A memoir about what's broken in tech and how to fix it
About
Before the layoffs
Long before any tech company called me a bad fit, I was already someone who didn't default to fitting in. When something wasn't working, my instinct was never to press myself into it harder — it was to change the thing. I changed schools. I moved across the country.
I was never especially interested in trends. I was interested in whether something actually worked, and I was far more curious about what happens when you change a broken thing than about learning to tolerate it.
That instinct came to work with me. It's most of why the label got applied — and most of why I think it was usually the more honest answer.
Then
I'm a user experience designer who survived nine layoffs across startups, government contractors, and Fortune 100 companies, including financial institutions. Each time, some version of “bad fit” came with the news — usually after I'd named a problem nobody wanted named.
Eventually the arithmetic got hard to ignore. Organizations hire problem-solvers and then remove them when the problems turn out to be structural. The individual becomes the explanation so the system doesn't have to be. Getting laid off wasn't proof I'd failed. It was mostly proof I hadn't gone quiet.
Background
I studied at Harvard Extension School and the Rhode Island School of Design from 1996 to 1999, then came into tech through Photoshop, back when the web was young enough that a design skill could be a door. I taught as an adjunct instructor for three semesters.
The real education was watching the same patterns repeat across wildly different organizations: the charismatic CEO who builds something closer to a cult than a culture, the “team of one” trap that isolates you before it eliminates you, the NDAs that keep everyone from finding out they had the same experience.
The part that's uncomfortable
I bring privilege that let me keep my integrity in rooms where other people couldn't afford to. I'm white, I'm educated, and I built investment income over twenty years. That financial floor is what made it possible to say no when staying would have cost me something I wasn't willing to spend. It's part of the story, not a footnote to it — because the flip side is that plenty of people saw exactly what I saw and had to keep quiet.
Years of documenting what breaks in tech workplaces, sent every two weeks. The early warning signs, mostly — the ones worth catching before you become layoff number ten.