Corey H.

Ohhh they’re gorgeous!

I have just finished an 18 year stint of working at the same company.

Now I’m like “oh I’ve started enjoying food again, that’s nice” and then “waaaaait when did I stop” so I think I’ve independently discovered what burnout is like.

There’s been a big upswing in various personal crises FOR SOME REASON

Yeaaaah

As you may be picking up I’ve been crispy as hell for a while lol. How’s things with you?

Oooh interesting! That feels a little daunting (in a way that may just mean I should get over my imposter syndrome already, lol) but super interesting. Any idea how urgently you’re looking to fill the role? Sadly if there’s much time pressure it may not be a great fit for my burnout recovery.

This is great, thanks!

Right now I’m watching a lot of TV and hiking and frankly counting my blessings that the burnout isn’t worse than it is (I mean, it’s not the Olympics etc, but)

Aw thanks!

Missed you too!

Hah, I feel that really hard right now.

so I’m genuinely in no big hurry to get to work. So the time thing is NBD.

Actually that sounds sort of great? Full disclosure I haven’t done contract work before but money coming in is awesome and leaves me more flexibility in a lot of ways, so it sounds like that could be a win-win. Happy to chat informally whenever, but I’m recovering from burnout right now anyway

Oh man accessibility is so important and so hard. My last team was an internal maps editor at literally the take on a11y was “users who need accessibility won’t be able to use this anyway so why bother” which is…not entirely unreasonable but not awesome

Building from scratch is a tempting decision to make but it’s frequently the wrong one.

And if not, please accept the tip of my hat for the work you’re already doing. I’ve always been pleased and impressed with what Dreamwidth is up to.

There’s a lot to be said for filling a niche and doing it well.

Seriously, if you might be interested in figuring something out with me, I’d be interested in talking. No big urgency on my end, though. (Do I have a resume ready? lol no, but I could fix that.)

Oh I’m familiar with dreamwidth! Y’all do great work, on admittedly a UI that is built on the finest modern affordances from 1999 (but that’s intentional, which counts for a lot)

Also I am great at endearing to myself to potential employers

(I mean, I realize you’re the org structure, but you take my point)

And/or that the org structure might understand the value of not breaking shit all the time

TBH the nice thing about a change averse user base is that then UI/UX shit isn’t changing every 30 seconds so you have half a chance of setting up good testing foundations while you make those changes

I mean, that does sound like a fun challenge in many ways. I would probably need a little more cat fur to put me over the edge though

and discuss difficulty and impact of UI/UX work.

That’s good to hear. I have come away from my career so far with the impression that mostly eng cultures are like “sure, your UI is pretty, but why should I care?”

Which is not the fucking point actually, but because the culture at large doesn’t care we also don’t have great ways to measure…

My own stuff aside, there is seriously so much money to be had in not having ethics. In some ways the miracle is that there are any jobs in the industry that feel ethical.

(I recently ended an 18 year career at the goog and now I’m realizing I can like…work on my own terms, and those terms are gonna be way more focused on my values and well being and way less on numbers

But also, where am I gonna find myself a 50-70% time job offer, lol)

Word. You looking for a not-very-well paid UI/UX person to work about 20-30hrs/week by any chance?

It was an entire debacle. Joining the privacy team was really funny too cause it was like “wow, this team has huge percentages of trans and queer people, I WONDER WHY”

Huuuuuh. That TS role is kind of a great fit actually, damn

Oh interesting. I’m honestly used to thinking of UI/UX as hamstringing me in this backend-heavy industry so I’ll have to chew on that