This is how my day went last Thursday:
08:00am - hop on a zoom call with a teammate to discuss Twitter's developer conference, Chirp, which had been canceled the night before. We were scheduled to give a tutorial on building SaaS apps at the event.
08:05am - While still on the phone, an email landed in my inbox, from Stripe's CEO Patrick, announcing that there would be a round of layoffs that day.
08:08am - While still on the phone, another email hit my inbox. Subject line: "Mike, your role at Stripe".
That was it. I got laid off.
If you're new here, it's likely because you saw my tweet later that same day:
🚨 I was laid off from my job at Stripe this morning. I will always look back on my time at Stripe DevRel fondly. Time to unwind and decompress. If you are a newly-former Stripe, DM or email hello@mikebifulco.com. I'll do whatever I can to help you find your next job.
— Mike Bifulco (@irreverentmike) November 3, 2022
The timeline above outlines a vast simplification - to give you some idea of what happened in my world last week, here's a few high-level events:
- Monday: I enjoyed an emergency dentist appointment after a crown come off my tooth during a weekend trip to Philadelphia.
- Tuesday: Went to All Things Open in Raleigh, NC, and gave a talk about Markdoc to 50 devs.
- Wednesday: Drove home to Charlotte, to pack for the next day's trip to the Caribbean Developer Conference in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
- Thursday: Ya boy got fired. lol. In the afternoon, I boarded a jet to Punta Cana with my wife, and shortly after arriving I fired off the tweet above.
- Friday: With the help of my incredible better half (Natalie 🫶), and steady stream of Piña Coladas, I responded to a trillion messages from people who had seen my tweet.
My dudes - it was a wild-ass week.
As I write this, it is almost exactly one week later. I've managed to untangle most of my brain by now, and have heard from a massive number of people who reached out to me with love and support. I have probably sent hundreds of replies by now, and I'm extremely grateful for each and every one of you who reached out, RT'd, and subscribed to this newsletter.
Seriously -- Tiny Improvements has doubled in subscriber count since last week!
On moving on & momentum
You can't control everything in life, but you can control how you react to it. I am extremely grateful for the experience I had - my team at Stripe was truly unique, and indescribably talented. I'd tell my colleagues that working with them was like having lightning in a bottle.
I still feel that way, but it's time to move on.
I was pleasantly surprised to see my tweet getting so much attention. It's the most viral thing I've put on the web to date, and I'm trying to use that attention for good. Since getting laid off, many people have reached out to me who are hiring for super interesting jobs. I've been maintaining a list of these jobs, and will continue to keep it up for as long as I can manage.
If you're looking for a job, or know someone who is, check out @irreverentmike's job list
If you're hiring, please DM me on twitter @irreverentmike or submit a job directly through this form.
What's next for me
I am endlessly thankful for the great network of people I have in my life. Friends, family, former colleagues, and complete strangers have reached out about job openings. I'm thrilled to say that my next job is lined up already. I'm excited to share more about that soon.
Now back to your regularly scheduled newsletter...
As you can imagine, this dispatch of Tiny Improvements is fairly atypical. Generally, this newsletter caters to people building great products - I'm a designer and front-end developer at heart, and a serial SaaS builder.
Generally my newsletters include a couple paragraphs diving into a topic like design for developers, or managing burnout, a photo or screenshot from my week, and links to a few interesting & helpful tools for getting things done.
If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, I'd love it if you stick around.
If you know anyone else who might benefit from my writing, please forward this to them, or send them off to mikebifulco.com/newsletter to subscribe. Thank you!
Here's hoping this next week is extremely un-interesting. ✌🏾
