FiveThirtyEight layoffs

Disney began more layoffs, and data-centric FiveThirtyEight, which is owned by Disney, was part of the round. Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of the site, also announced he is likely to be leaving soon:

Disney layoffs have substantially impacted FiveThirtyEight. I am sad and disappointed to a degree that’s kind of hard to express right now. We’ve been at Disney almost 10 years. My contract is up soon and I expect that I’ll be leaving at the end of it.

I had been worried about an outcome like this and so have had some great initial conversations about opportunities elsewhere. Don’t hesitate to get in touch. I am so proud of the work of FiveThirtyEight staff. It has never been easy. I’m so sorry to the people impacted by this.

Feels like a shift in data and stories.

Tags: , , ,

Words used in layoff letters

Tech layoffs continue, and as companies deliver more letters, there are some repeated topics. For The Washington Post, Hamza Shaban, Luis Melgar, and Leslie Shapiro parsed out the patterns:

The Post analyzed 48 publicly available memos from tech companies ranging from start-ups that have raised at least $50 million to trillion-dollar giants that have announced layoffs since last summer. Major themes and key words for each theme were determined after reviewing the memos. The Post programmatically split each memo into sentences and identified each sentence with a key word. Sentences were manually vetted to verify correct classification. A single sentence may be assigned multiple categories. Design elements are direct quotes from layoff memos with the exception of the first, where “Dear” was not necessarily used.

Tags: , ,

Unemployed data scientist

It seems a lot of data scientists have either left or were laid off from their jobs during the past few months. Jacqueline Nolis and Emily Robinson, data scientists who hosted a podcast and wrote a book on building a career in the field, happened to be in the lot. So naturally, they brought back the podcast for a bonus episode on their experiences with sudden unemployment and the job search.

I’ve never had a “real” job (as some tend to tell me), so workplace experiences are always interesting to me, like peering into an aquarium. The layoff process seems not fun.

Tags: , ,