Day 0 - exiting to the great unknown

I turned in my resignation at the end of June, after returning from a vacation in Hawaii...sort of a pre-celebration of things to come. I gave a full month of notice - I was involved in a significant project, so figured it would take a while to do a brain dump, and help transition my replacement. Reaction was more or less expected....meh. Nobody was notified that I had resigned which I found amusing.  I probably could have just packed up my desk the last day and walked out with half of my organization wondering where I was the next day. Some people were very upset, other didn't care, and probably some were glad that the old dude was finally leaving. I was not too disturbed by any of this - my focus was on getting myself prepared for August 2nd...the first day of retirement.

So how exactly do you plan for not working? I really did not give it much thought. I was constantly asked what my 'plan' was. What was I going to do on day 1. How about day 2. Where did I want to travel to? Was I going to work part-time. My canned response was 'why do I need a plan'. I kept on working at my usual pace, slowly disengaging from the project, skipping meetings, finishing up tasks and writing my final manifesto of a turnover document which one or two people read. July very quickly wound down - I had a nice dinner with some friends from work, and then had a going-away wine fest in the office the day before leaving.

Then came the last day ...Yikes! Oddly enough, I had two project related meetings scheduled including one with a director (always good to wait until the last minute). By this time, I had already transitioned my phone over to personal ownership, but still had my Google laptop. But then the big moment came - after lunch with a buddy and saying a few last goodbye's, I first handed over my laptop, then my badge, and walked out the door to my car and into the great unknown.

Holy crap - I was unemployed. Permanently!  I was still technically on the payroll that day, but I had cut the thread - no connectivity, no e-mail, no corporate chat or video conferencing...I live off of that stuff. Well I made it home most of the way before it hit, but it hit pretty hard when it finally did. My wife was tremendously supportive when I got home, and we had an awesome celebration dinner that night , so I was more or less excited about the future.

A few comments on exiting a tech company

After 42 years in this business, I have had the experience of leaving quite a few companies on my own terms. In some cases, I have had full blown exit interviews, in others nothing at all. I was expecting maybe something other than an online survey with about a dozen questions, from a company like Google. But once they found out I was retiring, there was probably a sigh of relief that I was not leaving for 'other reasons'. I also found it interesting that there really is no concept of retirement at companies like Google since there are so few employees who are old enough to consider it. I may have been the oldest person in my entire organization. Other than an e-mail reminder to look at a internal site with a checklist for people leaving the company, there was absolutely nothing specific about retiring. When people leave tech companies, HR assumes they are going to a job at another company, not leaving the workforce entirely - this is why you do not see much in the way of age related benefits in tech companies in Silicon Valley - for example, extended benefits for health care (dental would be nice), long term care provisions, life insurance. It is just not considered important, since there is a youth oriented focus in tech. Everyone is young, so why worry about a handful of employees. Yeah, but age creeps up on you like a worn out pair of underwear….