Exiting in good faith

Over the past four years, I’ve spent a lot of my time advising CTOs on how to manage their careers both in this column and on my Weblog. In my very first column, I outlined what I think it means to be a CTO, and since then I’ve walked you through my day-to-day trials and tribulations, hoping that reading about my successes and failures would be instructive — maybe even entertaining.

This week, I’m going to broach a topic that’s among the most important to any CTO’s career: how to exit your current job gracefully when an irresistible opportunity comes along.

As with all my columns, I’m writing this one from experience. After my final column next week, I’ll be leaving InfoWorld to accept a new position at Yahoo, hanging up the CTO hat I’ve worn for the past seven years in favor of something completely different (see my blog for more details on the new gig).

How you leave a job can say more about you than all the work you did — particularly if you leave badly, which can cancel out your hard-earned accomplishments. In my case, I decided to focus on one simple goal: making sure that InfoWorld doesn’t miss an operational beat as I depart. That’s the least I can do for an organization that has treated me well and that I still believe in.

A commitment to a new employer doesn’t absolve you of responsibilities to a current employer that has treated you well, put food on your table, and trained you for the next stage of your career. Not only should you not burn bridges, you should try to fill in a few potholes and touch up some peeling paint as you exit. It’s the right thing to do.

One of the key things I’ve learned is that the power of a position like CTO seldom rests in deep wells of specific knowledge. It resides in your ability to pass information to your team and the rest of the business.

If you think your value and importance rests in knowledge you have that others don’t, you’re not doing your job. That’s why I’m leaving without worrying much about balls being dropped. From an IT standpoint, there’s absolutely no mystery about what I’ve done at InfoWorld, and my team is prepared to assume key duties until my successor is named. Rather than leave a thick binder of paper for my eventual replacement, I decided to practice what I’ve preached in the past: I created a blog on our intranet with detailed information on key vendors, contracts, budget issues, and recommendations for the future.

IT management is chock-full of cross-dependencies, and as I prepared for my departure, I realized that there was no better way to adequately explain how everything connects than to actually show the connections with hyperlinked, well-categorized, and searchable blog entries. Where hyperlinks don’t suffice and I have to point to something in the analog world, I write: “Reference the file labeled ‘Web hosting’ in the top drawer of my filing cabinet.’ ” After I leave, I don’t want people bemoaning my departure. I want them thanking me for leaving them prepared to continue the business of running InfoWorld.

When you read next week’s column, be sure to draw the shades of your office and have some tissues close at hand because I can get a bit sentimental. But I’ll also be telling you about a replacement for my column that I can’t wait to read myself. Stay tuned.