The packing process

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I knew that I should expect many culture shifts between IBM and Google. One that became relevant even before the big transition was that IBM Research in NY has private offices, while Google has communal space. There are philosophical differences at play here... should employees work in private spaces, and then convene in communal spaces, or should "home base" be communal, with private spaces scattered about for private meetings, conference calls, etc.? I can leave these questions to corporate space planners...but for me, I had to figure out what to do with "stuff" that accrues after working in one place for nearly 17 years. and decorates your office.

I wish that everything had "expiration dates" like milk or yogurt. If something hasn't been looked at in 10 years, safe to say you can let it go...

Let's start with the shelves that I had at IBM and would not have at Google. The shelves had become museum ledges for all of my textbooks from graduate school. Even a few gems from undergrad. A dictionary of Ancient Greek....not opened, lately. Indeed, almost none of the books had been opened lately. Most hadn't been opened since graduate school. And even if I suddenly wanted to refresh my understanding of acoustic phonetics...would I open textbooks from 25 years ago, or would I seek something "fresher"? The answer is clear. Many, many books got donated. But sentimentality reigns...I still kept quite a few, which will probably live in storage boxes in the basement for more years than they should.

The most amusing collection of useless "saves" were business cards. I had hundreds of them in the archives.  As I looked at them, I realized that many of the companies represented on the cards are no longer in existence. Or the people that worked there then no longer do. And for most of the cards, I didn't have a clue about where they came from. Perhaps I gave a talk at a conference 5 years ago and someone gave me a card as we discussed the presentation afterwards? Maybe it was from a conference that was 10 years ago? In any case...There is no "networking" value for most of these business cards..."I met you somewhere, and I don't know when, but I wanted to follow up about something??" Nearly all of the cards got tossed. How cathartic.