For me, it’s always tough to make announcements like this (it took me three days to craft the email I sent to my team), but it’s one I’ve thought about for some time. And so, now, with my wife and I expecting our daughter (first child!) in mid-February (we are excite!), I felt the time is right for me to step back and into, a new but familiar role on the Web QA team, as an individual contributor.
Over the past 4 years and 10 months managing our team, I’ve learned a metric ton in so many different situations and opportunities, and I aim to use the time and experience spent in that capacity to help me continue to be a better peer and employee, as well.
It has been an absolute honor to manage, help lead, and work alongside such a fantastic team (nimble, razor-sharp, hard-working, but still manages to have fun!) I’m just as excited, now, if not perhaps moreso, to regain and grow my skillset, working alongside the team, and being mentored by them in their expertises, in many cases, more directly.
I want to publicly acknowledge and thank my past and current peers and mentors, managers, and directors, for their frank, hard-hitting advice and help; I definitely would not have grown or even remained, were it not for them!
And finally, but importantly, a huge Thank You! to Laura Thomson for her encouragement while I explored this new opportunity and for making such a difficult, but right decision for me, my wife and our family ( and I trust and hope, our team, by extension), not only possible, but easy, from my side.
We’ll now be reporting to Stuart Philp, and though still retaining what makes Web QA uniquely awesome, working more closely alongside the Cloud Services Quality team, sharing and learning with and from each other, together.
So, here’s to Web QA in 2016: I’m really looking forward to the new year and the opportunities which lay before us; I know we’ll do great together!
Thanks!
Stephen
jessicameri
wrote on