Nostalgia means a lot to me—I’ve essentially plastered that fact on the walls of this place. It represents the footprints that trail me as I’ve journeyed forward through life. There’s a sense of pride, of impact, of legacy, of truth. So what happens when those senses get… erased?
My first job out of college, Facebook, has always been the weird listing on my LinkedIn page. I found it on LinkedIn while interviewing for LinkedIn. I interviewed for it at the Noah’s Bagels on University Avenue in Palo Alto. I worked 96 hours during my first week. I accidentally soft-launched Facebook for high schools. My claims to fame were being Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet Explorer 6 bug-hunting bitch, and the business card that had “bitch” on it. I was summarily fired after 10 months because I didn’t get along with a middle manager and she sent me packing.
But I was hired as Facebook’s second designer. After Aaron Sittig and before Soleio Cuervo.
This hurts to write, because every fiber in my being is telling me not to. But one of my greatest fears is the fear of being forgotten. Right now, at 42, I fear it. Call it a character flaw, fatal or otherwise. Call it “something I have to work through.” But it’s primal and core.
So, color me conflicted when I see Soleio promote an interview with a former co-worker and the animation of “Facebook’s second designer” flies by. It stung a bit. But logically, I know he has a rightful claim to that moniker. He was there orders of magnitude longer than I was. He had orders of magnitude more impact and found orders of magnitude more success from the position. Yes, he was Facebook’s second designer who mattered.
Please understand, I’m not bitter, but I am processing. And the universe, apparently, has a sense of irony.
About a month ago, on a whim, I took a trip to San Francisco to bum around outside Figma’s Config conference. It was the first time in nearly a decade that I had even entertained identifying as a designer first—my departure from Twitch in early 2016 was underpinned by my loss of love for the craft and for the tech industry in general. But, like the elliptical orbits of Pluto or numerous comets, my own trajectory started slingshotting back to tech late last year.
Hours after I got into San Francisco, I joined a new old friend at a party a few blocks from my hotel. Full of energy and nerves, I decided to go. I walked into that event space a foreigner, proudly wearing the title of “OG” that was given to me by said friend. I found solace catching up with fellow designers, exchanging stories, and the like.
And then… Soleio spotted me. I hadn’t seen him in more than 17 years, the last time being a random run-in at SXSWi while I was still obsessively concerned with running bowling tournaments. After exchanging an embrace, he introduced me as a former co-worker to the gentleman he was talking to and told him how we met: I first met him through here, avalonstar.com, in the comments section of a blog post where I was looking for a partner to work with Aaron and me at Facebook. I brought him in, astounded by his Flash work at the time, and the rest is history.
After he finished, he turned to me, and said “thank you”. It was a 20-year-old, finely aged catharsis I didn’t know I needed. I said without skipping a beat: “I will always fight for people I believe in.” We talked a bit more, and went our separate ways for the night.
And then, weeks later, I saw his claim again. The same person who had just given me that unexpected catharsis was also the one whose success had erased me.
I shouldn’t care.
But I do.
I hate that I do. I hate that after 20 years, I can still feel this way about someone I genuinely respect and care about. Tens of thousands of people have worked for Facebook, now Meta. My era at that company, as the 27th employee, is ancient history in comparison. But can I even still claim that? What am I in the history of that company now? What is my legacy, even if it did only span 3% of Facebook’s lifetime? What does it mean when the person you brought in becomes the keeper of your title?
I shouldn’t care.
But I do.
But—maybe it would be better if I just erased all of this from my own legacy.