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An email message I sent to Chhavi yesterday:

I just experienced one of the most disturbing, disgusting experiences of my life—today, heads are literally rolling at DLI. The board of directors had their big meeting Monday, and the rumor circulating since then has been that it didn’t go well. Today, the truth of that rumor sort of hit full force—nine people got fired.

As part of a prime directive from the board of directors, DLI is streamlining and a lot of projects got killed. Including religion. So Steve got the axe, as did Jenn. Kiki got fired, two graphical designers, a project manager, a two product managers (including Jenn), and a content developer or two. Ten percent laid off. So it’s like a funeral around here today. Nobody is going to accomplish anything whatsoever. In fact, Kevin came by and told me that he realized as much and that I could just go home if I wanted to. I think I might in the early afternoon, though I don’t know what the hell I’ll do. He also explained to me that even he had no say in this. He was given a list of two names from his department and told to fire them.

Anyway, we’re all going out to lunch today and mourn, and probably bitch about the situation and how it was handled.

So that’s the big event of the week. We at DLI can’t go too long without some kind of shit hitting the fan, and I guess this was the biggest load yet. The complete list of people who got fired:

1. Steve
2. Jen
3. Lisa
4. Lisa R
5. Kiki
6. Anna
7. Marie (the receptionist)
8. Dave (graphic designer)
9. Chuck (graphic designer)

All this happened around 10:00 yesterday morning. By lunchtime, everyone had cleared out and the depression level was just enormous. Kevin came over as asked me how I was, and told me that if I was not in good working order mentally that I could just go home. I hung around, though, but I took a two-and-a-half hour lunch break with Armando, Ann P, and Marlon. Afterwards I went back to DLI and worked a little on the macros I’m creating for the XML tagging effort, and that was about the end of my day.

How were the decisions made? Apparently, even the lower levels of upper management didn’t even have a say in the issue. Both Kevin and Tom Flynn said that they were given a Post-It note with two names on it.

On first thought it seemed that Kevin was fairly upset about it, but it doesn’t seem to jive with his past actions. Look at how he fired Carl—get your ass out, basically. And the same thing with Alan. Perhaps I’m being too cynical. At the same time, if I buy the story, perhaps I’m being too naïve.

Firing Kiki was a particularly stupid move. We’ve basically dismembered this big mess we call a website, and now we’re in the process of figure out how to put it all back together. And who’s the only person who really had an idea how these things went together? Who could answer the question, “If I make this change in the file structure, how will it affect the links?” Who in our company basically played the biggest role in creating the current website? Kiki—the one who’s now fired. Isn’t that great?

The interesting thing about the firings is the gender break-down: 66% women. Both of the product managers who were fired were women. Who stayed? White men. How many women work at the company now? A handful. How many non-white women? One—Kyoungwa. Lots of eye candy for Layne.¹

Patricia summed it up perfectly: this is our first last gasp. And last gasp it is—we are so fucked. Basically, the religion project is dead—meaning Jacob Neusner once again will be told, “The project has been canceled.” A curmudgeon like Neusner is not someone you want on your bad side; he is not someone you want dismissing your product, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Here’s something, as Adam would say, that is even juicier: there is a large history conference next week where DLI will be presenting. John Monfesanni is planning to repudiate publicly his authorship of the last third of Western Civ I. He is basically going to say, “These people say this textbook is by me. The last third, in fact, was written by someone else.” He might as well say, “These people are liars.” We are so fucked.

1 Two amusing exchanges concerning Layne: Anna Socrates was terribly upset about the whole thing — the only person to show emotion there — and she sort of shrugged it off toward the end by saying, “He’s just a fucking gay porn director.” And at some point earlier, Allan Levitan said something about not being ordered around by that “short porn producer.”