Goodbye, Attest
date
Sep 9, 2021
slug
goodbye-attest
status
Published
tags
Life
Career
summary
Moving on to pastures new.
type
Post
At time of writing, I am working my last week of my three month notice at Attest.
I have been with the company just over a year now - I started August of 2020 and joined on the same day as my fellow Engineering Manager, Sally Goble, amongst some other great people!
Reluctant to spout all the typical bullshit about the 'company being great' and 'not wanting to leave', but genuinely, I feel sad to be leaving. It was the hardest decision I have made so far in my career, for reasons I will go into, but I am massively grateful for the support of my manager Will Lewis, who worked hard with me to make sure this was the right decision for me. To have that level of trust with my manager and to not feel pressure to make a specific decision is something that I will value for a long time. This is what great management looks like!
I have worked on several projects I am proud of - being able to introduce squad healthchecks again in different circumstances to those of Monzo and on a larger scale was rewarding. Doing a lot of thinking about the scalability of Attests structure of teams, the future of the products architecture and how engineering managers play a part in that has also been really energising work. Although I am not going to be here to see the changes through to fruition, I am looking forward to hearing about how everything goes in the future. Bringing a11y training to the Frontend chapter and the resulting hackdays was definitely a highlight! Yes, I was on the winning team. No, it wasn't a fix...
Without doubt, I am most proud of the people I have managed. I feel each one of us has come on a journey in one way or another. I have seen people grow massively whilst working with them, discovering more about themselves as engineers: moving into Tech Lead roles and smashing it, working towards Staff Engineer roles as well as building side projects and hustles outside of Attest hours, even helping people move on to find their perfect roles elsewhere.. I felt inspired each day I came to work.
It was hard to decide to move on because I feel happy here. The culture is awesome, the work life balance I have built up is perfect for me. The people are super smart.
My reason for moving however is no fault of Attests at all. It has become clearer to me, especially over the last year of lockdowns, that I want to work on something that I feel truly passionate and excited about. Life is so fucking short and delicate. Whilst the Attest platform is awesome, I cannot say with hand on heart that consumer research is not something that gets me out of bed in the morning or keeps me up at night, and I don't think that that is fair on me or the people that I am working with if I do not feel able to bring my full self to work.
Moving forward, I want to be able to focus on a smaller area of things outside of my personal life and not stretch myself too thin. Realigning my career with a topic of interest that I am already learning about off my own back seems to make a lot of sense for me at this moment of time. For me right now, that is the world of Web 3.0. I know that is a massive privilege to be able to be so choosy about where I work and work in industries that align with my general interests, and I am grateful for that every single day. It wasn't always like this for me, and I feel blessed to have so many opportunities.
So whilst I leave Attest, a fantastic company I would recommend to anyone (and still do), I am excited to be moving to a company building a product with a mission that I truly believe in. I can't wait to get started.