Two Week Notice

While we were on vacation during the Christmas holiday, I received my
welcome packet from service-now.com. Monday morning I went and took my
drug test on my way to work.

About one hour into my workday, I decided I had better talk to my boss
to let him know about my decision to take this other job and leave
Novell. It was a hard discussion to have, but my boss was very
professional about it and understanding. I explained to him that this
job would allow me to work with Jake again and that the pay was
significantly better. He replied that he wished I would have talked to
him because he is sure he could've arranged a similar situation for me
at Novell. I told him I was grateful for his offer but explained to him that I had made
a commitment already to this other company and I wouldn't renege on that
commitment. He told me that I was not burning any bridges and that if I
needed to come back to Novell he would hire me in a heartbeat. I really
like his attitude toward the whole situation.

It was kind of funny, however, because I have recently been assigned to
a confidential project on the side at Novell. I knew that I needed to
divest myself of that project as soon as possible since I would not be
here to drive it to the end. There were two engineering people on that
special project -- me and the chief architect for our product line. I
went to the architect and explained to him that I needed to add one more
person to our team. Leaving the company was supposed to be a secret
until after the vice president and other HR people were notified. I
couldn't tell the architect what was going on, so I just told him that
we need to add a third person. He looked at me funny but agreed. I had
one of my employees meet with him to learn about the project and to
start on it. However, just two hours later, the chief architect came
into my office. He had heard through the management grapevine that I was
leaving. He said it made total sense now why I was sending one of my
employees to work with him on this project. He then explained to me that
he was giving notice that same day that he would be leaving Novell. So
while I was trying to pawn off my responsibilities for the project to
him and one of my team members, he was simultaneously trying to pawn
himself off that project. It was really quite a coincidence that the two
of us will be leaving Novell at the same time.

Later that day, I had a special meeting with my team where I announced
that I would be leaving the company. It ended up being quite a somber
meeting and I received heartfelt thanks and congratulations. I really
have a great team. It will be hard to leave them.

Now the cat is out of the bag, my excitement level has risen tenfold for
my upcoming career change. It is now a real thing in my mind and I am
excited to gear up for it. It will be hard to leave the only company
that I know professionally as well as the people that I've grown to gain
respect for. However, is going to be exciting for me to be able to work
alongside Jake again.

So, officially, January 15 will be my last day at Novell. That weekend I
will fly to San Diego where I will start at service-now!