🙏 'Tis a gift to be Signaled.
Meet our new Head of Community Experiences, and an exploration of post-layoff communities through Signals
Three things.
🍠 A letter from our newest team member.
🌽 Filtering the tech layoff social media cycle through our Signals.
🧅 Career opportunities at New_ Public.
Hi! I’m Paul, the new guy.
Good morning, dear reader. 🌞
Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Paul Mendoza (he/him), the newest member of the New_ Public team.
As Head of Community Experiences, I’ll be cultivating our community through events and our editorial channels.
Like many of you, I’ve been a fan of New_ Public since their early days. The Sunday newsletter always energizes and inspires me, and I feel very honored to write in this space.
With the help of my fellow staff, our talented coterie of contributors, and your feedback and input, I’ll be reporting on the past, present, and future state of digital public spaces.
I’ve been in a community-building state of mind for several years now at AIGA, the professional association for design, where I refined my virtual and hybrid events game and all the strategy and product marketing management that goes with it.
In the three weeks and change I’ve been here at New_ Public, I’ve already met dozens of you at the Career Carnival and at Signal Boost: Enter the Fediverse. I hope these first two outings will set the stage for future gatherings where we truly live out our values.
My hope for my work at New_ Public is that we get to extend the joys, thrills, and catharsis of in-person gathering into an innovative digital realm, one that grants us all human dignity and equal citizenship, the cornerstones of democracy.
But enough about me! 😅 Let’s get to our featured story: the tech layoffs that rocked all corners of the Internet, and the seeds of hope that are sprouting in support.
Reading the Signals: The Tech Layoff Response
Everyone here at New_ Public—as well as many of you, I expect—are connected to people who recently lost their jobs at major tech companies.
With the headlines coming in hot the past couple of weeks, we’ve been examining and reflecting on the community response in support of this displaced talent.
A lot of the gatherings are understandably happening in private or under a cloak of anonymity: Signal chats, Blind items, and so on. Confidentiality is key.
But for those seeking broader connections in public space, there are many ways to build that sense of community, from comments sections to spreadsheets to microsites.
Trauma-informed community-building like this can be highly demanding and emotionally exhausting. So we’d like to celebrate the people and organizations in our communities who are using their power at this moment to help others.
To put a spin on our “Community Corkboard”, we’re featuring both individual and organizational posts about tech layoffs that align closely with our Signals.
Welcome + Connect: Threads, Posts, and Directories
Most of what we’re seeing in our feeds right now are links to future career opportunities. Job boards, talent directories, startup applications, and fellowship deadlines have emerged to capitalize on this moment.
We’re particularly encouraged when we see the Welcome + Connect blocks of Signals pop up in public spaces. Here are three good examples that come to mind:
@justinvent-ux's #metamates post on Linkedin
@justinevent-ux built a handy single repository that encourages humanization at the very end with a note to check in on affected friends and colleagues. The directory links in their post also strengthen local ties, as many of these lists are sortable by location.
Twitter Studio Alumni directory on Notion
Design makes a huge impact here, elevating themselves above the standard Google Sheet in favor of a Notion site that reads as safer and more secure.
Additionally, by adding the “A tad bit about me” section, power is more accessible to workers as individual talents are able to share their stories in their own way.
@jesslynnrose’s ethical tech jobs thread on Twitter
@jesslynnrose made a very earnest call to their followers for job openings in ethical tech, and the post does a great job of inviting everyone to participate, building bridges by commenting on posts, and cultivating belonging by sharing their own leads.
(And yes of course, you can find New_ Public in that thread! More on those opportunities farther down, so keep reading.)
Understand: Blogs & Articles
The incentives for most news publications are well aligned to cover tech layoffs extensively, and we are glad that many publications are on the fallout.
These articles were particularly helpful with building our empathy and broadening our perspective by finding new reporting angles on a widely covered topic.
The Conversation: What the world would lose with the demise of Twitter
It’s a bit redundant to say that an article from “The Conversation” amplifies our Signal of thoughtful conversation, we’ll admit.
But it still bears repeating. Twitter’s contribution to academic research around collective behavior often gets lost in all the accounts on its transformation. It’s a good reminder of the role Twitter played in our understanding of a society writing and publishing at an astonishing rate.
The News & Observer: The Kids of H-1B Visa holders
H-1B workers are typically the most vulnerable in the wake of layoffs, as they have limited time to find new employment or risk deportation.
This article does a great job of elevating shared concerns around work and immigration status, but by widening our aperture beyond individual workers to include their visa-supported families, the article also builds civic competence along the way.
NYT: When Your Layoff Has a Hashtag (paywalled)
By quoting people closest to the crisis, from the folks who were let go to the folks who stayed, NYT’s reporters added valuable context to the layoff developments and showed reliable information through primary sources.
“It was the most humanity-affirming moment that as each tweep was fired, we all posted. We laughed and rejoiced in the decency and kindness of friends. What a sendoff, Twitter.” —Rumman Chowdhury in the New York Times
Act: Guides and Gatherings
In many respects, the Act block of Signals is the hardest to achieve. It can feel much easier to open a door, to grab a hand, and to tell a story. But to spur meaningful organized action on the Internet is a very rare feat.
While many companies—recruitment firms, software startups, and the like—are stepping in to assist with information and resources, we’d like to celebrate the important work of online labor collectives who operate beyond a drive for capital profit.
Collective Action in Tech’s layoff guide (+ Patreon)
Collective Action in Tech offered this layoff guide for “tweeps” as part of their mission to document collective labor actions in the tech industry. By increasing awareness of organizing activity across the country, CAIT boosts community resilience and supports civic action.
Tech Workers Coalition (+ Chapters + Slack)
The Tech Workers Coalition reposted CAIT’s layoff guide, and their local member communities and Slack workspace boost resilience and support civic action on a local chapter level as well as a national level.
The ideal public space—digital or physical—exhibits all four of our Signal building blocks: Welcome, Connect, Understand, and Act.
We hope these links demonstrate that this kind of public space can be assembled from a wide array of existing resources.
Which of these links piqued your interest? Got another Signal-worthy resource to share with us? Leave a comment down below.
Consider making New_ Public your professional home.
As the latest heat wave of layoffs reshapes our social tech climate, New_ Public believes that investing in building healthy digital public spaces is one way to solve these problems systemically.
If you’re seeking to build publicly spirited social spaces that serve, not undermine, our democracy, and you’re also seeking a brave and kind work culture, we welcome you to apply for one of our open positions.
Head of Studio Operations
Senior UX Designer
Operations Manager
And if none of the above roles are quite right for you, or you have a pitch for a brand-new role, the water temp is always right in our talent pool. 🏝️
Giving thanks.
To wrap things up in the Thanksgiving spirit, I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge some wonderful and talented folks.
Thank you to the New_ Public staff and to our co-directors, Deepti and Eli, for this opportunity to write in this space.
I’d also like to thank all the New_ Public writers who came before me: Josh, Wilfred, Andrew, and countless other contributors. Your voices carried us, and I’m humbled by your work.
And a very special “thank you” goes out to Deb Schultz, who has been leading our community building efforts the last six months, and who has also shown me the ropes and written powerful and thoughtful pieces for this newsletter throughout the year. Love you, Deb!
If you have a burning question or request about a topic you’d like to see us cover at New_ Public, I’m here to listen. Email me at paul@newpublic.org.
🏕️ Watching Addams Family Values again,
Paul
Written, designed, and danced by Paul Mendoza. Edited by Deepti Doshi and Deb Schultz.