I consider myself to be extremely lucky. I have a wonderful family, friends and a fantastic job. It is the type of job I can’t wait to get to in the morning, and usually end up taking home as well. I work with some fantastic people on hard problems. I have worked on five speech recognition engines professionally, and played with two open source projects. The current engine is the cleanest, and most well engineered piece of code I have ever had the pleasure of working on (including CPython, and that says a lot!) No matter how good the code is, it is nothing without the people behind it. The researchers and developers are the hands down the best I have ever had the privilege to work with. Some of the people I am working with, I have been doing so for the past ten years. The nature of the work, technology, and the people it attracts, means that the core groups do not change much over time. It usually takes major events like the breakup of a company or large mergers for people to leave or move groups.
Why am I mentioning all this? Well for the third time in six years, I am not looking forward to work.
Last week we said goodbye to Fred Webber, as he is moving to New York where his wife will advance her career and he can spend more time with their children. I am sure his name will come up again in the future given some of the projects he is looking to work on; now that he doesn’t have all those pesky experiments to get done. Fred has been someone whom I see every day, eat lunch and solve the Guardian Crossword with. He is a fantastic researcher, a calm rational voice, and a practical engineer. Most importantly, he is a good friend. He will be sorely missed.
We have a ‘hit by a buss’ policy at work, which means that while some people have spheres of expertise, no one is irreplaceable. His knowledge and legacy remains intact. As such I have no ‘technical’ fears about the coming days. I also know that we will still be in contact, via the magic of the internet and shared interests. So why do I fear heading back in to the playtime I like to call work? It is a dread based on the hole left, where Fred once was. It is interesting how the physical presence of a person can leave an imprint on a place and influence our experience of those places. It’s not the pain of saying ‘goodbye’; it is the fear of not being able to say ‘hello’.
