Last Friday was my last day at BlackBerry Cylance. At the time I hopped on what my then hiring manager called a rocket ship, we were more than doubling both top line revenue and people.
We were growing so fast we had to fix our rocket ship mid-flight. These were stressful times. But these were also times when real bonds were forged. One team I worked with locked ourselves in a war room to solve the impossible: reduce the load time of an OLAP grid by 80% in two months. We had lunches and dinners delivered daily. At the end of the two months, we were exhausted. We had a decent version released to a customer to try out. But we had to cut out some functionalities as a trade-off. There was a parallel effort by the data team to improve the query with the same objective. Both efforts achieved the objective. Needless to say, the customer went with the solution that also retained all existing functionalities. We were bummed. For us engineers, it’s not enough to see our work released. We wanted to see it used. Ideally, loved by customers. Nonetheless, the customer was happy with the end result. Just not the result we worked so hard on.
Despite the disappointing result, I was especially proud of the team’s resilience and tenacity. I got everyone on the team a Dammit Doll and the best damn lunch at Agora Churrascaria, a local Brazilian steakhouse.
We went on to work on other projects. Some pretty challenging ones with pretty impressive results. But the Dammit Doll would always remind us of how we persevered. The relationships we built and how we had each other’s back.
The night before, I wrote my farewell to everyone. A lightly edited copy is posted below:
Folks,
Today is my last day at BlackBerry Cylance. A little over three years ago, I was in a room at our Von Karman office interviewing. The folks I met reminded me of the crew I worked with a long time ago at another company where I ended up working for over seven years. I knew this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Fast forward to today, I’ve come to know many more of you. Some of you I spent more hours together in a day than I spent with my wife. Some of you even bought into my crazy ideas and stuck with me through thick and thin. But each one of you has, in one way or another, shaped me. I am who I am today because you cared enough to point out my mistakes. For that, I’m eternally grateful.
What I treasure the most throughout my time here is... you. So, please keep in touch. You can reach me at cyyapye [at] gmail and I’d love to connect on LinkedIn.
Thank you for the memories you helped create in my life.
Ye
I scheduled the email to go out the next morning and went to bed. When I got in to the office next morning, this was what’s waiting at my desk.
What’s up with the Hawaiian shirt?
Okay. Story time... Summers in Irvine tend to get really hot. So, I usually put on my Hawaiian shirts. Some of my shirts are, umm... bright. Maybe my coworkers were just being nice and instead of telling me my shirts were too loud, they would say things like, “I love your shirt!” Well, I’m the type of guy who’d double down if I get compliments about my shirts. So, that’s how people come to know me for my Hawaiian shirts.
And, yes, that is a life size Hawaiian shirt card. Handmade. Thanks so much, L!
But the handwritten messages inside really got me emotional. We have offices spread across Portland, Irvine, and Austin. And I had messages from every office. Handwritten! Later I found out the messages were emailed and copied by hand onto the card. I was quite impressed.
I’ve long learned what you say about someone also reveal a lot about you. I hope you can get a glimpse into the team I worked with.
Someone I have tremendous respect for once said to me:
I would highly, highly encourage you to optimize around the people. They're going to be who make your life enjoyable. You really can't go wrong working around smart, interesting, interested, generous, high integrity, capable people.
💯I couldn’t find better words to describe the team. These folks made every day enjoyable. And I’m bloody proud of every one of them. One helluva team!
