In eight happy years at Digitas, I’ve been: a programmer analyst, a senior programmer analyst, a senior technology analyst, a technology manager, an associate director, and finally a vice president.
I’ve been through rich years, when the Technology department filled two buses for a team outing to Bowlmor Lanes. And I’ve been through lean years, when I was the only technology staffer in the New York office. The technology itself has grown and changed immensely. During my own job interview, I was asked to identify what an <li> tag was. That, and a professorial bow tie, got me in the door. Now, we routinely ask candidates to write a thousand lines of object-oriented code while simultaneously fighting an electrical fire, annotating a PowerPoint deck, and soothing a noisy pack of spaniels. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and Digitas has been a wonderful place to constantly learn while the interactive industry has been busy inventing itself.
I’ve also been commuting five hours a day for five years. In 2002, I cleaned out my apartment in Little Italy and bought my first of many Amtrak monthly tickets. I’ve spent the equivalent of 260 full days inside a blue Amtrak coach, with a laptop on my knees.
And now, that chapter is coming to an end. Yesterday, David Nie, my boss and colleague at Digitas, took the technology team out for dim sum at 88 Palace, so I could say goodbye. I’m venturing out on my own, starting a small interactive practice with an office just a mile from my house. I’ll be blogging plenty more about what I’m doing, but for right now I just want to say that I’ve been tremendously, wonderfully fortunate both in finding a company that truly values its staff, and finding people that are smart, inquisitive, and care deeply about doing the job right. Digitas and I were a perfect match, and I’m sorry to leave. Goodbye, Digitas team!
I won’t miss the commute, but I sure will miss you folks. Good luck, and I wish you continued success as you go from strength to strength.
PS. New York held up its end of the bargain: it’s always at its most captivating when you’re about to leave. I had never been to a dim sum restaurant before — at least, not the real-deal kind where you sit down and immediately start grabbing interesting, delicious food off of carts that are constantly circulating around the room. All in a secret location literally crammed under the girders of the Manhattan Bridge. I’m on to you, NYC. Nice try. Thanks for the sendoff.