How 25 years of exceptional work ends
The morning started with a message in Slack from our CEO stating that it would be a difficult day—that the company would be making strategic cuts in deprioritized areas to ensure future success, or something like that. He said that U.S. employees would be receiving layoff notices within the next three hours.
That was ominous, but I had been through a couple rounds of that at Boeing, and we had purposefully kept our team lean in the past year. I hadn’t re-hired when two of my senior analysts retired. Our team was responsible for the only true design system in the company, we had the only mature CX metrics practice, we provided acclaimed facilitation for workshops across our various product portfolios, and we were supporting some of the most strategic, forward-looking initiatives. The value of our team was obvious to everyone we worked with.
Furthermore, I hadn’t been informed of anything. In past rounds of layoffs, I was informed of the employees I would be laying off and provided with information and instructions prior to public announcements. So, it was concerning, but I wasn’t too worried.
I had a weekly meeting with my user analytics team. We talked about the status of the software contracts we were trying to put in place to replace the tools we were borrowing from Boeing. Then we went over the roadmap for the work we’d been planning for Q1.
That call ended, and I jumped over to the workshop that I had organized for our AI adventure team: a group of designers from across the company that I had assembled to figure out how we can best employ AI to aid our work, as well as how to design for AI capabilities within our products. We had spent four hours the previous day, and we had the second half of the workshop to go.
As soon as I joined the call, our lead facilitator told me that he would not be able to lead the rest of the workshop, as he had just been laid off. That was a shock. Then every other person on the call, aside from those in Europe, chimed in with “Me too.” Some of these were people I managed, some were managed by my manager, and some were on product teams. Every designer in the U.S. that was in the workshop had received notice. So, I checked my email, and sure enough, there was a message from the head of product saying he had “important news.”
We all had about an hour and a half before our access would be cut off. Meanwhile, I was getting Slack messages from other direct reports who weren’t in the workshop stating that they just got laid off. The workshop turned into group therapy for a while. I received a text from my manager to let me know that he had been laid off. Then we all agreed to make sure we’re connected through LinkedIn, said our farewells, and signed off.
I spent a little more time sending and responding to messages in Slack, informing people of the situation. And that was that. I shut down my laptop. All the work that I was doing, the plans I was making, the appointments in my calendar… poof.
It was surreal. No wrap-up, wind-down, or hand-off. Non-U.S. employees that I managed not knowing what to think. I spent the rest of my day updating my LinkedIn profile, composing a post to let the world know that I’m #OpenToWork, and then responding to all of the messages expressing surprise, condolences, support, and thanks. I’m blessed to have such a large network of colleagues and friends around the world.
I still find my mind wandering to problems I was trying to solve, issues I had to fix, people I was supporting, and then I remember that they are no longer my responsibilities.
What hurts the most is the dissolution of the team that I had spent so many years cultivating—the working relationships with the people that I was caring for. We’re scattered in Pittsburgh, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Raleigh, Minnesota, India, Sweden, Spain, and Germany. The reality is that, while I spent more hours with these people on a day-to-day basis than with my family, we’ll now only ever occasionally interact through a message on LinkedIn or an occasional SMS.
And so, I’ll close the cover of that book, the one with the interesting story but unsatisfactory ending, and I’ll open a new one.