That’s the Spirit

This week has been difficult, to put it mildly. As you may have seen in the tech news (and hell, maybe the regular news too), AOL laid off a bunch of my friends this week. I’m still employed, but it’s never easy to see the company I’ve been a part of for twelve years shrink. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but for now, I’m not giving up. I twittered last night that fighting is much more fun than surrender, and it’s true. Between the web standards stuff Kimberly and I started four years ago, to working on the stuff that’s come after it (the Cluetrain, Rails, etc), I’ve been fighting to “save” AOL for years. I’m not ready to give up on that investment yet.\
This week has been all about mourning and trying to make sense of what’s left. I wasn’t going to write anything at all about the layoffs here, but I saw something today that was so unbelievably awesome, and says so much about the people who make up the company, that I have to share it. Upper management may change every year or so, but the people who work here are what’s always made AOL work and made it a fun place to work. Check out this video (the password is aollover and I found it over on Silicon Alley Insider):

L’amour a la francaise from pyc on Vimeo.\
I’ve been to that office. It was many years ago, but they’re great people, just like the great people in Dulles, Dublin, Mountain View, Columbus, Tucson, Bangalore and everywhere else we have offices (those are the ones I’ve been to anyway). I’m hoping that when it’s my time to leave, I can show as much class and heart as the folks in the Paris office.