Goodbye, Revlon
Today, May 7th, 2015, marks my final day as a Revlon Cosmetics employee. I started on August 25th, 2005, meaning that I’m leaving a little less than four months from my ten-year anniversary.
I came on as consultant that created mostly Flash sitelets (remember those?) and eventually became a full-time employee that had to learn the ins and outs of object-oriented programming. I also learned to drop my bias of corporate environments and learned that doing web stack work in such an environment is just as good as working for a startup…even better in some ways.
But while I was doing the web stack work that I liked (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), I wasn’t doing enough of it. This was due to the changing needs of the company and this is neither a good or bad thing…it’s just the way it is.
I’m moving onto a company called Everyday Health which, as per its Company Overview, is “a leading provider of digital health and wellness solutions.” It also has a TON of web stack work that needs to get done for all its various web properties.
I’m excited about the work I’ll be doing at Everyday Health, but am NOT excited about leaving Revlon. Revlon had its ups and downs like any other company and some of the downs were really bad, but there were many, many, many more ups than there were downs.
The biggest “up” was the extended family I found at the company and leaving all those people sucks. I send a special shout-out to Max Slabyak, whom I worked with for almost all the time I was with Revlon.
I’ve been recounting with Max all week how we went from building web code via emails, instant messages, and web briefs to working practically telepathically. We’ve completed each other very well over the years as well as become very good friends so I will miss that.
I also need to send specific shout-outs to some former bosses, specifically David Giambruno, Piotr Prussak and Erica Homer. Each one backed me up many times while at Revlon so I thank them for that as well.
Finally, I thank the entire Revlon company for becoming my extended family over the past decade. I will miss you all.
I’m simultaneously excited and sad today. :-(