Dear Stefano,

I hope you are in the best of health and spirit. I have started this letter many times in my head — in cars, during walks, at my desk — and every single time I stopped, because how do you even begin to thank someone who was never really just a manager? I still remember the 12th of December 2017, my interview at the Modena office. I had just finished my masters in Piacenza — fresh out of university, terrified, trying very hard to look like I knew what I was doing. And then, on the 1st of February 2018, you took me under your wings anyway. You were my first manager in my first real career. Working with you over the years, I realize no one has ever had a better first manager than me.

You have always been very understanding about my afflictions — my outsider situation, my failure to integrate in Italy, all of it. And then Covid, the remote work, and most importantly when I broke my left elbow in 2021. No job description in this world includes a manager carrying his report’s groceries up three floors, every other day. But you did it, and you never once made me feel like it was a burden. For that, I thank you. And the drives — you dropping me at my flat after work, time after time, all those deep conversations in that car. Some of my best weeks in Modena ended in that passenger seat. For that, I thank you.

When I decided to ask HR at Empirix to relocate me to the UK — essentially walking away from the team, the projects — you supported me like no other manager would. You always wanted my happiness more than my output, and even when I drifted into another team entirely, you were still there, happy for me, even though it meant I would never work on the same projects again. Who does that? For that, I thank you.

One of the last times we spoke, we recollected some of the wonderful times together, and I almost had tears right there. I am glad I did not hold them back, and that I made sure to tell you how much you mean to me.

I wanted to share a piece of my heritage with you as a token of my gratitude — a small statue of Thiruvalluvar, an ancient Tamil philosopher from 1 BCE, whose secular treatise on ethics, politics, economics and love, the Thirukural, has stood for over two thousand years, much like the classical stoic philosophy of Rome. It felt right, because your calm and composed approach during trying times has been the most stoic thing I have ever witnessed — a lesson I strive to keep.

One of his verses reminded me of your guidance.

செய்யாமல் செய்த உதவிக்கு வையகமும் வானகமும் ஆற்றல் அரிது.

Transliteration: Seyāmal seytha uthavikku vaiyakamum vānakamum ātral arithu

Meaning: Unsolicited aid — help given when none was expected or previously received — cannot be adequately repaid even by giving the entire earth and heaven in return.

If any verse was ever written about you, it is this one. Everything you gave me was unsolicited — the guidance, the rides, the groceries, the patience with a foreign kid who just could not find his footing. I cannot repay it; earth and heaven are slightly out of my budget. But I hope you know that I carry it with me, and that whatever I become in my career, the first chapters of it will always have your handwriting on them.

Thank you, Stefano. For everything. For being family when I had none around.

With gratitude,

— Manoj