Greetings people from space!
A few reminders before we jump in…
The opinions below are my lived space experience and therefore should not be taken seriously, as truth, or shared with meaningful conviction
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🗞 THE NEWSSTAND
This week marked a monumental moment in American history as the former leader of the free world was indicted on 37 felony charges for withholding classified federal documents from the government held at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The indictment includes obstruction of justice and witness tampering, with Trump facing potential jail time if convicted.
Tim Cook announced his vision for the future of computing with Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, sorry ‘spatial computer,’ starting at the low cost of $3,499. The high-end headset is designed to be used for gaming, working, and entertainment.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and his vision for a cartoon world carry on as Meta spends the equivalent of the GDP of Armenia with the announcement of its headset the Quest 3.
And in a technology craze that is so last year, the SEC began cracking down on crypto exchanges including well-known Binance and Coinbase for failure to register what the SEC deems securities, as the future of the industry hangs by a thread.
🎙 FIRESIDE CHAT
Some bets pay off, others don't. Some bets create jobs, others cost thousands. In the early 2000s, Mark Zuckerberg made a bet on a future where people would interact in virtual social networks instead of in real life.
That bet paid off. In less than two decades, Facebook grew to reach nearly 3 billion people, nearly a trillion dollars in market capitalization, and changed the landscape of business, politics, and society. It also made Zuckerberg one of the wealthiest men on the planet.
With more riches came bigger bets. As the saying goes, "It takes money to make money." In 2012, he made a $1 billion bet on Instagram that was then just two years old. The bet paid off, with Instagram expected to hit $50 billion in revenue in 2023.
Two years later, Zuckerberg made another big bet when he acquired Oculus VR, a company developing headsets that would allow people to trade the real world for a virtual one. Believing that virtual reality was the future, Zuckerberg made AR/VR his pet project, investing billions over the next eight years. After all, he had convinced the world to trade the real world for a digital one once before, so why couldn’t he again?
Then in 2021, facing negative public sentiment following its role in the two previous presidential elections combined with federal investigations and a new remote work landscape, Zuckerberg saw his wedge to rebrand to Meta and build a new world in his image…
[Actual selfie of Mark Zuckerberg taken at the Eiffel Tower, Horizon Worlds]
Despite investing billions of dollars in VR/AR, Meta has yet to achieve the success that Zuckerberg envisioned. The company's headsets aren’t as popular as hoped, and its Reality Labs division has reported over $13.7 billion in losses.
While Zuckerberg was off prancing around in Horizon Worlds, shareholders decided they could no longer sit back and take the bleeding. Someone had to pay. In November 2022 Meta laid off 11,000 employees and then in March, the company announced it would be laying off an additional 10,000 employees, the largest losses in the tech giant’s history.
While the company touted a severance package as a bandaid for the wounds it would inflict with these ‘moments’ (actual term Zuckerberg used on a company-wide call), it would be a grueling few months for the entire staff.
Thousands of Meta employees woke up anxiously each day wondering if they might be impacted by the layoffs. Each round created more turmoil and despair, dragging down employee morale across all teams and levels. So much for its ‘Year of Efficiency.’
While mass layoffs devastate everyone, it’s the story of the new or expecting mothers who were impacted that goes untold. Stories of women laid off days or weeks before their due date, many while on maternity leave. These women experienced job loss and insecurity at a time when stability and support are the thing they needed the most.
The layoffs also had a ripple effect on the families of Meta employees, forcing them to move to new locations or find a job while simultaneously preparing to give birth. The physical and mental stress this puts on a mother is unimaginable. I should know because my wife was one of them.
Zuckerberg took time off to celebrate the birth of his newborn, which prevented him from being available to address those impacted by the April round of layoffs.
As I watched my wife struggle for months with the anguish of losing her job, I reassured us both that everything would work out. Surely a company committed to giving ‘people the power to build community and bring the world closer together’ wouldn’t lay off my wife weeks before her due date.
On the eve of the May layoffs, it was announced there would be two emails sent out the next day. The first would come between 7-8 am ET for those unlucky thousands. While the fortunate ones would receive an email between 8-9 am ET. I’m not sure whose twisted idea it was to conduct it in this way, but it successfully carried out the dread until the last hour.
Then the email came in…. “ Unfortunately, you’ve been included in today’s layoff. ” Tears. Our entire world flipped upside down. From nursery planning to job searching in a matter of minutes. A couple of hours later Zuckerberg addressed those impacted on a video call that resembled the scene of cousin Greg from Succession notifying ATN employees they would be losing their jobs via Zoom.
The shift was swift and dramatic. From anxious, yet cautious excitement to doom. My wife would go from being a mother focused on preparing her body and mind for bringing life into this world, to becoming a job candidate with a 33cm belly.
But she was not alone. In fact, there are hundreds of new and expecting Meta mothers just like her in a WhatsApp group supporting one another through this painful time. Fear, anger, anxiety, and stress. These are the motions that these women feel on a daily basis.
One woman gave birth a few weeks prior to being laid off and suddenly found herself having to cut bonding time with her newborn short to dive headfirst into a job hunt in order to maintain her immigration status. Others talk about the challenge of having to balance being ready to start a new job while having to notify their new employer of their impending time off.
The burden of bringing new life into our society while having to hide one’s pregnancy is a reality only a woman can truly understand. Of course, there are laws to ‘protect’ expecting mothers from being discriminated against during the hiring process, but in practice, it doesn’t always play out that way. Hiring managers face pressure to grow teams fast with employees who can ‘hit the ground running.’
After going from newspaper to newspaper I was met with disappointment for the lack of interest in this untold story of the Meta mothers. Editors demanded my wife go on record, which of course presented challenges of its own as she navigates the job hunt process as a very pregnant woman.
It was yet another data point that in our society we value profits over people and this story didn’t have enough juice in it for the corporate paradigm of modern journalism. In fact, one journalist said they might be willing to do a story if my wife had the inside scoop on the upcoming release of the Meta Quest 3…
It’s time for us to start making some changes in the real world and spend a little less of our energy in the virtual one. If we can create a healthier environment for women to feel less stress to become pregnant and get back to work on their time, then we can benefit companies, their employees, and the greater economy. In fact, a recent study from Moody’s has estimated that a national paid family leave program in the United States could boost GDP by $2.2 trillion over the next decade.
So, why is it that we are so shy to invest in half of our labor force and our future labor force through comprehensive paid family leave programs?
I believe that the future will judge our poorly focused business decisions impacting millions of families’ lives in the name of shareholder profits and ‘efficiency’ all while driving toward less efficient and aimless pet innovation projects fit to serve the egos of our tech billionaires.