letter of resignation

I published the following letter internally on Wednesday, 2020-06-24.

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am leaving Tableau. My last day is Friday. I am resigning, retiring, and graduating after 13 astonishing years of growing personally alongside this company. I’ve done some reminiscing here, and if you’d like to say goodbye (which would delight me) please swing by my virtual party on Friday afternoon.

I am resigning because I believe the company will not soon change its stance of silent complicity with systemic injustices, nor its authoritarian leadership style, nor invest in improving its decision-making or employee representation practices. Those words are my own perspective, and I respect anyone who disagrees or would choose a different frame.

What should be uncontroversial is that trust and good faith between corporate leadership and a large set of employees has been severely damaged over the past year. Regardless of how one apportions responsibility for this, <redacted> and I did express mutual interest in working on a project together towards reconciling those rifts. However, they and the exec team “just can’t support the kind of work you’re interested in at this time” due to bandwidth constraints and other important priorities. I bear no personal ill will towards any individual within this complex system, and my dearest hope for all my former colleagues is that you can be authentic and true with each other, exercise your power without infringing upon others’, and find health, strength, and unity within diversity and decentralization.

I am retiring from my software development career, and from the conventional corporate world altogether. This is an unusual privilege to have, and I am deeply grateful for the fortune that we have experienced and produced together over the years which grants me that freedom to pursue my own interests independently. I look forward to spending the next 40 years discovering the path that is finding me, exploring in service of our future as humankind.

Lastly, I am graduating from the best school I have ever attended. The personal growth and development I have experienced in this environment are so tremendous that the me of 13 years ago would hardly recognize my current self. Getting to challenge myself so strenuously, diversely, and continuously, from 40 employees all the way to 5,000+, has been truly amazing. My own failures have been the most valuable of all in my development, and have expanded my awareness more than I even knew was possible.

It has been a great honor and privilege to work with you all, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I feel peaceful, free, and excited to begin fresh in creating something new, in finding new ways of being and of organizing ourselves and our society. Thank you, best wishes, prayers and blessings, openness and gratitude to you all.

You can contact me at @jambarree, or subscribe here for monthly updates.