Layoffs

• Stress. I didn't get enough sleep because the kitten was a holy terror, I didn't see my squirrel or even talk to my bug enough. A lot going on at work, but trying, and making some slight progress on planning Q1. The big surprise of the early week was suddenly planning a trip to the Mothership for the first time in ages, scheduled for... well, a week from today, now. I spent time planning that instead of catching up on email. My next update will, likely, be written next Sunday from an airplane.


• Adulting away on rental-property things. I think I found us an Arlington zoning lawyer, and enthused at him until he took our case, although let's see how long it takes him to actually do anything for us.


• Worrying about Hypercube, who went back onto oral steroids as well as the inhaler this week. It may be helping a bit, but then everything seems to help a little bit and then she gets worse again. The vet agrees that her disease is not progressing as we'd expect, and suggested that we send her to a specialist next. Which I am following up on, but urgggggh.


• Adulting away on other people's gigs. Yes! I promised my coach that I'd help him with his pricing model, and I did some research and I did help him. I promised my cleaning company's leading lady that I'd help her learn a bit about AdWords, and I did some research and wrote to her too. She at least is offering to clean the empty rental property for free in exchange. But I should probably stop volunteering to help with things so far outside my wheelhouse.


• LAYOFFS on Friday took that early-week work stress and blew it all out of the water with darker, higher-grade stress. Woke up to a text from a friend saying "I've been laid off" and another from my squirrel saying "Alphabet has joined the soup". One glance at the news -- Alphabet laying off 12,000 people -- had me scrambling for corp access, where I spent much of the day on worried roll calls ("who's still here?") and an impromptu staff meeting by my demoralized director. In the end, while I still have a job, they laid off 6,000 US employees by email at 5AM and immediately cut their access to buildings and systems. Several were my friends. And a lot were high performers -- they didn't just trim the deadwood. They claimed to be removing roles but the people are now classified as "external hires" and are thus impossible to bring back easily... no, it's not self-consistent, and they blindsided all the directors as well as the peons. This is the first time Google has done anything remotely like this, so it may not be surprising that it was done poorly (though with generous severance packages); and I feel old and tired because I have lost other friends just as senselessly, just never at scale like this.


• As for my team, we lost our PgM but no engineers. I hope I can get some PgM time, but maybe lower level this time? The last one blew a lot of hot air along with the usefulness.


• Had an interesting lunch, also on Friday, with some people who are starting a nonprofit aimed at helping and waking up rich white men. Here's their donation link. The whole thing is quite an idea, perhaps a hope for trickle-down social justice. I found it useful to tell them I'm already doing a philanthropy this year and my resources are, thus, fully committed.

On the bright side, workouts went better, and my tentative stretching is not hurting my hip. So far. The upcoming week is also going to give me a lot of data:

• Tuesday I go to an allergist for various allergy testings, of the kind where they prick your arm with various allergens and wait to see what reacts.


• Thursday I take Hypercube for (doubtless expensive) testing at the Internal Medicine specialist vet. It'll probably be a tracheal wash, maybe bronchoscopy.


• Friday I have an air quality testing and mold expert coming to my house. My respiratory/allergy problems have been worst when I'm working, and I'd been thinking there's nothing suspiciously moldy or allergenic over there, but tonight I finally noticed I sit under an air vent. So. Suddenly I do have suspicions, after all.