In late May, my department head announced to our team that he had metastatic cancer in his abdomen. I had never heard of such cancer before and within 10 minutes of Googling, I knew he may not be in our life much longer.
Over the next few months, he went on short-term disability for chemotherapy. From time to time he would show up to our virtual monthly Friday Happy Hour, and we made sure to distract him from chemo.
On Monday, 09/28/2020, the interim team lead held a meeting about his health. Understanding the suddenness of the meeting, I knew it was time. “He was put in home hospice care,” the interim team lead said. He passed on that night at the age of 60. While surrounded by his family members, he died without retiring.
I can’t say I knew him very well, since he worked out of NYC office and was constantly traveling and I work out of the Baltimore office. We had a couple of genuine conversations. And I am grateful that he played a pivotal role in my income growth journey that spanned over 4 years.
I had a career setback early in my career and by the time I was 27, I was with my 4th company and wanted some stability. At the same time, I worked hard to set myself up for promotion. Two years later, due to management changes and a poor company performance, I didn’t get a promotion I thought I would get.
I was struggling between a decision to start job searching again and staying. I ended up staying with the same company for four more years, thanks to the department head. At the time, he was running a small but rapidly growing initiative with a couple of full time employees and looking to add more staff. After a couple rounds of interviews, he offered me a position with no pay bump.
While I hadn’t found in the FI community at that point, I knew I wasn’t going to change jobs without a pay bump. I negotiated and he ended up offering me a 7% bump. My department head at the time then offered me the promotion with 10% salary bump at year end. Since the competition was between two departments in the same company, I didn’t ask for a second counter and accepted the promotion, which was honored after year-end.
I stayed on my position for another 2 years. Feeling embarrassed I avoided him when he came down from NYC for work. I also didn’t expect to have another opportunity to work from him.
Meanwhile, his team kept growing and needed an additional staff again. To my surprise, he and I met again. It was awkward for me since I rejected his offer the first time. He reassured me that he didn’t take my rejection against me since I needed to make my own financial decision. He valued my skills and liked me. He also came prepared this time. Within a week of so, I got an offer with a 13% bump which I accepted without negotiating.
I learned over the next 2 years that he was passionate about his job, travelled extensively for work, and commuted close to 3 hours a day. He moved from South Africa when he was in his early 40s for the American Dream but remained close to his children even though they lived thousands of miles apart. A few of them moved to the US in recent years and lived with him.
When I think about his early and untimely death, I can’t help but feel grateful that he liked me and gave me two opportunities to join his team. Because of him, I was able to achieve my goal of increasing my compensation twice while staying in one company.
At the same time, I lament over the fact that he was a workaholic and did not get to have a well-deserved retirement. I also wonder if he wasn’t so driven he would not have left us so soon. While I can speculate all I want, I have to take solace over the fact that due to COVID he worked from home and had more interactions with his family members than he would have otherwise if he were still commuting.
More importantly, he was surrounded by family members after restarting his professional journey alone in America 20 years ago.
Farewell, John, till we meet again. I will always remember how kind you were to me, how much you helped me in my journey to FI, and how I should approach work as I get closer to FI.