My colleague Eric passed away. Cancer sucks, and Eric fought hard to stick it to the disease. His stubbornness throughout the process is exactly one of the things I will miss in him as a colleague.

Shortly after his parental leave for his youngest, Ember, Eric and I were paired on a Donut call, a random social connection at work. Even though Ember’s early months had come with several health issues, Eric didn’t complain about them. He was his sunny self; he had just made a plan. That call, even though we had worked on other products for several years, felt like it was meeting an old friend. We could straight away dive into our personal lives and deep work conversation. Eric wasn’t the person for small talk. I loved that about him.

When he returned, he started focusing on Woo as a product, so we worked much closer together in the following years. Eric was hard to have in meetings. Not in a bad way. On the contrary, Eric asked the difficult questions, didn’t just go for easy answers, and had absolutely no way of hiding it when he disagreed with something. When I had to present something, I often felt that getting Eric’s buy-in was one of the biggest hurdles. And again: that’s a good thing. You need people like Eric in your team because if your argument can’t hold in a conversation with a peer, how would you convince others?

I remember that during one of those calls with the executive team at Woo, Eric talked about the importance of us deeply respecting each other, even looking up to each other. I agree with that, it’s important to be surrounded by people you admire, both in personal and professional environments. I’m certain Eric was that person for everyone who connected with him, in whatever context. I hope that when it’s my time to go, I will have inspired even a fraction of the people Eric touched.

I will miss you, Eric.