In 2004, my friend Greg Long called me up to tell me he was starting a new consulting firm and asked for my help in coming up with a name, logo, and website. Greg partnered with Raazi Imam to found Caiman Consulting, and shortly thereafter I moved to Seattle to come work for the new company.

From those small origins we grew slowly but steadily until we had around 100 employees. In those 15 years I wore a lot of hats, as you tend to do in a small company. I successfully completed over 20 consulting projects. I managed Caiman’s IT, which involved everything from troubleshooting people’s broken laptops, to deploying our CRM and recruiting systems. I strove to be a thought leader for Caiman in business intelligence, data analytics, IT security, and technology in general.

A particular focus of mine was on Caiman’s community and culture. In a consulting firm, it can be hard to form bonds with coworkers as everyone is on-site with clients and not always interacting with their fellow Caimanites. I went at this problem head-on by championing new traditions like the Caiman Annual Post-Holiday Holiday Party, Caiman Trivia Night, and of course the tropical-destination Caiman Annual Meeting. I recruited employees to get involved in newsletters, happy hours, and volunteering events. Everything I did i tried to do with a good dose of humor, to help make Caiman a place where we took our work seriously but never took ourselves too seriously.

Last week, Caiman was acquired by Sia Partners, a Paris-based consulting firm looking to expand their US operations. Along with most of our internal operations staff, I was let go as part of the acquisition. It all happened very fast – two weeks ago I had no inkling of any of it, and today I am unemployed!

I want to stress that I have no hard feelings about any of this. I received a generous severance package plus a good price for my Caiman shares, and the logic behind my departure makes a lot of sense. I also think this is a very smart deal for both Caiman and Sia, and I am excited that all my friends staying on will be able to avail themselves of all the terrific opportunities that come with being part of a bigger firm. From what I can tell, Sia is a great company that shares Caiman’s values and I wish everyone there nothing but success going forward.

I am admittedly very sad though, as the company that I helped build from scratch is now out of my hands. I’m sure some of the traditions I started will continue on in the new company, and others will go away. I’m going to miss working with all my beautiful Caiman friends. I just turned 40 as well so there’s a real “end of an era” feeling coming over me.

I want to thank all the people I worked with at Caiman over the years. I made so many great friends and learned so much from so many different people. We had more fun than you really could expect from a workplace. I’d thank everyone by name but listing them all would get me crying again, so I’ll just say that it’s been an honor and a privilege to work alongside y’all, and thank you for putting up with my terrible puns. I especially want to thank Greg and Raazi for giving me the opportunity to spend so many years working at a place that completely accepted me for who I am.

So I’m now looking for a new job, which is scary. Last time I was in the open job market, people used the classified ads in the newspaper to find jobs. I have some good marketable skills in data and business intelligence, security, IT management, and event planning, but I’ve been a jack-of-all-trades for so long that I’m not exactly sure where I fit into the modern workplace. Ideally I’d like to find another small company that needs a hundred unrelated things done plus someone to liven up meetings with bad jokes. If any of you know of such a place, drop me a line!