laybor daybor 2024

late stage capitalism is a trip

i fell off updating this site mid-2023 because i was over-working myself at blizzard / battlenet and leaving zero time for recovery or rest. at the same time, i was also trying to keep up with all the games and design trends... which was a bad idea. i'm too old and disabled to try that now, and should know better by now, but keep over-extending anyway.

then came the layoffs at microsoft / xbox... i was one of the 7-8 folks cut in the design org at battlenet, and almost 20% of blizzard as a whole was canned on one day: january 26. i was in california on a leadership planning retreat and had to spend half the trip in my hotel room depressed, crying, and wishing i could just kill myself and get it over with. i'd landed and lost my dreamjob thanks to nothing but workplace politics and an external agency looking across the org and making random decisions without anyones input.

between january and march (when my paychecks would actually stop), i went on the job-hunt and at least took notes about 600 applications i sent around to jobs i was not just qualified for, but could excell at doing. i got 2 interviews from all that time and effort... and maybe 1 actual DM / email from a person vs automated HR system. folks i knew at netflix games, niantic, nintendo, sony, and several smaller game orgs submitted my info as an internal recommendation; i heard back from none of them and as of last checking the roles were still open. if you hear about "ghost jobs" on the news, this is what they mean; hr departments are paid to pull in resumes but the company won't greenlight any actual talent hires or team expansions.

before my paychecks stopped, i landed a role at a sketchy seeming startup for 3-4mo contract. the founder has plenty of articles written about him online and has made awful comments like "hire autistic devs bc they'll overwork themselves for you" kinda shit. it was about as bad as i would expect from all the warning signs. so i kept looking while working there, revamping the design and front-end code for a game streaming app that is probably out of money already and couldn't find more than a dozen regular users at its peak.

and then came a job offer from michaels stores in the tech org / ux department. i started on july 1st alongside another staff/lead level designer and its... going. the design folks are nice, but the workplace as a whole is broken and borderline toxic. the VP level folks don't believe in work-life balance for instance, and the silos between design, dev, and product is reinforced with concrete. it was a waterfall style org until last year, and none of my teams use jira correctly or consistently. there is no roadmap or real planning in place. its chaotic and frustrating, but paying the bills; and potentially fixable? maybe.

and on labor day, its been really good to relook at my past year and realize that all the protections people fought for have been eaten way with time. our nights and weekends are less ours thanks to digital communication like email & slack. most days i eat lunch at the desk while sitting on a meeting that could have been an email or even worse a well-written slack message. and while i love what i get to do in the ux design field, its not worth the ways in which it hurts me day in and day out. but i also know i have it a lot better than others, so i keep my head down and push forward.

my workplace goal for the next year is to fight to maintain boundaries as best as possible; saying no to unrealistic and unhealthy requests/timelines. to delegate well and set an example for my design team so they know i mean it when i say to protect their well-being bc we sell glue sticks and googley eyes, and that shit shouldn't require a toxic workplace. and hopefully i can maintain those boundaries without getting fired for it or swept up in another round of layoffs... because two job changes within 6mo was too much.

what helped me so much in my early career was that my autistic brain was hyperfixated on design and didn't want to stop even when i went home for the day. i enjoyed the overwork bc i couldn't force myself to stop. but now, as a burned out autie who's nearing 40, i need my rest to even function for a full work-week. i nap over lunch when i can take one, i nap after work every day, i sleep as much as i can at night, and i struggle to fit in any of my hobbies or games to something other than the weekend.

if it weren't for derp helping around the house, making sure i eat/drink, and keeping the kitchen stocked, i would probably be in the hospital by now. i'm incapable of working like this and doing literally anything else. i can work or live... but not both.

and one of these days, sooner than i think, i doubt that i'll even be able to work full-time :(

08.31.2023 / burned out & bedrotting