RE: https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/116798038528869495

Yet my mum was only telling me this week that all the hot weather warnings are silly because they never needed them when she was a kid.

Pauline von Hellermann

2026-06-23 06:37:12

#ClimateDiary “Above is a fictional weather forecast for August 18, 2050, broadcast by French television in 2014, intended to warn against the disastrous consequences of global warming.

Below is the weather forecast for June 22, 2026.”

(By @jakubwiech on unmentionable)

This brings out super starkly how #ClimateChange has accelerated so much more quickly than we thought even just 12 years ago.

Trump as President enriching himself.

Musk as the richest man in the world.

Bezos talking about "work/life harmony" and talking about "maniacal obsession" about customers as a good thing while most of his employees barely make a living wage. And those making good money know they're in a pact to be treated like shit and have no work/life balance in exchange.

At my last company, when I met the CEO, I tried to open up a bit to him when I started, since he seemed to want to know about me. I explained how I always felt like an outsider, coming from two different ethnic backgrounds, growing up in the deep south, very, very Catholic area of New Orleans. And then discovering I was gay combined with Catholic guilt, it was difficult to really be who I could be if I was hiding part of who I was.

So I explained that I build teams where everyone is welcome, and different perspectives and skills of people all being who they are, fully, is what builds a well-rounded, and happy team.

He replied that, "Being a redhead in Alabama wasn't exactly easy, so I know how you feel." A cis-gender, white male....but being a redhead was his biggest friction in life. Wow, all of the feels for you.

He was given every opportunity, went the "desk job" military route. Started a company, got in with big money like the Koch Brothers, big oil as investors, etc.

After 3 years of building a team from scratch, shoring up morale, putting in processes where none had existed...I made a fatal mistake.

I realized that my team was the most diverse in the company. That I had more women, more queer folks, more non-white folks in my team than any of the others. But some of my peers noticed as well.

One of my peers asked me for mentorship as a director. He wanted to know how to be more open and supportive of women in tech, especially those who may not have been born American.

I agreed...we struck out a very friendly relationship at work, where eventually the idea of a DEI committee came up. I told him the CEO would never approve of that. He told me to write the email, and he'd send it to the CEO. The CEO had his ear.

So I did. The letter that started the DEI commitee at my old company was formed. We had LGBTQIA/BiPOC folks, men, women, sponsors. It was wonderful. We were creating a cross-company team of some lower- and high level folks who were getting representation along with executive sponsors.

I was thrilled to be there and seeing this happen and the way I built and led my team spreading to other parts of the company.

Then the CEO found out, somehow, that the idea for the DEI committee came from me. I heard through channels and folks he was close to that he was getting "jealous" that my team held me in high regard, and that one of his confidants was coming to me instead of him for leadership mentorship.

And it infuriated him. A month after I was promoted, my manager told me that the CEO has identified "leaders in engineering" who are not good leaders and shouldn't be here. I told him, "Well, I'm gone then." He replied that if I got pushed out, he'd leave too. There's no way they could get rid of me with my contributions.

Two months later, I was terminated for "non performance related reasons." I got about 10 phone calls at around 10AM, all asking me what the fuck.

The DEI committee was disbanded shortly after my termination.

I mailed back all of my stuff. But kept in touch with my folks. Many of whom left the company as they were increasingly treated like crap. The entire eng team placed on a PIP. A peer of mine who backstabbed me and ended up as SVP of the organization. He would take glee in terminating people who wouldn't acquiesce to his insane demands. He once told a UI/UX director to completely rearchitect and reimplement a user flow in under a week. When she said it wasn't possible to, he pushed her. She replied, "If you think it's possible, then you do it." 30 minutes later, an announcement went out that she had been terminated. And he posted a blog about what insubordination gets you and how not to be like her and suffer her fate. That's the level we're dealing with.

The CEO once said that he was offered $5B for the company and he and the CFO laughed and turned it down.

When I was term'd, the fair market value was about 1/3 of what it was at its peak. But my stock price was even lower, and I was out of work...so I used a third party to help execute on getting funds to buy my stock, which I liquidated immediately, as everyone still at the company told me things were getting increasingly worse.

It was recently announced that the company was acquired, and FMV jumped x8 in a single day. All concurrent with an announcement of AI grift with new (crap) products.

The CPO who told me they loved walking down the hallway and people getting out of their way out of fear of her is now worth well north of $10M.

The peer who stabbed me in the back, he's got at least $5M or so.

The "difficult life" CEO is now a billionaire.

I'm not upset that I sold my stock early. They weren't that generous with me with stock. It would've been a nice chunk of change, but not a life changing amount or enough for me to leave the country. That's not what upsets me.

What upsets me is the scum of the earth, people who feed on the fear of others, who need people to listen to them out of fear, not respect. The grifters who fuck over people in their personal relationships, get rich beyond their wildest dreams, but still conflate respect for their role with the love they so desperately need...these are the folks who get ahead.

Empathy, leading with compassion, caring about people you interact with, work with...that doesn't seem to get rewarded.

Being ruthless, selfish, emotionless, worshipping the dollar, and selling your soul are what get people ahead in life.

Because, not in spite of this behavior, many of these people never have to worry about money again. They have options. Some decent folks got a good payout, and I hope it's the catalyst for them to leave.

But what's evident is that you can get too entrenched to fail.

And no one at the top has a sliver of empathy, humanity, or worth as a role model.

And that's who our country rewards.