Today is my last working day of the year. Because our company is preparing to move to a new building next week and I will be on vacation by then, I stay late to pack my things. Looking around the empty building (everybody gone, packing boxes scattered everywhere), knowing that I will be starting a new year in a new location, I can't but look back and reflect on the passing year.
It's quite a rocky year. More than 30% of the people I had worked with in 2009 were gone in 2010. Some left because work was too stressful, some left for better opportunities, and some left for other reasons. I had my moments of doubts too. Yet against all odds I stayed. A coworker (who left last week) once asked me and another coworker, what motivated us to stay in this company. We couldn't give him a good answer. We knew it was not money since we hadn't gotten any salary raise for 2 years and probably wouldn't get one any time soon. (I even got a cut when I joined.) The working hours were long. The future was uncertain (whoever thought he could make quick money working at start up probably hadn't worked at one for long). So why did I stay? Or, change the question slightly, what kept me going?
It took me quite some soul searching to find the answers. They are:
- the people I work with. When I worked long hours, I knew my other coworkers worked just as hard (if not harder), and no matter what challenges I was facing I knew I could always get good advices from them. I was not alone. (I sometimes even feel slightly guilty because most of them have families and are making more sacrifices working at a start up.)
- the sense of accomplishment. To write the first line of code in many modules and see them grow, to master things I doubted I would ever be able to learn, to overcome my fear of talking to strangers and help on customer support, the action of accomplishing things becomes its own reward.
- the sense of adventure. Just one year ago we didn't even have a customer, now we have doubled our revenue for four consecutive quarters. How's that possible? Will we be like that next year? Honestly, I don't know. Yet I now know why epics like Iliad and Odyssey are relevant after two thousand years. We are all living in epics of our own.
Maybe the answers are not good enough for my parting coworker (he will laugh his head off and tell me I am too naive), but they are good enough for me. At least for now.
P.S. I started this post yesterday, so the "today" is actually yesterday.
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