Last night, my role at Google was eliminated. I'm quite sick to my stomach, extremely sad, and even more angry. [email protected] is no more. Just like that.
There's not really anything about this that makes sense.
Goodbye Google, I guess #
I'm told this comes as a shock to my managers and other Chrome team leaders. I'm told it's not based on merit. I'm told I could find another role.
But I was also immediately ripped away from my calendar, docs, code, and more. Anything nice anyone has to say is immediately met with reality, and reality says "don't let the door hit you on the way out." If I was really welcome to another role, why treat me like a criminal?
I can't believe the timing #
I was at a Chrome team building offsite, quite literally having some of the most fun and creative innovation with Chrome folks I've had in a while; shoulder to shoulder with incredible engineers, planning ways to make web developers life's easier while raising the quality level of the web.
It's like none of these good moments ever happened.
Like I was never in any of these rooms. Like I wasn't assigned to high priority features or an owner of meaningful work streams.
- I was supposed to record a Google IO video next week. A talk I was very very excited to give. Gone. Wasted.
- I was supposed to be on stage at Google IO, gone.
- I was supposed to run a booth right outside the main stage, gone.
- I was supposed to help with the developer keynote, ensuring things matched reality and were beautiful. Gone.
- CSS Working Group membership, gone.
- Developer Office Hours, gone.
- Code access to the Carousel Gallery, gone.
- Helping with Overflow 5, or other CSS work at Google, gone.
- Relationships that took me years to cultivate… mostly going to be gone too.
The list of things I was doing is huge. It's going to be a while until I can resume some of them, and many of them won't resume at all.
I feel back stabbed, unappreciated, tossed in the trash. I can't sleep. I'm ashamed. I'm pissed.
I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp.
Find me on Bluesky or email me at [email protected] if you feel compelled to reach out.
Sorry if I don't reply quickly, it's very overwhelming to read messages about this. The topic is quite sore.