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I hate writing these posts. They happen far too often and they reflect a certain failure in how this place is run, and a darker prospect for the future of the network.

Usually we'd talk about the folks who we've lost individually, but this is probably the biggest single loss of folks we've worked with closely since the first big layoffs.

Some folks we've had an excellent working relationships with, and the bonds we've forged with them are no longer with the company, and to an extent, the work we've done together is likely lost.

I'll leave it to the community and folks involved to speak up - I'm not sure I've the heart to say more for now, and there's a lot to unpack.

Good luck all of you, and you will be missed.

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    Is there an official company acknowledgement, other than Phillipe's edit to the CM's list? Commented Mar 18 at 3:18
  • @Robotnik I don’t believe so, not at the moment anyway. Commented Mar 18 at 3:29
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    Nope. I added everyone I know of but I'm pretty sure its non exhaustive. I used a mix of the CM listing, and what I heard from people - but its pretty likely there's a lot of people I missed, many of whom probably have had measurable impact on the network Commented Mar 18 at 3:48
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    Sorry to see them go :( Commented Mar 19 at 2:46
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    I'll really miss working with such a passionate community. Thanks for caring so much about the best programming knowledgebase on the internet. The community makes the site what it is. Commented Mar 19 at 19:03
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    A lot of thanks to the hard work of those people. But I also kind of get "the end is nigh" vibes. A "sorry need to shutdown" notice might not be unrealistic anymore. The company and/or the community better had a plan what could happen to the collected content, the domain and the software that powers the network in that case. Better to be prepared, if possible. Commented Mar 21 at 19:26
  • Well, we still have an unofficial compilation of the datasets. Rebuilding SE wouldn't happen in a day. Codiact probably is the best organised alternative but moving people over is difficult. Alternatively, they'll ruin the value of things so much someone would buy it cheap, though it might be too much to hope its someone with a clue. Commented Mar 22 at 3:01

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Indeed, thank you all, for your work and for being great coworkers.

Losing Grace Note in particular is quite a sad cut. When I left the company four months ago, Grace took over the top spot on the tenure leaderboard (and unlike me, didn't even cheat by having a three-year gap). With this loss, Stack Overflow isn't only shrinking in the number of people, but quite literally shrinking in time. Sorry they didn't have the … grace 😬 … to allow you to reach 15 years. ~♪

I want to respect everyone's privacy, so I won't disclose any names I'm aware of that aren't already known. But let me mention Tom Limoncelli, because he has already posted on LinkedIn that he was also part of the impacted group. Tom joined the company as an SRE well before SREs were even called SREs. It's quite a thankless job because if you're doing it well, nobody notices. Thanks for doing it well, Tom, and for giving us the infrastructure to run the Stack Exchange network on.

To my knowledge, well over 30 people, possibly 40, lost their jobs yesterday. I don't know all the names, but the ones I do know tell a bleak story. The amount of community advocacy inside the company that we lost yesterday (and recently) is staggering. The picture that's painted by revision 153 of the CM list is not subtle, and knowing Philippe, this is his way of being as transparent as he can, which I really appreciate.

Grace Note wrote in the Tavern yesterday

this remaining plank of our Ship of Theseus has been removed

and that's just the saddest and truest invocation of that metaphor I've ever seen.

Sixteen years ago, Jeff Atwood likened the way we built Stack Overflow to this quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

And we all yearned, and we all built. And that includes not just the company employees, but everyone here on Meta, and everyone who helped create the giant library of knowledge that is the SE network.

How much of that original ship still exists? I don't know. But I do know that it is more important than ever that it keeps floating.

Billions of dollars are being thrown into an industry right now that claims to commoditize knowledge and understanding, but whose goal is actually to monopolize these things.

I feel that Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have to be an answer to this, ensuring that knowledge and understanding continue to be freely shared and available to everyone, and not owned by any one entity.

Everyone who's still at the company, I hope you still have the chance to work on that mission. Everyone who no longer is, I am sorry this happened to you and hope you land on your feet, and I salute you for doing your part. 🧡

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    Tom literally wrote the book on being a SRE - I own a copy of one of the editions. Man, this is pretty damned terrible. Commented Mar 18 at 8:15
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    He is also the owner of best-spaghetti-sauce-ever.com. I feel that should be mentioned. Commented Mar 18 at 8:21
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    "I feel that Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have to be an answer to this, ensuring that knowledge and understanding continue to be freely shared and available to everyone, and not owned by any one entity." Agreed, but they are doing very much the contrary by making it much more difficult to download data dumps (which btw are very incomplete, eg don't include images), changing their license and selling them. Commented Mar 18 at 13:39
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    @balpha How did I never know this?? Amazing. Commented Mar 18 at 14:19
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    @V2Blast cause clearly we weren't aware of the sauce of that wisdom. Commented Mar 18 at 14:41
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    @balpha I have a quibble, the best spaghetti sauce surely needs onion, carrot and celery plus beef stock, and red wine–you can use water to dilute the tomato but c'mon, it's wine! Then cover the sauce with a lid and simmer for at least three hours until you see a film of glossy fat swimming on the top. Always best the next day. If I were Tom I'd include a tik-tok video of his mamma or nonna cooking the ragu. With a domain name like that, there's millions to be made! On a more serious note, bad luck on losing your job, Tom. I wish everyone the best xxx Commented Mar 18 at 20:18
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    @FranckDernoncourt Yep, I'm well aware of those issues. I've been the loudest opponent internally of the data dump shenanigans. The venn diagram of what I believe must happen and what I believe will happen under the current company leadership is definitely not a circle. Commented Mar 19 at 8:26
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    @Mari-Lou Please cite primary sauces to back up your claims. As it stands, it's largely an o(pi)nion-based argument. Commented Mar 19 at 8:30
  • sauces...for sources. Clever comment! Commented Mar 19 at 14:24
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    @Mari-LouAСлаваУкраїні - I'm more concerned about the fact that it's not your own recipe, but a copy/pasta. Commented Mar 21 at 0:02
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Thank you, to Journeyman Geek and everyone else who's reached out (here, in chat, or elsewhere) to express their support or offer their condolences... And thank you to everyone else who got laid off alongside me as well – whether your work was visible to the public or not.

Y'all were some of the best folks in the business, and I enjoyed working with all of you (those of you I had the good fortune to work with, at least). Wherever you all end up, any team would be lucky to have you all – and hopefully, I'll end up working alongside some of you again at some point in the future. I know you'll all continue to be amazing at what you do.

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I didn't know all of you. Slate was a bird that I nested with, V2 was this funny guy in chat, Hoid and Rosie and Charlotte were the vague friendly diamonds hanging in the distance, but I wouldn't have recognized Grace's name if pushed.

I didn't know all of you, but I knew that you were there. The vague friendly diamonds hanging in the distance, comforting in their there-ness, in their steady glow, in their promise that someone I trusted, that we trusted, would be around if needed. You were part of that ineffable sense of community. That ambient trust, that feeling that this was a place worth being.

I didn't know all of you, but I felt better with you around, and worse now that you're gone.

I didn't know all of you, but I thank you all the same.

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    Grace was amazing as a Community manager, and her moving to support was a bit of a minor loss for us. He was probably amazing in support, but just not as obvious. The addition with the list of CMs was intentional, cause as far as I'm concerned CM emeritus are just as important to us. Commented Mar 18 at 2:18
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This is another sad moment for the whole Stack Exchange and its communities. We are again losing good people we trusted and also plenty of knowledge on how the sites operate.

I want to personally say thank you to Slate and Hoid with whom I have worked and interacted the most. Thank you for all your support and the discussions we had. It was a pleasure working with you for the betterment of the network. I will surely miss you.

To everyone I wish a good luck and I hope you will find new positions soon.

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