Thursday, June 02, 2011

And One Last Thing

Sent this email to my colleagues earlier this week.

1 day to go. Feeling yet to sink in.

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Hello Googlers,


I know I am not particularly well known for the brevity of my emails. I have a hunch that this one won't go a long way towards changing that opinion:)

This Friday will be my last working day at Google. And I don't have a clear idea about what that feels like. Somewhat unreal and not nice is all I can confirm at the moment.

6 years can be termed as a decent amount of time in most people's careers, more so when it's your first job. When you add one of the fastest growing companies in history, a dynamic industry that reinvents itself every week and a billion plus market just starting to adopt the Internet, it becomes a heady mix of learning, development - both personal and professional and forming of exceptional strong ties and bonds. I have read many of these farewell emails where people attribute a lot of their learning and experiences to Google, I attribute all of mine. When a company has that kind of a role to play in your life, it's not easy to express your gratitude in a few words. I could say my time here far, far exceeded my expectations and I would still be off the truth by a fair margin. Overwhelmed.

Watching the Indian Internet landscape emerge from nothing to the blossoming stage it is in now, from very close quarters, has been awe-inspiring.  Moving from our '6 chairs and a table' excuse for an office in Vatika Atrium (Gurgaon) to the robust teams that we have now set up across Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad has been a fulfilling journey. I take immense pleasure in the fact that I will be able to say "I was a part of that story" in years to come.

Revenue graphs going up and to the right is great. Internet users exploding is music to the ears. However now when I look back at the journey from RMZ, Hyderabad till today what really stands out are faces, of colleagues, turned friends. I have way more friends in Google than outside and the bonds that we share are among the strongest. Well, I guess the fact that one of my colleagues became my wife a few years back says it all!

If I were to make a tag-cloud of the fun times I had I guess the ones in the biggest, boldest characters would be - Dogfooding products yet to be launched to the public, Food, Offsites, Inquizzitive, Misc-India/Gur, TGIFs, Sales Conferences, Food, Holiday Gifts and the countless lunches which covered every topic conceivable and were by far the best brainstorming sessions ever. 

All this still leaves one question unanswered - what am I up to? I am moving to the US for my MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Chicago. Goes without saying, if you're in that part of the world please do make it a point to catch up! 

But of course that doesn't mean you've seen the end of me:) You can still reach me at suhel.banerjee@gmail.com and I will be happy to connect with you on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. If that's not enough you can find me quite active on Twitter and my blog as well. And if you find me too active at these places, please do remind me to go back to my books! 

Google is a world class hub of technology, a brilliant business, a caring organisation, a social revolution and most importantly Google is family.

Thanks for everything.

--
Suhel Banerjee | Manager, DCS | suhel@google.com | +91XXXXXXXX