originally posted in the ex-verily slack

The hardship that these layoffs bring on is real. For some its hyper real. That it has happened before and will happen again is scarce comfort for the folks hit the hardest.

Yet, maybe there’s something good right over the horizon. Once upon a time my network was a medley of people doing all types of neat things in all sorts of firms. There was an energy then, a sense that all sorts of new things could and would happen. You could feel it in the air.

Then, about 7 years ago, it started to ebb. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, &c. started handing out way more money than anyone else, and big firms started gobbling up smaller ones as fast as they could. Many people—myself included—did well. We raised our wealth and even had fun. The pull was well nigh irresistible.

I remember one chat I had with a friend at a bar in Burlingame in 2014. He had been at Apple before and he would later go to Facebook, but at that time he was working at a new hardware accelerator fund. He told me then that Google is where young people go to retire while still collecting a paycheck. A fat paycheck. He might not have been completely right but he wasn’t wholly wrong.

By 2019 a lot of us were doing well and living in comfort. But at some point I looked up and saw that the energy wasn’t there anymore. It felt akin to visiting the neighborhood you grew up in only to find out that though it looks the same it feels unknown. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe its because we all aged. In fact it’s probably because we all aged.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that—if my network diffuses—that dynamic energy might come back. That would be cool.