Shopify just laid off 20% of employees, among which many were way more impactful than me.

The main reason I'm still there is randomness, not merit.

This is the first time I witness a major layoff first hand in a company I'm part of. It's really weird.

As a student, I read about the ROWE movement (Results Only Work Environment). It was before the remote work trend and I could only dream about it. Today I work in such an environment where nobody gives a shit how much I work. All that matters is my impact and my results.

To make an analogy with sports, who cares how much a player trains or not? All that matters is their performance in the game.

As I start with Mastodon, there's a weird feeling to be in a social network with almost no follower. It's like Twitter is a bar where many people know me, and entering a new bar where nobody sees me. It will take some time to build a social graph here.

Also what matters most is not the number of followers, but rather the quality of the interactions and of the discourse. My goal is that if Twitter shuts down (slowly or suddenly), I'll have a second online home and won't feel "homeless online".