A door closes

Today, my role at Meta was eliminated. Through a quirk of corporate benevolence, I have the ability to message former co-workers until 5pm PT to say goodbye. So now I’m sitting at my desk, trying to string a coherent thought together. I’m in shock, yet I know that I have thoughts I want to share. It’s like a security alarm just went off at Reality Labs, the lights are flashing red, and the giant reinforced steel door is slowly lowering from the ceiling. I have precious minutes to run across the room, dive for that shrinking gap, and roll under the door to the outside world before it slams shut behind me.

To my colleagues at Meta, thank you for three exhilarating years of building the future of human-computer interaction together. To my family and friends, you’re going to be hearing from me more often now that I have some free time. I’m looking forward to resting and reflecting over the holidays, and then sharing some thoughts and connecting through this newsletter.

Why Substack

I’ve been wishing for a while that I had more time to write. Writing helps me think, and with the world changing so much and so quickly in the past few years, I’ve found myself feeling like I’m rushing ahead too fast to think deeply about much of anything. There’s always an urgent deadline, someone waiting for a response to a message, errands to run, and all the while the world is tipping further and further on its axis, teetering. I’ve treated deep thinking as a luxury I couldn’t afford for too long, and I’ve finally reached a phase in my life when it feels more like an essential.

Working in technology for over twenty years has taught me that ideas get better when you share them. Substack appears to be a platform for sharing ideas and having conversations about them with other people, so I’m excited to put my thoughts out there and engage with a community that respects and learns from each other.

Future musings

Topics I may cover in the future include my personal writing journey and projects, human-computer interaction design, consumer technology trends, AI tools/agents, and health and wellness.