Bye, Twitter 🎩👌
My farewell letter to this dumpster fire of a social network that gave me so much.
Este post va a estar en inglés por si mis colegas deciden leerlo y en parte es una carta para ellos y para mí.
At the time of writing this, I'm still working at the website known as twitter.com, since I wanted to effectively get paid by Twitter for writing my farewell letter. I did not click the fork button, nor my role was expected to.
March 2021, my family in Venezuela got Covid, my mom, sister, grandma and my stepfather; he almost died. This cost me pretty much all of my savings even with a Gofundme where my friends showed up for me and helped me pay for everything. I just hope that someday I'll be able to repay them by being there myself when they need me. I love my friends, they helped me save my family. My point why I'm telling you this is that I was broke.
Before Twitter, I was working in a place where I was comfortable and respected. Half my time was coding and half my time was managing people. I knew I could make more money, and that with more money I could bring my grandma to Spain to have a better life for her, recover economically faster and I also knew that there was something calling me, chirping me. Thanks to changes in their work policy, Twitter was now hiring remotely. Covid almost took everything I had, and then it seemed it was going to open up a whole new horizon for me. I applied to Twitter as a Senior Engineer referred by my good friend Hector. Last time I worked with Hector we quit because we had a terrible boss and a toxic work environment, just ✨lmao✨.
I did not pass the interview process and was deemed not senior enough. I probably failed to demonstrate what I was capable of, I got nervous, it happens. I was sad for a while, but I believe that in life you have 2 types of problems: those where you only have one shot and problems you have as many shots as you got in the chamber. I wasn't going to give up that easily. Months later I applied as an Engineering Manager.
After a long process of interviews, I got in. I did it. I was IN twitter, my favorite place in the internet because stuff like this happens to you:
I have around 5k followers, which is a modest number but is a number I earned by being myself, no tricks, baits or traps. Just being myself with my little jokes and insights. I have more of 115.000 tweets and a lot of them are bangers. Anyone that knows me can tell you that if someone loved Twitter, it was me. I really thought this was a place worth fighting for and showing up for work.
Once inside, I got the opportunity to work with the smartest and most talented people I've ever met. We had the budget to find new talent and I pulled in some of the best engineers I could find. Things were going forward. My goal was to make Twitter better, not only on the outside but also on the inside, more than a goal it was a dream, and if we all had that dream it would come to be.
I can't stress this enough, my bosses were truly inspiring. PJ and Marie, if you're reading this, not only thank you for giving me a shot, but thank you for being there for me. I learned a lot from you. You have true grit and that's a rare thing to find. You were thinking strategically when everyone else was always thinking tactically. You gave me a true opportunity, and I thank you for that. Hope one day I can be that person for someone else and pay it forward.
There is nothing as beautiful as a second chance.
I'm sorry to disappoint you if you thought this post was going to be a timeline until today. This is just the context so you can understand the Twitter I'll remember, not the Twitter that was acquired by the richest man in the world and threw me off the fucking window.
This was my dream job, and it's gone. Not because I lost it, but because it no longer exists. It doesn't exist in the form I knew it and neither is the possibility that it will take the form I wanted it to be. Not that this bird will be a phoenix, if anything right now is just on fire.
Since The Pandemic™ I've felt as if I'm going through this liminal space where the things I used to chase are no longer there. Like I'm supposed to keep moving and we're in this weird transition space where everything will change in a few months or a few weeks. In the office, it started to feel like this since Jack™ left and for a year we were just hoping to see what was going to hatch (I'm running out of bird puns). Having Parag saying “this is for the best” for a full year to have this be the best makes me think what he was actually saying was “this is for the vest”.
I've lost things in the past: I've lost true love, true friends and some passwords that made it a pain in the ass to recover access to my League of Legends account. But I had never lost a job like this that I've wanted for so long and it feels a bit like a breakup where the future you wanted won't come and the past you cherish won't happen again. The Twitter I knew no longer exists and I will not get to see the Twitter I wanted it to be. I'm pretty nostalgic.
In moments like this when I feel lost, I always turn to The Last Lecture, from Randy Pausch, which was recommended by one of my very best friends, Jose Dunia, back when we were in college still trying to piece our lives together. Randy said, “follow your passions, believe in karma, and you won't have to chase your dreams, they will come to you.” That is my plan, as it has been my whole life.
In a lighter note, I also think of The Rock as he always says that the best thing that never happened to him was reaching his dream of playing in the NFL because then he would've never been The Rock.
I say goodbye to the Twitter I knew and I tip my hat to that little bird, for it filled me with sooo much gratitude.
And as I finish writing this post, I'm done grieving. It's time to break out of this liminal space and find new horizons.
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.Attributed - Sir Francis Drake - 1577
Thanks, #oneTeam. One last hat tip before I leave. 🎩👌
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