Update 2024-09-13
On 2024-Jul-12, Philippe promised a response to the community after following up with Legal:
On 2024-Jul-20, Philippe updated that he was still awaiting an update:
Since then, folks have tagged Philippe and asked for updates or clarification over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. The change has gone live, and Philippe has refused to respond to any of the questions, and failed to meet the expectation that he set that he would provide an answer from Legal to certain questions.
If it weren't so disappointing, it would almost be funny.
Update 2024-07-19:
Last Friday, the company announced unpopular changes to the Creative Commons Data dump, and used the same playbook whereby the Company has asked employees not to engage on the Meta post, leaving that task to Philippe---who responded to some early questions. Then, despite saying they would monitor the post over the weekend and this week, all engagement from Philippe stopped after a few hours.
It brings me no joy to write this post.
Just over a month ago, Stack Overflow announced their most recent round of layoffs for the 2023 calendar year. Following that announcement, Philippe (VP, Community @ Stack) posted a follow-up in which he solicited questions & comments from the community & promised follow-up. In the second post, Philippe writes:
I’m expecting this post to spark many questions, and we’ll do our best to answer as many as we can. If we answer that something is confidential, please don’t take that as an opportunity to speculate.
On the 16th (the day of the lay-off and of the post), Philippe posted responses to several questions. On the 18th, Philippe responded to another tranche of questions.
Unfortunately, the company stopped responding after that.
I've gently and not-so-gently nudged for more responses, but have been incredibly disappointed.
There are a few highly-upvoted, high-quality questions from community members (myself included), that really deserve a response from the company, and it is disheartening to see the flow of responses simply stop.
My expectations
Based on Philippe's own words, I've been hoping to see responses to more of these questions, even if the response was "Sorry, this is confidential, so we can't answer directly," or some other acknowledgement of the question, even if it can't/won't be answered.
The company's failure to meet expectations
Philippe was quite direct in saying that we were to expect responses from the Company. From the appointment of multiple official spokespersons, to the mention that official responses from other Staff/CMs would not be made, everything signaled that the post would remain an open line of communication between the Company & Community.
I was hopeful that given 2023's rocky path between Company & Community, this post could be a valuable tool in re-focusing and re-validating the company's commitments to its core values, notably and specifically being transparent & community-centered.
Unease with existing answers. Lack of transparency.
Even when responses were made, several of them strike me as disingenuous. In a response on Oct 19, Philippe says:
Yes, management was impacted, up to and including at least one VP.
However, one Senior Director wrote a farewell letter that begins:
I wanted to let each of you know that I have chosen to be laid off today
Given that managers self-selected to include themself in the layoff, I don't think Philippe's original statement was truly transparent. If Management had not had the opportunity to add themself to the layoff, would any VP-level staff have been impacted? Signs point to no.
Additionally (it's been pointed out too many times for me to even cite), of the four official spokespeople who would be responding to questions on that post:
- Lily Toy (Chief Legal Officer) does not even have an account to respond with.
- Prashanth Chandrasekar (CEO) rarely engages or even logs in on the Network.
- Jody Bailey (CTO) rarely engages on Meta.
- Philippe Beaudette (VP, Community) is left as the only "real" spokesperson who has responded to any of the Community's questions.
After a long intro, my questions:
Does the Company plan on responding to any more of the questions asked on Philippe's post?
Can the Community expect engagement from Prashanth, Lily, or Jody? Or will Philippe remain the sole contributor to responses on that post?
Does the Company feel that it is fulfilling its obligations & promises to the Community?
Does the Company feel that it has lived up to its core values of transparency and being community centered in the way in which it has handled communications related to the most recent layoff?
I look forward to hearing a response from the Company. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
