On a decade long relationship

It was the 31st of May 2006 and I was going to one of my biggest job interviews so far. I had been living and studying in Tallinn for a year and a half and felt that owning my own regular income was something that I really wanted. I wanted and needed more freedom in my life. Yes, having a job meant more freedom for me - I would not be living on my parents or scholarship money.  Also the summer was coming and I had no big plans for it.

I was sitting and waiting behind the door with other candidates. There were four of us, it was a group interview. There were a lot of people rushing by and doing what they had to do to keep the new startup company working.

I had already made my first friend in there - a local wiener dog called Toby. I remember that I was playing with him to calm my nerves. True, I had prepared myself a lot for it but I was still nervous.

I remember only little about the interview itself. I can call out a few faces and I remember that a fellow-candidate talked a lot about how he liked swimming and wanted to continue swimming (I am not making this up. Even then I thought how much out of context this was. Dude, if you want to get a job, don't talk about how much you like to swim, unless you apply for a lifeguard position). I knew already then that what they were looking for was not only the skills, but also the attitude - how you as a person would fit into the group.

They sent me (and I assume that to other candidates as well) a test task the next day. There were four scenarios, one of them was about explaining technical details to an old person. (No, I don't remember it. I found the email in my mailbox while writing this text).

Then there was the waiting. The long waiting for a reply. I really do remember the waiting and I also remember giving up on the waiting.

On 26th of June they finally replied and said yes, I was accepted to the company. 

Little did I know, when I started this journey, how long it was going to be. 

 

This Friday, 16.10.2015 is my last day in this company. It has been nine and a half years - almost a decade. It is one of the longest relationships I have ever had in my life. I have changed a lot during that time and so has the company. 

If you did not figure it out yet, the company that I am talking about is Skype. I started working there in summer 2006 as a Customer Support Person - English Language.

Here is a video about Skype Tallinn office in late 2006, you can also see the dog Toby running around there.

However, it is not the office where I had the interview or where I started working in the first place. When I had the interview the office was located in a section of the Tallinn Cybernetics House. My first workday was also the grad opening of a new small temporary office for a few teams (support included).

There were maybe 15 or so people in total doing all the customer support at that time. We got emails from customers and we replied to them as well as we could. If you did not know the answer you googled it or asked from colleagues. That was it - no first, second, third level of support with escalations and ping pong. It was plain and simple. There was a quick training about internal tools and processes and then you sat in front of a computer with a more experienced colleague who helped you out if needed. I do not remember the first email that I replied to, but I still remember the coaching part. We analyzed the problem together and before I replied my more experienced colleague said: "And now think like this: Dear Maria (assuming Maria was the name of the customer), how can I help you today?"  

It was plain and simple and I still think that this sentence should be behind every customer interaction. The willingness to help, the intention should in my opinion be more important than anything else. If you really, truly want to help, you will find a solution.

The attitude of the company was plain and simple as well. The contract said that you had to work 8 hours per day - you could choose how, when and where (this was applicable only when you had a laptop. I didn't at the beginning) you did the 8 hours. It was the flexibility I needed so I could continue with my studies at the university. Also there were a few times when I could not sleep in the night, walked into the office (the temporary office was not far away - the trolleys  were not working during the night), worked a few hours and walked back home to sleep. Truth to be told, there were also people who sometimes slept in the office and time to time overtime was needed to reply to all of the customer requests so we stayed there for longer hours.

As context, it was the year where the Skype user community reached the first 100 million and the Skype 3.0 for Windows and Skype 2.0 for Mac were released. There were no ideas for Skype on mobile or even for Skype on Smart-TV. The smartphone revolution was still to come and the world had not even seen an iPhone.

When I write this text, the latest Skype for Windows is 7.1 and about 40% of all the international calls are currently done over Skype. A lot has changed. Maybe you have even seen a red Skype logo that was used in the early days? It was blue when I started, but several of the back-end tools still featured the old red one.

This much about Skype at these days, but what about me? Well I had a hipster - rocker thing going on at that time; I had no idea who I was, even less who I wanted to be, I would even say that I was quite an introvert and kind-of nerd at that time.

Here is a picture of my first Skype badge (with name turned into blue blur) - a set of sunglasses and a wig and anyone could theoretically use it, but only theoretically. The company was small at these times. You knew most of the people in the office and we even had some Skype group chats that included most of the office - these were used for serious topics, but also for sharing bad jokes.

It was like a big family. We knew each other, we celebrated birthdays and other events together, we had random parties with colleagues. The spirits were part of the company spirit (you see what I did there?). There was even a sauna and a fun room in the new office (the one in the video) that were used for internal parties. I remember several times when I had some extra work stuff to do late in the evening, went to the office to do it and there arrived at a random party. There was one specific incident that I remember where I had to fast solve a payment case late in the evening (had to be in the office network for that) and while I was working there a few fellow skypers went by with a box of beer and gave a few to me as well - feeling sorry for me.

We worked hard and we partied hard. We had a feeling of connectedness.

* The emoticon (poolparty) is there to celebrate one of the really wild parties. The emoticon (heidy) is for one of the Skypers (who was like a squirrel ... in a good way) and there is a emoticon (toivo) that even has Toby included. Later some other skypers were also included in the hidden emoticons :)

What has changed?

 

I would say that almost everything. All though if you search for the biggest news of 2006 and compare it with 2015, it might look as if the global issues are still the same or really similar. (human nature is human nature and big headlines are big headlines).

The company started to change. While it was easy to solve the customer issues in the beginning - you just went to the right developer if needed and had a talk with him (it was your call to decide if the issue was big enough or not) - as the company grew bigger it was only logical that internal processes were set up for these kinds of needs. We went from free spirit and personal judgement to numbers, but it made sense if you count in the amount of employees and customers.

It was time to grow up and embrace the changes that came with it. However, I feel that something valuable got lost as well.

Some time ago I had a meeting about increasing the team spirit in one of the offsite teams and it was mentioned that having events together outside of the work time would have a positive effect (like drinking together in a pub or having a hobby together). It was then when I thought back to the early days of Skype. We had a common identity and team spirit. We wanted to change the world ... and we did. However, with the increase of people, it all slowly started to change and diminish. The newcomers did not have the same feeling or history as we oldies had. It was only natural - the group dynamics change when the group changes.

A month or so ago I bumped into a person in supermarket. A person who had worked in the company in the early days. We had not seen each other for years, but we remembered each other. We had not worked together too much, but we had had the shared experience. We had a short but really heartwarming and friendly conversation.

There  are not too many people left from the early days in the company - a lot have left. We are bigger and therefore there's more paperwork and more policies. I don't say it is worse or better, all I am saying is that it is very different compared to the beginning.

I am also different. A lot has changed in my life with this decade. I have grown a lot as a person (I hope so at least). There have been too many major events in my life to list all of them down, however here are some: took a cat, almost faced death, started and finished a bachelors degree, started with improv theater, bought an apartment.

Now this journey, this step in my life is ending as well. This writing is here to look back and write down some memories, to say Thank You to everyone I had the pleasure to work with and also a Thank You to everyone else who was part of this journey in whatever way. 

There were ups and downs in the company and also in my life, but next to that there were a lot of really great and amazing people.

And as I am the last one left in the customer support area (true, I am way higher than in the beginning, but still within the support section) from the original team that I started with, I will turn off the lights tomorrow when I leave, for all of you.

Thank you!

(this text is just my personal opinion and my personal memories that might not be fully accurate. All data used is from internet.)