I grew up in a world that followed simple rules. When I did things my parents considered to be wrong, they punished me. Hardworking people were the winners, and everyone who saw nuance was making excuses for their lack of hard work. You could judge someone’s righteousness by the amount of money they had. As I was a good person and a hard worker, it was only inevitable that I would get everything I wanted from life.
In short, I listened to and believed the sorries of the Bible and conservatives. The world was simple, and those who saw things differently were evil and lazy.
But then the world changed around me, and I was just a leaf on the wave. I got married in November of 2012, then went to drill in January and was told we were deploying to Afghanistan in a month. I was pissed, but there was nothing I could do. When I got to Afghanistan, the Army had no use for my role; I was just another number. I’d spent years training to work on satellite systems, which they didn’t have any use for. As a result, they found a relatively meaningless job for me to do, and I realized I was more of a prisoner serving his time than a valuable part of a team.
As a random prisoner with other random prisoners, I made a lifelong friend. With this friend, I found something that would impact the rest of my life. I fell deeper in love with programming and robotics. Together, we would go on to compete in robotics competitions and build a stereo-vision system. To this day, over ten years later, we still see each other almost weekly.
Five years into a job I got after returning, the company was acquired. Through a comedy of errors, the private equity that owned the company I worked for sold the company to a much bigger company and was then surprised by what we did after they bought us. It was a disaster. Having the money to spend a billion dollars on a company does not mean you are competent. The team that was previously happy fell apart. I specifically remember the sadness of the head of security who did one of my exit interviews. She was so sad that this incredible place she worked was falling apart because of things she couldn’t fix and none of us could.
Out on the open market as a programmer, I randomed into two offers from robotics companies. I was so excited and hopeful. Both allowed me to be an early employee at an exciting startup. One was a product company trying to make recycling sorting more economical and humane. The other was doing contract work around an open-source library they maintained for robotic arms. I got excited about working on a successful, sizeable open-source project and picked the second.
I tried my brute force lawful good soldier tactics to make the robotics startup succeed. I tried improving the quality of the software and doing large refactors. I tried increasing the open-source community through blog posts, YouTube videos, code reviews, and even flying around to play board games. I won’t say I didn’t have fun sometimes. I also got burnt out doing on-site development with our customers, who had me working out of hotels for months. Then, when I was home, I regularly worked through every weekend like a maniac.
Nothing I did made a dent compared to external forces. Google killed a project on which we were contractors, almost killing the company. Covid happened, and robotics R&D took off with lots of free money. So we expanded, and leadership thought they could build a product to grow even faster. They took investment, but then the free cash ended, and the product sales did not show up.
In crisis mode, leadership started doing things one would only make up for a comedy. An accountant messed up an Excel formula tracking salary expenses for several months, worsening the situation. A new sales guy cast a spell on the CEO and is going around picking fights with many of us because we want to avoid adopting his sales guy ethics when communicating with potential customers. Then the layoffs start. As money is so short, leadership is giving almost no severance and has decided it is best to fire without notice in the coldest way possible.
I’m in the shower one day, getting ready to go snowboarding on a day I’ve taken as vacation when my phone blows up. All my accounts have been disabled, which keys me into what’s happening. I later got a text from the head of operations saying I needed to call him. When I called, they told me I was part of another layoff. I feel so burnt and try to get off the call quickly. I say, “Have a great rest of your day, I’m going to try to enjoy mine,” and hang up. And with that, a job I’ve poured myself into has chewed me up and spit me out.
So what do I do? I changed. I’ve found the things I want and can control, and I am focusing on them. The world is random and cruel, but you should still find joy. I have been riding bikes and am writing a bunch of Rust. I am no longer lawful good; I believe lawful can’t be good.
