It seems weird after nearly five years, but today is my last day as manager of developer relations at Sony. (Pardon the Clinton picture. 🙂 ) I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, of course. So many things done, but so many things yet to do.
Job transitions always feel strange. In the calm between jobs, I always wonder: Am I being reactionary? Am I giving up? Am I running away from something? Or am I realigning myself with my values? Taking my victories and leaving the rest for future generations? Running toward something, building something? The latter is always preferrable, but unfortunately thoughts and feelings and actions are never so clear, and don’t add up to produce a quantifiable answer.
So I’ll take my victories at Sony, the largest of which is our greatly expanded GDC presence. And I’ll take the lessons I learned about myself, how I work with others, and how to be most effective. I’ll take all the things I learned about developers, and publishers, and the game industry. And I’ll move forward to a new role, with the expectation of an opportunity to learn a lot of new things, contribute in unique ways, and feel like I’m making a difference in my own manner, in a new place.
People tell me “you are not your job”, but I’ve never been very good at that distinction. If I wasn’t my job, I wouldn’t care so passionately about it. And if I didn’t care passionately about my job, why do it? So it will take a few weeks or months or years to get Sony out of my bones. In the meantime I will continue to wince each time I see a stupid quote, or bad press, or an analyst bad-mouthing my former employer.
Last day at Sony
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5 responses to “Last day at Sony”
You know yourself that there’s never a “quiet time”. Even if you’d waited till PS3 launch*, there’d be something else looming. So, look to the latter reasoning. This is the start of the next stage of your career. MDL 3.0! Once more into the fray!
You’ll be fine, and it’ll be awesome. Congrats, and good luck!!
* (and I STILL don’t think they’ll ship this year! 🙂 )
I have always felt weird when leaving a company (or, heck, grad school), but, in the end, the “next opportunity” always turned out to be the clear winner.
So, pat yourself on the back for your years of great service at Sony. You’ve learned a ton. You’ve made lots of good friends and contacts. And I know Sony must be very appreciative of your hard work.
Now you’re ready to move on to something new. Go for it with eyes wide open and with a hunger for new adventure!
Coincidentally, just a few nights ago, I was reading “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss to Kat (who’s now 2.5) while C was putting Cooper (who’s now 9 weeks) to bed. It’s an applicable book for you as well! 🙂
Take care,
George
About four years ago, I had the realization that I was working basically with the same people that I was working with the same people four years previous. But everyone was working for a different company. Everyone had a different logo on their shirts. But they were still basically the same people.
If we weren’t passionate about it, we’d all be working at Google or writing SQL code somewhere. But are you passionate about the logos or the people? If it turns out to be the people, why bother with post-partum depression? We’re not going anywhere.
Nice work Mark! Good luck!
I also totally agree with John. I was shocked about how much of the ‘good stuff’ about working at Xbox followed me from Microsoft to ATI.
You guys rock. THanks for the good words. You’re right, I’m having a blast, learning a ton of new things, finding that a lot of old things are applicable, and loving meeting new people.
All in all a great experience so far. I’m extremely busy, but it’s definitely a good kind of busy!