Thanksgiving

Along with a lot of folks, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. If you live in New England, there's an "our holiday" aura to it, which makes everyone feel good. Beyond that, just think of the Thanksgiving features and benefits: It's just one day. It breaks the week up nicely, and for most people it now translates into an extra-long weekend. No gifts to buy. No cards to send. No decorating.

And there are no religious requirements. You can thank a deity, your lucky stars, or whomever you want, for whatever it is you are thankful for.

Without sounding too much like an Academy Award winner, I am thankful for things great: family, friends, home, health, etc. , and things small: laptops, Polarfleece, MacIntosh apples, etc.

But I am also inordinately thankful for my work. For interesting projects and thoughtful clients. For the blogosphere denizens I've "met" over the last couple of months.  And I am most thankful for the company I've kept over the last 25 years since I got my MBA* and lucked my way into a career in high tech. Many of them have become "life friends", others were "war buddies," friends in the trenches  that I run into on occasion (and hope we'll have the chance to work together again at some point). But it has been enriching and rewarding to work with so very many of them.

I am thankful for all of those who tried to make our companies "work better" by designing, building, marketing, selling, and supporting better products, and by going the extra mile for our customers.

I am thankful to all the colleagues with whom I've shared interminable bull sessions and interminable bitch sessions. With whom I suffered through re-orgs and de-orgs, and through company meetings that had us all come away shaking our heads. ("Did he really say we are going to 'move ahead with all the momentum of an entrenched juggernaut'"? Huh?) Sometimes I was on the opposite side - management, not rank and file; presenter, not audience - and I'm thankful to those with whom I shared the extra burden of decision-making. (Yes, for all the second-guessing and bad-mouthing about management I did over the years, it is indeed harder when you're one of the folks at the top.)

I'm thankful for (most) of my managers for the opportunities they gave me - or let me take. I am thankful for (most) of the people I've managed who made management easy, and who made me look good.

I'm thankful to those who filled the candy jars and brought in the sheet cakes when someone got engaged. Who tossed the six-month old yogurt out of the fridge and changed the water bottles without being asked. Who raced with me for planes we mostly caught, who sat with me in snowbound airports, who manned the trade show booths when we practically had to tackle someone to get them to talk to us, and who showed up with me for calls that got canceled at the last moment.

Most of the companies I've kept are no longer. I used to have the conceit that my having worked for so many places that ceased and desisted for whatever reason was unique. But it's, in fact, an experience shared at least somewhat by the majority of folks who've worked in high tech - maybe even the majority of folks who've worked anywhere.  You could certainly wile away the evening trading names companies that were once household words but that now live on only in memories or trace elements. (I'm in Boston: Lotus, DEC, First National Bank, Wang, John Hancock Gillette...)

But the folks I've worked with are still out there, and I'm thankful to you all (well, most of you) for being such wonderful colleagues.

 

*Sloan now awards an MBA, but in the day it was an MS. MBA is clearer, so I've awarded myself one retro-actively.