Niels Joaquin

[Note: This was originally an internal memo that I wrote when I resigned from the company that has meant the most to me personally. Although the intended audience is small, I’ve posted it publicly because it covers a very important period of my life.]

It’s still hard for me to believe I’m leaving Care/of.

This farewell is a big shift in a long-running trend for me. For every corporate job I’ve left, I’ve always written an overly long, valedictory missive—but it was often because I was leaving the place with some irreconcilable differences. Something fundamental had changed—the tides were turning; a dream was fading—and my writing was a chance to take control of a conversation where, as a more junior employee, I didn’t have a voice.

In my last weeks (months?) at Care/of, my feelings are nothing like that this time. I don’t have anger to expel anymore. I was entrusted with a team, granted enormous freedom to pick our projects. I was given a platform and the priceless gift of not having to filter who I am. So there’s no new conversation for me to commandeer as I depart. Instead, the only feeling I want to leave you with is the warmth in my heart for the person who brought me here, and for the beautiful team I got to build.

Episode 1—The Man of Splendid Virtue; or, Chapters 1 and 2

I’ve known Craig Elbert for almost seven years now. It’s hard for me to explain the very unique way that he’s changed my life.

I rarely use phrases like “changed my life,” too drunk are they on our fleeting emotions—so I’m sincere when I say it. No one’s ever come close to caring about me professionally the way that Craig has, over each one of those seven years. When I was at Bonobos, he would send me messages like this:

From: Craig Elbert
Date: Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: [data-discuss] Re: First consumer science meeting of the year
To: Niels Joaquin
Cc: David Glueck

Hey Niels - sorry I had to miss the meeting today, but David walked me through some of this yesterday and I just flipped through the deck.

Love the way you laid this out, created the equation, decision rule and graphed the function. Very cool, good explanation and valuable to the team to see this stuff. Great work!

Or this, a year later:

From: Craig Elbert
Date: Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:18 PM
Subject: Re: [data-discuss] Data science update, Sprint 6 (part 1 of 2)
To: Niels Joaquin

Hey I loved that customer clustering stuff. Was excited and surprised to see us able to do that already.

Really excited to have a tight, productive relationship with data science and marketing this year.

Thanks for being so smart! Have a good weekend.

Are you wondering why I still have records of these ephemera—corporate trifles, subject lines with bracketed naming conventions, references to a forgotten “deck” that was doubtlessly presented in a conference room with empty dry-erase markers and a themed name? I emailed these notes to myself because they meant so much to me. I wanted to hold onto them.

You have to understand that I was still painfully shy in my first years in New York. And Craig, as you can imagine, cast quite a figure at Bonobos. Lanky, mischievously irreverent, casually hip in his tattered espadrilles and his sun-bleached sweatshirt (I assume the gaping rip at the elbow must be well earned and not factory-distressed), he could charm you with his goofball raillery and then regale you with his knowledge of postmodern literature. He could talk about David Foster Wallace without ever approaching douchebaggery. He won the equivalent of the core-values award at the company, but for all the values, for the entire year: he was widely admired for everything he did to build the company’s culture.

When Bonobos did some stunt marketing in 2014 to get football coach Jim Harbaugh to glow up his démodé khaki pants, the copy was so clearly oozing Craig’s humor that I knew he’d written it personally without ever having to ask. (I just confirmed that, yes, he did indeed write this himself.) It’s a tight, inspired piece of absurd comedy—the kind that, as a fellow writer, you kind of just have to applaud. And it was the first of many discoveries I’d have about Craig’s hidden artistic talents.

So sure, getting shout-outs from Craig was definitely flattery from a person up on high. But it ran deeper than that.

Occasionally people will directly ask me why I spend so much time writing these laudatory profiles (“It’s a little creepy!” —Jaimie¹). And my gut reaction to that question is … DON’T YOU FEEL THESE THINGS AND WANT TO SAY THEM, TOO? (In Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler confesses: “I don’t know if there is anything wrong because I don’t know how other people are.”) I’d like to think that we all have really strong feelings of gratitude for the people in our lives, but we’re just not used to being open about them—or to having a venue for expressing them. We toast people when they get married, or turn seventy, or win awards. That’s weird to me. Why just on those occasions? I don’t know if I’ll ever live in an emotionally open environment where a multi-page appreciation of Ryan’s back-end work or a villanelle to Dr. Eric will be “normal” things to spend one’s time on,² but maybe that was my aspiration. I wanted to foster that culture here.

Craig’s early words of encouragement—internally motivated, grateful, specific—made me feel like I mattered. And if those simple messages of thanks and his plea to get me to stay at Bonobos had been the sum total of his contribution to my career, I would already feel immense gratitude, looking back on those years, for someone who sincerely cared about me. They were small gestures, but goddamn if they didn’t matter to me. As you move up in your career, your potential to impact other people’s lives will grow. And that is why substantial feedback and emotional openness are so vital to who I am: perhaps I write and write because I want to have the same impact on others that Craig’s had on me.

---

The thing is—those weren’t his only contributions. An entire second chapter followed: the one that you’re a part of, and the one that’s now winding down. Craig checked in with me a few months after I’d left Bonobos; we talked about movies at BAM and Pynchon and, later, his twin creations of Whit and Care/of; he introduced me to big boss Raws at Shutterstock, to more data people, to Jed and Patrick at Juxtapose; we broached the idea of a data team in the summer of 2016; we considered contract work (the progenitor of user_survey_dim) but ultimately converted that arrangement into full-time employment.

As I finally got to know Craig as a friend (instead of as LinkedIn’s was-senior-to-Niels-but-didn’t-manage-directly), a lot of biographical parallels between us came into focus. We’re both from the midsection of the country—he loves it more than I do—and we traveled from there to the Northeast for school; we took the route of at least partially studying economics (but he balanced it with English—which is what I originally wanted to do); we moved to New York, for startup life, and made it our home; we have similar ambitions for what we want to do after.

For me, those parallels add even more dimension to Craig’s loyal support. In Philip Roth’s novel The Ghost Writer, the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, is a budding man of letters who gets to visit his literary idol in person for the first time. After a particularly witty exchange with his hero, Zuckerman is overwhelmed with starstruck admiration—an emotion he explains as “a son’s girlish love for the man of splendid virtue and high achievement who understands life, and who understands the son, and who approves.”

I wouldn’t take the parent/child thing too literally—Craig and I are about the same age. And funnily enough, we both seem to reach for parenting analogies off the shelf when we talk about management. But that passage really struck me when I read it. It gets at a feeling I hadn’t seen described before: an admittedly naïve glorification of someone that approaches feelings of love—but an affection that exists because of a deep need for artistic mentors, or for surrogate parents into adulthood.

I feel what Nathan Zuckerman so incisively expresses. This month was so tough for me because—while I most definitely have dissenting opinions about what went down, and while I’m still hurting over irreversible change—I know Craig is responsible for a much bigger family, and I know he has to make an intractable equation work. The FC associates depend on him; the large team at Varick depends on him; Vermont depends on him. Hundreds of people need Care/of to work for their livelihoods, and that is the crucial responsibility of running a company. No one shoulders this burden more than he does. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.

A big part of humility is appreciating that you will never have the full picture. I can never fully know your world, and you can never fully know mine. Yet we still have to make imperfect decisions under incomplete information throughout life—and, in that process, strive to empathize with fears and desires we can never fully internalize. Figuring out exactly how to pull that off is wisdom, and grace.

So I end where I began (one of the greatest writing clichés): it’s still hard for me to believe I’m leaving Care/of. But to repay the man of splendid virtue and high achievement who understands life, and who understands the son, and who approves—I had to write out Chapters 1 and 2 this way.

Craig, in all sincerity, I have so much love for you and truly look up to you. And I want your company to blossom. I hope in Chapter 3 that we’re men of letters. Otherwise I’ll have to find more startups that will let me post shit like this in public forums and make shrooms jokes with impunity, which is pretty much impossible.

Episode 2—The Moment Was All

But we—against the brick, against the branches, we six, out of how many million millions, for one moment out of what measureless abundance of past time and time to come, burnt there triumphant. The moment was all; the moment was enough.

—Virginia Woolf, The Waves

(1) Emil, the elusive unicorn, the Great Dane! I worked for more than two years without a data engineer: the single point of failure. It was stressful, and frustrating—and really risky for Care/of! But being on call for more than 750 days straight was totally worth it if it meant that I got to meet you and work with you. The level of care and diligence that you put into everything is peerless. I’m not really sure it can even be taught: it’s intrinsic to who you are, and it’s exceedingly difficult to find in people.

You are the absolute best person to carry this torch into Care/of’s new era of data. This is the first time I’ve ever left a job and known with certainty that my work would, in some meaningful way, live on. The super-rational side of you once told me that it’s misguided (or naïvely enthusiastic) to think that a given co-worker could be once-in-a-lifetime great, or even once-in-a-decade great: we don’t experience rare events often, by definition, so how rare could this instance really be? But I don’t know—you defy probability.

(2) Mika, the way you continue to stretch yourself month after month in your role is so admirable. The analytics team has been an interesting subdepartment in my time here: perpetually in early stages, always lacking a real manager. But for every setback we’ve had, it’s not even really accurate to say that you bounce back from disappointments, because they never put you back to begin with. You just move forward, undaunted and infinitely patient. Woe to anyone who still doesn’t know you are playing 3-D chess. We truly are pawns in the game of chess that is your life.

(3) ERD, man, it’s gonna be so hard not seeing you every day. I’ve already used the word mensch to describe you, but it was tailor-made for people like you! So much of my joy at Care/of came from your wild inventiveness and your humor, which everyone notices immediately upon meeting you. At the same time, you are also wonderfully mature and levelheaded, and I honestly could have seen you running this whole department. You have the composure, the decency, the intelligence, and the drive for it. My only regret is that you needed so little help from me, so we never really shared as much time as I would’ve liked. It wasn’t nearly enough! Let’s make up for that.

(4) Wilson, you really inspire me the most. You were in the trenches, worked shitty jobs, went back to school at a non-traditional time, built a new life, became a homeowner. You’ve taught me what prudence is: this is what it looks like when someone invests in long-term things, sticks with them tenaciously, and reaps the harvest. Your hard work lets you appreciate the world around you, because you know the value of things that are earned. Ultimately, this helps you approach life with the right attitude, and with enviable happiness. I wish I could see the world through your lens.

(5) Tanya, I learned very important lessons from you. You challenged me to think hard about inclusion and my own biases. The tricky thing about unconscious bias is that it’s unconscious: it can be even more pernicious than being actively hateful, because certain patterns have just become part of the way you think, or have become even more generally institutionalized.

I didn’t push hard enough to assemble a diverse team, and I had the power to do so for a long time. And when you challenged me about the use of the word “aggressive” in describing women vs. men, I saw I’d fallen into traps that I mistakenly thought I was separate from. Thank you for starting this conversation with me: that’s not an easy thing to do. I will continue to have that conversation and pay it forward.

(6) Tristan, what can I say … Your first months at 9 Great Jones were maybe the most fun I ever had here. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to have a nerdy friend (Well, you were nerdy at one point, but then you went mainstream) with whom I could get coffee and share meals and refaire le monde autour d’une bière. I want to see you change the world, and I know you will.

A few more shout-outs:

Bryce, I’m happy that I’ve now seen CX Bryce, data Bryce, literary Bryce, and Twitter Bryce. I have yet to see TikTok Bryce but I am not 13. You are one of the remaining Care/ovians who precede me in tenure—and it makes total sense, because you are so foundational to the culture here. I think you win the “It wouldn’t be Care/of without you” trophy, hands down. Thank you for bringing me into your universe. I feel lucky to have a window into your worldview and your fresh-out-the-oven hot takes.

Joseph, this might be a controversial statement—like many of your own statements—but you are my idea of the kind of engineering culture I wanted to foster here: inclusive, thoughtful, empathetic; transparent, eager to share knowledge—with a keen eye for how things connect. You are young, and with the right kind of mentorship, you’ll become an amazing technical leader. I appreciate your incredible support of my department, and much more so, I appreciate your friendship.

Ryan (You know I had to do it), it’s been a long time since you’ve been here. Very few people were even around when you were, at this point. But when I think about what health tech could be at Care/of, I’ll always think of you. You completely shaped my own thinking of what was possible, and what we could create together. When you made a point to get a one-on-one with me in your second week to ask, “What exactly is your data agenda here?” I knew you meant business. I know you’re perennially in search of the right company that fits you and inspires you—but whatever you do in the future, I hope you find happiness.

Episode 3—Thanks for Supporting This Weird Thing

I’ve been thinking about LCD Soundsystem’s “Home” for the last several months, long before I knew that I would be leaving. It’s a masterpiece of a record—one of my top … three songs of all time—and, like “All My Friends,” “Losing My Edge,” “I Can Change,” and “Someone Great,” it’s a song that has become dearly personal to me. LCD’s songs are often epic in length, and always epic in confessional. If I wanted to find the common thread in my favorites, it’s that, at their core, they’re always juggling the same two dominant themes in opposition. On one hand, there’s this unabashedly joyous indulgence in life’s social bonds, often in the form of just straight-up partying. But looming over the bacchanalia are the anxieties of belatedly becoming an adult, of harboring insecurities, of fighting with the people you love, of reluctantly saying a long goodbye to things that must pass.

“All My Friends” achieves this mixture with gorgeous precision. In the simplest words, you get that potent blend of sensing the imminent end and celebrating with full conviction:

To tell the truth, oh this could be the last time
So here we go, like a sales force into the night

I love those lines so much. I can feel the forward motion. I can feel that night.

Even more wistfully, the song “Home” expresses a frustration we all eventually face, toiling for a version of happiness that’s confounding and chimerical, always shifting sneakily under your feet. At the start of the year, I was working hard toward a certain projection of happiness I had settled on; within the first weeks, that figure assumed a totally new form. I had to adjust instantly to a new version, turning away with purpose and finality.

When you make decisions in times of heightened emotion, it’s normal to come down later and start to re-evaluate—supposedly with more rationality. And then you start weighing the validity of those initial feelings. What were the instant reactions that I couldn’t control, and that will fade: had they been masking a deeper kernel of truth? Are emotions impurities that have to evaporate, ultimately leaving behind what is right and true?

And this is what you’ve waited for
But under lights, we’re all unsure
And so tell me
What would make you feel better?

For me, “Home” encapsulates this conflicted, self-doubting happiness, in lyrics and melody. Again I can picture the particular setting that James Murphy sketches, and the feelings start to transcend the time and place described. You “grab your things and stumble into the night”—maybe somewhere on Avenue A, or in East Williamsburg—the frigid air somehow still penetrating your overcoat-wrapped layers, your unusually formal shoes pinching just a little too tightly. It’s the familiar New Year’s Eve revelry, repeating the motions of the last several years. The mood should be ecstatic, but there’s a tug on your soul, as there always will be from now on—and the night is tinged with unrest, craving a cathartic release.

I’d love for you to watch, right now, when LCD Soundsystem performed “Home” at what would’ve been their final concert in Madison Square Garden—and then return to these thoughts later. It has to be a multimedia experience; you have to feel where the music transports you.

The most striking lines of “Home” have got to be the final ones. But it won’t do them justice to read the lyrics straight; they are naked without the progression of the music, and the collective howl of life packed into it. For once, words can barely get you there:

If you’re afraid of what you need
If you’re afraid of what you need
Look around you
You’re surrounded
It won’t get any better

And so, good night

I depart with this moment, knowing of no other way to convey how I feel. I’ve written a novel’s length of prose at this company, always in the service of making some technical concept digestible—trying to show why I think an idea is important, even if it seems recondite at first glance. In technical writing, you pride yourself on being the business/tech bridge, or the bilingual translator: I will take something foreign and try my best to mold and reshape it into something meaningful to you.

I want you to know what this side feels like; I want you to know why I care.

But paragraphs of writing won’t work in every situation: they can’t always cover the rich spectrum of our experience sufficiently, even if the pen has become the primary tool of my life for any attempt to do so. Then as the Talking Heads percussion of “Home” builds and swells; as the sixteenth notes bounce off each other with abandon; as the chorus of “Ah-ahhh“s find their pent-up release, and many voices address me—

Look around you
You’re surrounded
It won’t get any better—

for my raw feelings, in dire need of reshaping to become something universal, I couldn’t possibly find a better translator.