Tech swallowed me up and spit me out.
I feel chewed up, partially dissolved… not quite my full self.
Tech swallowed me up and spit me out, like it did many hundreds of thousands of other tech workers over the past few months.
200,000+ workers have been laid off in tech since the beginning of 2022. And many in ways that can only be described as absolutely soul-less and dehumanizing.
My experience is my own and Im thankful to be through with it. Ive been in the belly of the beast for far too long and I feel chewed up, partially dissolved… not quite my full self.
Turns out that “hyper-growth“ and “moving fast and breaking shit” coupled with an unstoppable drive for “exponential YoY growth” that is centred only on shareholder returns (not customer value) doesn’t make for humane work experiences and it is not something I find fulfillment or purpose in. It’s not surprising that many of us feel frustrated, hurt, tired and burnt to a crisp.
Many of us got into technology because of the opportunity to innovate, build and identify or define new frontiers. To use technology for the betterment of human experiences. But, today I don’t think that’s what happens, most of the work feels like innovation theater, a story to tell to shareholders. All while the actual rate of innovations is slowing “I can only conclude this is because most of our R&D efforts since 1980 have focused on short-term profit-motivated refinements rather than the development of novel ideas that would substantially improve our lives.”
Whether “Impacted by layoffs…” or having chosen leaving that world behind on your own terms…there is the very real problem of the golden handcuffs and what shedding them means. When our personal debts, rising cost of living and dependencies on health insurance are tied to inflated tech salaries, how do we find our way back to work that doesn’t require “loosing our soul” and allows us to live a more fulfilling life and support our families.
Watching continuous waves of layoffs wash over the tech industry over the past few months has been hard - a combination of complete shock and an expected confirmation. For those of us who have been able to peek behind the curtain and get a view of how technology gets conceived, developed and released into the world, none of what is happening is truly surprising (still shocking, but not surprising).
Most of us know that the tech industry is addicted to pain killers. The quick, superficial “fixes”, increases in the vanity metrics, upticks of a single metric on the latest flashy dashboard. As the economy seems more and more uncertain for the foreseeable future, the focus always becomes about increasing sales, a myopic focus on growth for the sake of growth, not value.
If you look at the teams that are being let go, especially within R+D, its designers, strategists and researchers - its teams whose contributions are not as easily confined within these frameworks of “business success”. Their work is often seen as “slow” and “hard to measure”, they often focus on long-term improvements to the experience for the users of a product or service. Systemic change, not immediate financial gains and things to be measured in isolation.
So the tech industry continues on this trend of popping pain pills, trying to dull the symptoms of bigger underlying problems that we are not willing to address.
It seems that the tech industry as a whole is not willing to make investments in figuring out the chronic lingering issue, and instead is continuing to gulp down those pain pills and lay off hundred of thousands of individuals who are working on the wicked problems, the inter-connected systemic challenges, pushing for human centricity as a driving factor in the technologies we release out into the world. But emerging from the belly of the beast, all dizzy and disoriented, many of us know just how deep the tech industries’ addiction to growth, scale and speed runs.
Listen, yes, I am salty. But I am not anti-technology, I am anti-technology industry as it exists today. I feel like as a collective, we know that the things that will guide recovery are a deeper change in habits and mindsets. Just like healthy diet, exercise, sleep, drinking enough water all sustain our bodies, the teams that are meant to help shift us to a more humane approach to technology, those trying to build muscles for sustainable habits and cultures that focus on HUMANS not TECHNOLOGY first, are those that are first to go. Ironic, especially considering that “technology evolved from an originally Greek word technologia (…) and even back to the original Greek, technology has been a careful, thoughtful, systematic approach to doing something; a technique.” This deeper change will take a culture where we can admit to not knowing the answer based on a single experiment. It takes systematic inquiry, not growth hacking. It takes sustained time and commitment, intentional investment and reflection. These are not things I have seen much of in the tech industry.
These mass tech layoffs we are seeing are a result of this addiction to speed, growth, the glorification of “the next cool technology” and short term fixes.
My hope is that enough of us who have been spit out will seek out new ways of working, pursuing meaningful change in other places and through other engagement models. And continue the search for progress, purposeful work and true innovation in / through technology.
I’ll leave you with this fight song from Santigold.
Sincerely,
Salty and tired, for now…