Words. Ideas. Actions.

31 March 2023

There are a lot of opinions about how today’s economy has been recovering since the start of the pandemic. And, this is the place where I would usually say something like, “people much smarter than me can better explain where we may be headed.” But lately, I feel like nobody actually knows anything. Especially when it comes to our current economic realities, much less the future and where our prospects are headed. All I know is my lived experience. I assume that’s the same for you, too. So I want to give you a peek into what it’s been like for me, looking for work in Biden’s America, and trying to navigate a constantly changing economic landscape.

In a surprise to probably no one, I tracked my job search in a spreadsheet. Here are a few of the facts and figures that I gathered as I scrolled LinkedIn every hour, emailed people I haven’t spoken to in years, and posted a couple of hundred words here every weeknight:

70: Days since the layoff announcement
51: Blog posts since getting notified
54: Applications submitted
29: Cover letters written
7: Phone screening calls with recruiters
6: Discussions with teams and potential collaborators 
6: Unique presentations created showcasing my work and experience
4: Interviews with hiring managers
17: Written rejections 

I don’t have a lot more of these posts scheduled. By my count, the Soundgarden titles left to use are “Kristi” and “Like Suicide”. So, I plan on posting just two more (for those keeping close track, Soundgarden released 121 songs, nine of which are covers which I didn’t want to use as titles, which would bring the grand total to 112 posts since starting these in November). After that, who knows? 

I like the process that making these has forced me to go through. I feel like I’ve sharpened my thinking here in a couple of helpful places. And I know that some of  these first drafts turned into more polished thoughts and answers to questions during my interviews. It’s odd how this initial idea morphed into something so very helpful. And it just reinforces the notion that I never know what’s coming next. Even if that is one of the hardest things for my mind to accept. So, on this last official day of my Google employment, I want to say thank you to my now-former colleagues who have reached out after reading something on this blog. I hope I can find a way to keep us connected, even if it’s just through reaction emoji on LinkedIn posts. Most importantly, if you’re reading these words, I want to thank you, too, for coming on this journey with me. And as I mentioned a few nights ago, if you need help in your own search, please let me know.

See you tomorrow?

29 March 2023

I very rarely know if I’ve made the right decision. And I find that I question decisions I’ve made for a long while after. They could be big ones, like did I pick the right college, to small ones, like should I have ordered the shrimp and grits tonight instead. And as I sit here tonight, I feel that familiar feeling of second-guessing coming on again.

See, I think I’ve decided what my next gig is. I have been very fortunate to have a good amount of interest in my services since being part of the Google layoffs in January. I know that. There are a lot of talented people — and seemingly more and more every day — competing for what feels like fewer and fewer roles. So, I understand what a luxury it is to have my last paid day at Google this week, while starting something new on Monday. I just don’t know if I picked the right option. And I probably never will. What I do know, however, is I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking. Not anymore.

One thing these last few years has taught me is that you never know what’s coming. And I have also discovered — the hard way — that your only allegiance you should have is to your colleagues (both past and future), not your company. I am making a choice that’s right for me and my family today, and that’s the most important consideration. But I am going to keep my eyes and mind open to new positions for a few reasons:

1) The future is unknown and unwritten, both for you and your employer, so change can come at you in a moment’s notice, and your only true boss is yourself.
2) I want to continue stretching my understanding and my skills, so as soon as I feel like I am stagnating, I’ll look for ways to learn even more.
3) There are many highly qualified candidates on the hunt right now, and if I can help connect any of them with their next gig based on my network and teams I’ve already talked to, I am more than willing to help in any way I can.

I hope that in a few months I’ll be able to look back at this post and confidently see that I made the right choice. But there’s nobody handing out “Winning Decision” ribbons, that I know of. Instead, I’ll just have to ask myself some hard questions, and hope that I like the answers. In the meantime, if you’re reading this while looking for your next content design or UX writing gig, and you think I can help, please send me a note either here or on LinkedIn.

See you tomorrow?

24 March 2023

There’s this strange, liminal space that happens while looking for a new job. And I’m deep in it now. Offers are finally starting to come in. But so are replies to opportunities that I got excited about in the early stages of my search. Obviously, these are good — and privileged — problems to have, but I’m finding that I don’t really know how to approach finding the right decision. The idiom “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” keeps popping into my mind, and I feel like that logic is weighing heavily into my decision. And I just don’t know what to do.

Part of this decision paralysis is on account of my fear of making mistakes. But what really qualifies as a mistake in this instance? Let’s say I pick the “wrong” job. What does that even mean? Knowing that I’m really the only one making the judgment, I’m at a loss for how I’m even grading myself. I can compare pros and cons, but as the impending deadline of no more paychecks looms, isn’t the “right” choice the first offer you get? Again, I know what a luxury it is to have multiple offers, but that deadline also means that there were questions which went unasked during the interview process. And not knowing those answers may lead to regretting my decision. Which, I guess, then means I made the wrong one. Right?

I would love to be able to quiz my potential new managers more about how they think about career development and learn more about their management styles. All I hear in my head, however, is that ticking clock, counting down the seconds until I’m officially without income. I’ve been lucky to pursue new opportunities without this pressure in the past. But the job searches I remember most are the ones which came right down to the wire, and I had to balance my ability to negotiate with my need for a more immediate start date. If I look back at the summer of 2015 as an example, I had two offers to lead content strategy teams in hand when I finally got an offer from Twitter. It was the one I really wanted, but I know it stunted my career growth. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of almost every piece of work I was part of there, but content strategy at Twitter was not a real discipline yet. There was no career ladder. No appreciation for the craft from other teams. No real understanding of what we did and how we could help. The three of us, at the time, helped establish all those things. And more. Those factors led to being years and years away from a promotion, however. And now, I think, I’m paying for that.

There are a ton more nuances to that situation, and a pretty long story about the first job I took right after leaving Twitter where I only stayed for 29 days. For now, though, I have a lot of thinking to do. And options to consider. And, also, bills to pay. With less than ten of these posts left scheduled to be published, I assume I’ll have a decision before these end. At least I hope so.

See you tomorrow?

07 March 2023

The cycle of interviews and presentations and cover letters and rejection emails continues this week. It all has me a little frazzled. Obviously, the rejection is the hardest part of all this. So, with a hat tip to the Pizza and Affirmations session I joined last week (thank you Jane Ruffino and Shannon Leahy), I want to share a few thoughts if you are facing any of the job-searching self-doubt similar to mine. Essentially, these are reminders to myself about the many reasons why I didn’t land a role I wanted, combating the voice in my head screaming, “you’re not good enough!”

They lost funding for the position.
This is definitely happening. As companies go through their own layoffs, the projects that were funded and the hiring they expected could be cut due to a refocused roadmap which no longer includes the project you might have been hired to help bring to life.

You have too much experience.
This idea has come up a couple of times for me this month. And it sucks. And it’s short-sighted. I get to decide how senior a role I’m willing to take. But what people hear, sometimes, is, “He's trying to take my job.” I can appreciate that senior people can be more costly to hire, and that can hamper some hiring decisions, but threatening the job security of the hiring manager is also an unfortunate possible outcome of being a “seasoned” professional. And there’s nothing you can change to make someone else more secure in their role. Move on, and be glad for the reprieve.

You were a great candidate, but — believe it or not — they found someone even better.
This can be hard to take, but there’s just so much fabulous talent available right now that employers are able to find people who check all the boxes. Which is fine, because you are that person for some company, you just haven’t found them yet. Keep looking, refine that presentation one more time, and remember no one else has your unique combination of skills, experience, and perspective. There’s nobody more you than you.  

One constant that has kept me going is that I know what I know, and I’m not afraid to point out the areas where I’m still learning. The companies I want to work for aren’t ones who want me as I am today, but are looking forward to, and encouraging, my growth with them. Those are the places I want to exert my effort. Those are the products I want to help build. Those are the companies I’m willing to take a chance on. To repeat an idea I shared last week, I want to be hired for my potential, not my accomplishments. I’m so much more than what I’ve already done, and we need to get better at appreciating people’s potential, not just their portfolio. So, for myself and to you: You’re going to find exactly what you need. You may just have to be a little more patient than you had hoped.

See you tomorrow?

02 March 2023

I had lunch with a friend today. A smart friend. And a friend who is asking many important questions about hiring and recruiting. I’m not going to share many more specifics about what he’s working on, but it’s safe to say that as I go through my own job search gauntlet, I really think he’s onto something. 

While I’m not sharing more about his ideas, I do want to add to some thoughts which started in a previous post. He and I talked about what I wrote, in conjunction with his thinking, and like most good conversations, we kept building and building until we got to an even better set of notions. 

The main conclusion we came to is that the success metrics for hiring are too short-sighted. I understand that. But what if we started tracking hiring statistics differently, focusing more on belonging and retention rather than headcounts and productivity? For the companies I want to be a part of, I feel like they are hiring humans rather than filling a role. And that’s a difference I think we should be talking about more often.

In my past, I’ve definitely been hired because I was the right shape for the hole a company was trying to fill. But when my shape changed, through additional knowledge or new aspirations, the company wasn’t elastic enough to accommodate my new shape. Other times, the shape of the hole I was filling for the company changed, because of a shift in focus or an adjustment in the market landscape, and I didn’t have the capacity to mold to the new structure quickly enough. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The companies I’ve been happiest working for did two important things for me and my coworkers:
1) Invested in us and our continuing education.
2) Created managers who were constantly checking in on our evolving career aspirations, and giving us the freedom to be curious and explore other areas within the company.

Before we get too much farther down this path, I need to do something which I should have also mentioned in my previous post about hiring, and that’s to recognize the immense amount of privilege required to try to do any of this. It’s a privilege to be picky about where you want to work. It’s a privilege to get even one offer. And a privilege to be able to say all of this so openly without worry about how it may change your prospects of even being considered for a role. Right now I have that privilege. And soon (hopefully), I’ll be in a position to start advocating for these changes so that we can get better at getting people into better positions. Now, back to the suggestions.

The other idea I want to see more prevalent in hiring conversations is goals. This can come in many forms, but I think both the employer and employee should have a better understanding of what success looks like after a person is hired. Where should you be in 90 days? What should you have accomplished after six months? Which preparatory training or services will you have access to in order to explore what’s next in your career? These kinds of questions can go a long way in finding out which companies care about you as a person, and which care more about you as a human resource. 

And that brings me to my last point. In one way or another, companies will ship their org chart. It’s almost unavoidable, for both companies big and small. So we need to do a better job of designing our organizations. I may be biased, both because I’ve worked on design teams for so long and because my lunch partner today is a brilliant design ops person, but I truly believe that every company needs a designer to help build their organizational framework. If we break it down, it’s just a structure. We design buildings, why can’t we get better at designing teams? If I go on much further about this, though, I’ll quickly get out of my depth. But I know that the teams I have been most productive on, providing the best value to our customers and users, were the ones which had thoughtfully integrated my skills into the entirety of the organization. Doing this well is a smart investment, if only to cut down on the constant recruiting, hiring, and training costs which can arise from doing it poorly.

If we step back and think about this holistically, we need to create more opportunities to hire people, not positions. And account for the fact that people change. When we are flexible enough to account for both those facts, we create enough psychological safety for teams to really innovate and solve problems through their creativity. And isn’t that the whole point?

See you tomorrow?

28 February 2023

Good lord, interviewing is exhausting. I know I promised a recap of Noise Pop, but honestly, I just didn’t get to it today. I did talk about why I think I’m qualified for a couple of jobs. And it was so draining. Seriously, how can a few video calls be so taxing?

I get that companies want to make the right hiring decisions. And I understand all the work which goes into honing job descriptions and creating success metrics and asking interview questions to try and understand a candidate’s problem solving skills. I understand. Hell, I’ve been on the other end a number of times. But sometimes I think we’re getting it all wrong. I mean, I wish interviews where just two questions: 
1) What excites you about this job?
2) Will you talk about any work you’ve done in your past which might be applicable to the work we’re doing?

These days, people want to work. They don’t necessarily want their work to be the entirety of what defines them, however. Those days are gone. We should be taking that into consideration as we hire now. We need to stop being so precious about “culture fit” and “self-starters” and “greatest strengths,” instead focusing more on the human you are looking to hire. 

Nobody joins a new team already knowing all they need to know; we already assume they are going to need to learn something. Let’s focus on that, instead. If people are looking forward to collaborative problem solving, and willing to learn new tools and processes, then they are more likely than not ready for day one. As long as their new company is willing to invest in their continued education and have a good system for performance evaluation, everyone should come out ahead.

For now, I need a rest. If only so I can focus on finishing gushing about Noise Pop.

See you tomorrow?

07 November 2022

I tried to stay above the fray today. It was tough; there was lots to follow. But about halfway through the afternoon, I saw something on the Twitter Alumni Slack that changed both my focus and mood for the rest of the day: the #OneTeam Tweep Talent Directory.

Started by Chanddan Maloo, this is the compilation of hundreds of form entries to collect both the names, titles, and LinkedIn profiles of former Tweeps now looking for their next gig in one tab, and another tab with a collection of recruiters and companies who are looking to hire the amazing talent that has been so abruptly shunted off.  

I took some time to scroll through it, searching for familiar names from the Design and Research team. I wanted to find few, naively hoping my former teammates had already put enough pieces in place to weather this storm. But as I came across name after name, I realized I needed to get more involved. 

I sent each of them a message, commiserating about how shitty all this is and offering any help they thought I could provide. I also recommended they look through the current Google job listings to see if anything there piqued their interests; lawd knows how much we value internal referrals.

I’ve heard back from a few already, and we’re talking about how to narrow options and take some new steps in the next part of their career journey. But, if you’re reading this and you’re currently looking, too, please let me know how I can help. Although you know I’m trying (and occasionally failing) to stay off of The Bird App, you can still DM me, and I’ll probably see it sooner rather than later. Or, in an effort toward expediency, if you're interested in a Google gig, you can email me at my work address (my LDAP is srfox@). Whether we’re Tweeps or not, we’ll always be #OneTeam.

See you tomorrow?