Why I'm Leaving Puppet

01.19.2022

It feels like my last day at Puppet was March 13th, 2020. The physical office was a second home where I spent more waking hours than the series of apartments I lived in, and while in the context of the pandemic I felt so lucky I also came to realize that the Puppet I had worked at was gone. Even when (if?) people start going to the office again it will be so different - if nothing else, I'm an entirely different person.

Deciding to leave happened slowly then all at once. Puppet's popularity has been falling, and for a few years now it's felt like our new products are "throwing things at the wall" so to speak. Some things have stuck and some haven't, but once Bolt was deprioritized it was hard to feel energized about the things we were working on. Morale seems extremely low without many signs of improvement, and while it's easy to ascribe that to the Panorama I think high turnover and product direction are contributing.

All of this led me to casually start looking at other companies, and after about a month of searching I was lucky enough to get an offer I'm really excited about from Launch Darkly. I knew that if Heidi Waterhouse and Dawn Parzych worked there it had to be a good place to work, and interviewing with other engineers there confirmed that folks were smart, friendly, and it seems like a place I'll fit into. I'm particularly excited to learn new technologies and repos, and create developer tools that can help develop and release features more smoothly.

Puppet was my first job out of university, and after five and a half years it's hard to summarize how working there changed me over that time. You can find a thank you note slash love letter to my coworkers there, and memories from the last 7 years (5.5 + internship) here. Please keep in touch!

Kisses and revolution,

Lucy

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