three years later...
Three years ago — the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend 2023 — I received the “A Message from Meta’s Leadership Team” email and was informed that I was part of the layoffs that day. It was the outcome I had wanted, though the experience was still jarring. Today, Meta conducted another sizeable round of layoffs (about 8K people or 10%) and stated two more rounds would come later this year.
Tonight, I am sitting in front of my Zoom link for parent-teacher conferences. Post-COVID, parent-teacher conferences have been remote as per our UFT agreement. It’s honestly been a technical nightmare as every teacher has a different Zoom link and (at least at my school) parents sign up via Google Sheet. It’s chaotic and messy and inevitably there’s a broken link or one with incorrect permissions or a parent who can’t get off mute. Part of my tech brain thinks there’s an opportunity to productize this but I’ve also found that ed-tech adoption in the DOE is a whole different beast. (More on this some other time.)
I think I would have liked in-person parent-teacher conferences. I can envision greeting parents in my classroom in front of all my growth-mindset mathematics posters and having the opportunity to show them their child’s work. I’d share with them the same snacks that I stock in my room for the students. I’m experienced enough at giving feedback to casually dole out shit sandwiches — “Your child always participates and self-advocates but they need to ensure they’re not distracting their peers and turn in their work.” “Your child is so capable and recognized as a leader but chose [in the draft] the one person capable of getting them off-task and their grades are reflecting that.”
I still deliver that feedback on Zoom but far fewer parents than I expected usually show up. And it’s usually the same parents. It’s wonderful to see when parents are involved and hear how they’re trying to get their child to care as much as we (parents, teachers) care. Our fourth PTC of the year and what’s been said has been said. There’s three weeks left to the semester and there’s only so much to be done to change the trajectory of a student’s grades.
So, I’m sitting here on a lonely Zoom for another 2 hours, thinking about where I am now versus where I was three years ago, waiting for news about layoffs and trying to manage my team through it.
In business school, the most memorable case studies were about culture. OK, this was over 15 years ago so I don’t actually remember specifics but I DO remember thinking that culture was crucial to company success (Southwest Airlines LUV 0.00%↑ was often cited). As my friends and I got a few years of corporate experience under our belts, culture became a stand out topic of conversation and company choice. I was at Facebook/Meta META 0.00%↑ for so long because I loved the culture and I still fondly remember karaoke nights and the ability to carve your own path.
Three years ago, the company culture already felt toxic. Layoffs were announced months ahead of time and when you do that, people react in understandable but varying ways. Some spun up workstreams to prove their “impact.” Others sat around and waited for the guillotine. There was no easy way to manage people’s reactions and trying to motivate felt futile when I had no control over their destinies nor mine. I don’t envy my friends (Metamates) who have to continue to face uncertainty and I will always mourn the Facebook/Meta that was. I do miss the paycheck and the perks.
I think if I were laid off today, I’d be excited to explore AI projects on my own and I hope that that’s how many of those who were impacted today feel: this is an opportunity even if it doesn’t feel like it immediately. We’re in the midst of a tectonic technological shift. Though I feel “safer” in my career now as a teacher (being an analytics leader in the age of AI seems way less stable), I still feel a desire to learn and upskill and reinvent parts of my career. Who knows where we’ll all be in three years. Summer is just around the corner and I’ll finally have the time to finish that roadtrip memoir I started (not using AI), focus on my grad school coursework (maybe using AI), launch my consultancy (probably using AI), and dabble with some ed-tech ideas (definitely using AI).