I’ve been meaning to write up what’s been going on since I left Shopify last year. ADHD brain makes me want to come up with a long well-written post with a storyline and quippy section titles. Well, then ADHD brain aborts the process because I get decision paralysis and never write anything.
I got laid off on May 4th, 2023. I was very upset by the whole situation, rage sold my SHOP equity, and then got rid of everything with the Shopify logo on it. Shopify was such a good fit for me and I was learning a lot. Losing that HURT. That catharsis helped me focus on how I wanted to spend my time being unemployed. I decided to start looking for a new job right away instead of taking a few weeks to decompress. I’m not entirely sure I’d do that again, but I wouldn’t have found Figma if I had done that.
I stopped keeping count of the number of applications that I filed – easily in the 150 range for ones that weren’t just clicking an apply button on LinkedIn. I also grasped onto the extra time in the day to go for longer runs, poke around the yard, and hang out with my doggos. I had a couple of great companies in the pipeline after a few months, one of them being Figma and the other 1Password.
I ended up moving forward with Figma because it was a combo of things I really enjoyed doing – leading a smaller but mighty team, and being the engineering lead of an entire product, the Figma Desktop app. I also loved using Figma on a regular basis at Shopify and Automattic, with FigJam being the culmination of the love for how it brought people together. There’s something magical about working for a company that uses the product it makes to in fact make their product. 🤩
That’s the update for now!