With a heavy heart, I just handed in my notice at Redgate.

I’ll write another blog post in the next few days to explain my plans for what I’m doing next, but in the meantime, I just sent this email to all my colleagues:

My dearest Redgate,

We’ve been together so long. I feel like you are part of me. I love you. My blood literally runs red.

That’s what makes this email so hard.

When we started our relationship I was a different person: young, naïve, inexperienced. I was hungry to make a success of my career, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. You have taught me so much. I have developed from a rookie sales guy, to a product champion, to a pre-sales engineer, to a well-known character in the SQL community outside our little home in Cambridge (and Pasadena).

I’m leaving you because I’ve changed. There was a time when I thought a life in pre-sales at Redgate was enough for me, but there is a bigger world out there. I want the measure of my success to be how well I solve a problem, and how well I can help people to deliver code faster, rather than licence sales. I want to be a consultant, not a sales person. And you want to be a tools vendor, not a consulting company. Let’s call it irreconcilable differences.

So I’m sorry, I’m leaving you. This weekend I registered a company: “DLM Consultants”. I need to do this for me. If I don’t try to stand up on my own two feet and have a go I’ll never know. I don’t ever want to look back and think “what if?”. I don’t ever want to look at you and feel that you held me back from my dreams.

And I promise there is no-one else. Yes, I’ve been propositioned. I even turned down a couple of offers. They offered more money or different experiences but they weren’t you. It wouldn’t have been the same.

I think I need to be single for a while. I need to spend some time with myself to pursue my own projects. I need to find out if my dreams really are all I hope they will be. I need to find myself.

Perhaps it’s a mistake. Perhaps it won’t work. Perhaps I won’t enjoy it. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll be looking to be with a company again and if you have space in your life for me… Well, who knows what the future holds?

Remember: it’s not you, it’s me.

I hope we can still be friends.

With love,

Your Alex

xxx

It’s terrifying, giving up the best job you ever had.