kind of dark you luxuriate in to the accompaniment of Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt. One of the very few blog posts I wrote up at the time seems to capture my darkening mood quite well.
Come late 2006; with one hand I was fighting Infor people in a bid to keep Pegasus going in some sustainable fashion while bargaining with jobs on the other hand. I didn't want to do either, and but for the fact I had become emotionally attached to the business and its staff after so long, I wouldn't have. While I wouldn't expect an ounce of sympathy from the 42 people I made redundant one Friday in October 2006, it wasn't a massively wholesome or personally fulfilling experience for me.
Between August 2006 and March 2007 I found myself in the utterly dire, no-win situation of removing the limbs and vital organs of a business I'd spent my career helping to build. I was lying to the staff that were retained - for their own sake I rationalised; 'It's going to be fine. Different, but fine.' and I was lying to the Infor people who believed they'd successfully secured me, rather than bumping me like they did 95% of my peers at takeover. I'd originally resigned a couple of days after the takeover when they shared their plans with me. Then concluded - as cheesy and fake as this sounds - that I owed it to the staff to stick around. Call it a character flaw. I lied to my Infor handler and told him I had bought their vision and I was back in. Sorry, Ken.
My logic - if logic was what you could call it - was that the best person to radically downsize the infrastructure of the business without actually killing it off completely was me rather than a blank Infor exec who would unwittingly decimate it within a month. This I concluded was the best thing for the company, its remaining staff, Infor - whose freshly acquired asset would be protected in the long run, and for the customers and partners.
So, I conspired against everyone. I'm sorry, everyone.
I set myself a 3 month time limit after which time I expected it would be safe to slip out the back to sanity, my secret mission complete with the company stabilised and coming out of rehab.
I actually lasted for 5 months until March 8, 2007 in Brussels after I'd done all I could do and eaten all the shit I could eat. I regret with hindsight that I didn't record it for posterity but my spontaneous resignation in that quiet Brussels office was quite a spectacular, monstrously over-acted performance. I'm sorry, Wolfgang.
I decided I needed some time to get my sanity back and was fortunate to be able to afford to take an indefinite sabbatical through the summer of 2007. That's when I started talking seriously to Microsoft - we'd spoken the prior autumn but I was so committed to my kamikaze mission I pushed them back - but after just three months sitting on my hands I joined them.
It was mostly a logical decision. Critically it wasn't an emotional one.
Three years down the track I can see that I was quite broken and probably in need of a longer sabbatical than I took. Had I joined Microsoft under different circumstances it might have turned out differently, those critical first few weeks of bonding might have been successful - some early decisions might have been better ones. Or maybe not.
But I feel incredibly privileged to have been given the chance to work for Microsoft for two years but I also feel quite guilty in that I think I let a couple of people down who perhaps thought they were hiring someone they remembered me being. Not the damaged goods they, nor I, realised was being traded. I'm sorry, Paul.
In fact I feel pretty shitty about it. It was a rebound gig; mutually convenient, briefly tantalising but ultimately not long term. I'm sorry, Microsoft.
It honestly feels like it happened to someone else. Like a dream.