BAD FIT
Cover coming soon
The Book
Nine layoffs. Fifteen years. One conclusion: the system is broken, not you.
Bad Fit is a memoir about surviving nine layoffs over fifteen years as a UX designer in tech - and discovering that being labeled a "bad fit" was often the most honest assessment available.
This isn't a book about resilience or bouncing back. It's about recognizing when organizations hire problem-solvers then eliminate them when systemic issues persist. It's about the scapegoat economy where companies use individuals as convenient explanations for failures that stem from leadership, culture, and incentive structures.
Using OOUX (Object-Oriented User Experience) methodology as both framework and organizing principle, the book maps the patterns that repeat across startups, government contractors, and Fortune 100 companies. The same dysfunction, different building.
"Organizations purchase silence with NDAs and severance, preventing workers from recognizing patterns. When you're the only one saying the emperor has no clothes, it's easy to believe you're the problem. Until you realize dozens of other people said the same thing - they just got paid to disappear quietly."
What makes this different
Most workplace memoirs focus on one dramatic arc: toxic boss, startup failure, discrimination lawsuit. Bad Fit shows the same patterns across multiple companies and industries, revealing systemic problems rather than individual villains.
The book combines personal vulnerability with practical frameworks you can apply immediately. The OOUX color-coding system (blue for objects, yellow for proper nouns, green for actions, pink for metadata) becomes a tool for analyzing your own workplace and recognizing red flags before they cost you your job.
This is for anyone who's been told they're "difficult" for identifying problems, "not a culture fit" for refusing to pretend everything's fine, or "not strategic enough" for caring more about solving problems than managing perceptions.
Key themes
The isolation economy: How companies use NDAs and severance agreements to prevent pattern recognition among workers experiencing the same dysfunction.
Translation tax: The exhausting work of translating between creative/technical perspectives and business language - and how this invisible labor gets weaponized against the people doing it.
The CEOzilla trap: Why charismatic founders with vision often create the most toxic cultures, and how to recognize the warning signs early.
Privilege and intersectionality: How my relative privilege (white, educated, financially independent through investments) allowed me to maintain integrity in situations where others couldn't afford to - and what that reveals about systemic inequality.
Financial independence as psychological freedom: Why building investment income over twenty years gave me the ability to say no when staying would have required compromising my values.