Four tiny vignettes to recap the last two years.

November 2017



I’m in the lobby of Twitter, awaiting the final interview. It’s furnished in a bird theme, with branch sculptures, reclaimed wood furniture, and decorative birdhouses. I’m humming with anxiety, ripping away at my cuticles. 

Jack Dorsey walks by, wearing all black and these barely-there sandals (I do a double take to make sure he’s not barefoot). He grabs a bottled water out of the fridge and floats down the hallway. Another candidate and I turn to each other gaping, then grin. His passing presence feels auspicious.

February 2019





Yesterday was a hard one. I left feeling crushed and defeated. These days are inevitable but hopefully infrequent. I’m in an alcove tucked away on the sales floor, free from distractions to think and write. My teammate messages me and asks to chat. When I left work yesterday, she’d reached out on my way home to ask if I was okay. 

She comes downstairs to meet me in my alcove. We make tea and talk about yesterday. I’d skipped out on after work happy hour since I couldn’t bear to prolong the day. She fills me in, and it turns out yesterday was awful for her too. We’re both feeling stuck and unsure of what to do.

Until this moment, I’d felt incredibly isolated. From the outside, nothing had specifically transpired yesterday to make me feel this way, but I was suddenly and completely demoralized. Everyone else seemed perfectly fine but I alone was lost and struggling. In this tiny secluded corner, I now finally understand that my feelings aren’t irrational. The anxiety still weighs heavy, but is somehow a bit more bearable.

August 2019





We’re sitting in darkness, staring through a mirrored 1-way window in the middle of a user research study. We scribble down notes as the researcher guides a participant through Twitter’s onboarding flow.

We’d spent all of yesterday traveling, but it was our only weekend night in Sao Paolo. We’d decided to spend it drinking too many Caipirinhas (a sweet Brazilian cocktail) and coercing the company driver to babysit us on a night out in the city. 

Back in the research observation room, it is cool, dark and quiet. Suddenly, we hear the steady rise and fall of heavy breathing. I turn to the source of the noise and give a little poke. They wake up confused and I whisper that they had fallen asleep. Someone glares at us and shushes. We erupt in silent giggles and get back to taking notes. 



November 2019





I’m at a house party with some of my coworkers, gossiping about the week. They decide to leave for a club in Oakland and suggest that I accompany them. Twitter is hosting an afterparty for the AfroTech conference. When we get there, the club is packed! Every black person in technology in the Bay Area is here, and it seems they all know each other. The energy is vibrant. The night is alive.

My friends are clearly having a blast but I can’t help but feel a persistent discomfort — I’m obviously out of place. It dawns on me that this is a tiny, temporary glimpse into how my friends who are underrepresented minorities in the tech community are made to feel, everyday. At their jobs, they are frequently the only ones in the room that look like them. I’m so grateful for the perspective this night has afforded.



November 2020

My first year working was challenging, and at the time it was hard to diagnose the root cause for it. Although I could never clearly articulate why, I wondered if my personal friendships with coworkers had complicated our working relationships. For whatever reason, I irrationally decided this was an easy solution to test, and vowed to create separation on my second team. These were my coworkers, not my friends. This year, especially, it was easy to not make the effort.

As I reflect on the highlights of these past two years, it’s clear that this was a mistake. My fondest memories, some of which I’ve shared here, came from the deep friendships I built with my teammates. These experiences yielded the greatest personal and professional development. Of course, boundaries are incredibly important, but a bit of vulnerability created friendships that continue to be deeply important to me. They made my work experience and my life so much richer. 

The people that I met and the friendships that I made were categorically the best part of my experience at Twitter. They made the wins at work, and outside, worth celebrating. They made the losses tolerable. Words are too clumsy to express what these people mean to me, but I’m excited to carry these friendships forward. 

Farewell Twitter! Onto the next chapter 🙏