I am in my last days at my current job. I started as the tenth or eleventh employee, the third developer. Two years later, the company is now over seventy-five employees, with a team of twenty developers. I am the Director of Engineering.

Since the beginning, I have worked to build a culture that welcomes questions, values differences, and gives people what they need to do their work. It wasn't altruistic. This is the culture that I thrive within. When I announced I was leaving for another company, I heard from many people a concern for what would happen to the culture we had created without me there to help protect and guide it. I haven't a good answer for this concern, but in a conversation today a phrase came out that I think points in the right direction:

We feel this in all kind of areas of life, this feeling that something is not quite right, not quite the way it should be. For a long time, I ignored these feelings, not wanting to be seen as a needy. It was more important to me that people see me as easy to get along with than it was for me to express my needs and find a way to meet them.

In my first week at the company, I asked one of the founders what he expected of me as a new member of the team. He told me to bring my whole self. That was the encouragement that I needed. I decided that inside this company, I would not ignore the twinge. I brought up issues as I saw them, and I worked with people to find a way that better met everyone's needs. I setup tools to help people get to know each other better while working remote. As we brought on more developers, I asked for feedback about things that were working and things that weren't. I pushed for an environment that would allow people to work in a way that worked for them. I pushed for this for primarily for myself, because I needed it.

In my last week, I'm hearing from people that my efforts were noticed and appreciated, that they have benefitted from me bringing my whole self to this company. I'm very happy to hear this has been the case. I'm not going to say that any person could do what I did. My life experience has molded me in a certain way. I see things and react to things differently than other people. Sometimes that helps me and sometimes it hinders me. But that is true for everyone. We all see things differently. Each of our experiences have molded us in a different way. And every one of those perspectives is crucial to building a place in which we can work (and live) happily. We each contribute in different ways to building that place. We do so by not ignoring who we are and what we need.

It will be painful in the moment, but ignoring the twinge is just delaying the pain, not removing it. You will benefit and the people around you will as well. Don't ignore the twinge.