One way I decide what becomes an essay is by paying attention to how often an idea comes up in conversation.
In March, during a team retreat I attended virtually, my executive producer talked about how the main priority for leadership was to take care of our people. It was a sort of throwaway sentence. It wasn’t even what the session was about. It was a small bit of extra context added to a bigger conversation about something only slightly related to this. But that idea - ‘taking care of our people as a priority’ - stayed with me.
On the morning of the 8th of May, I sent my friend a text.
“distressing news coming from Microsoft today”
Only hours earlier, I found out that Microsoft was closing its African Development Centre in Lagos. More than 200 people were losing their jobs. My friend was one of them. It was really bad timing for their family. We talked for a little while before they said this about the way layoff decisions are made in big companies:
“…Because someone just looks at a spreadsheet and is like "let's get this number down by a few hundred"
A few days earlier, I’d been talking to a friend who works in Venture Capital about my biggest faulting of capitalism. I am lucky right now, that my work exists outside capitalist motivations. So I can criticise capitalism without being too big of a hypocrite. I told my friend about an Instagram post I saw announcing Tesla’s layoff of its entire EV charging division. Over the years, as much as it is possible to have any proper understanding of an issue from far away, I’ve fallen under the impression that Tesla’s biggest success as an EV manufacturer is in its robust charging network. Tesla has one of the largest EV charging networks in the world. It has the biggest network of Superchargers. The team responsible for that did not seem, to me, like a team that deserved to be fired. In the comment section of the IG post announcing the layoff, someone had said - in justification of Elon’s choice to fire the team - that if these people’s jobs were no longer relevant, then why waste money on paying them salary? To my friend, I talked about the idea of taking care of your people. If your priority was to take care of your people, you wouldn’t decide to fire the people responsible for one of the best parts of your company. That sort of thing just wouldn’t happen. My friend, whose job is to invest in startups with the hope of making a 10x return on investment pointed out to me that she would not look kindly on a portfolio company spending money on salaries simply out of some sentiment to ‘take care of some people.’
When you look at a spreadsheet, that’s not a wise financial decision.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this newsletter. When I started writing Act Two in 2022, I had just taken up a job in a new Nigerian Audio Production company. The job was one of the first moments when my decision to pursue a career in audio documentary-making felt validated. I was getting noticed. Someone out there had seen the audio stories I was making and wanted to pay me to help them make more. At the same time, there were many things I did not know. I was still new to the field and wasn’t exactly sure what kind of trajectory my life would follow. I had just quit my job about a year earlier and I was feeling lost. I did not know what I was doing and I talked about that very often in this newsletter. I had a lot of anxiety (and still do) and talked about that a lot in this newsletter. Finally, I was scared - confused and talked about that too. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a long time, perhaps you remember that I started writing these essays to document the five years I gave myself to figure out how to do this for a living. We are in year 4 now. I no longer work at that company and have been asking myself if this is still Act Two for me.
This phase of my career has changed since this newsletter began. When it started, it was essay after essay about how normal it was to feel and navigate anxiety. I feel like these days, essay after essay is about care.
A few days ago, I was on the phone with a character in a story I am working on. It was 8:50 pm and as we recapped our days, I was telling them about another call I had just a few minutes later. Curious, they asked me if this - our casual call - was part of my job.
The answer is not super straightforward.
When you do courses on audio storytelling, most instructors will talk about only two moments when you talk to a character.
a pre-interview
an interview
In this way, it appears that you only talk to a person as a direct connection to getting tape for your story. This call I was having with my character was neither. At that moment, we weren’t having a conversation that meant anything to the story I was making. I had set up that call as an opportunity for me to check in on the character and what was happening in their life. I was doing this partly because of the nature of my work. The kinds of stories I make aren’t just stories, they are big important parts of people’s lives. They don’t simply exist to make narrative sense for a podcast episode. These stories (the ones I find myself pursuing lately) usually represent big expressions of hope for these people. I find that I don’t think my only place is to show up, record some tape and then leave. I think I owe it to them to exercise some care. So I told the character that yes, in a way it was part of my job. It wasn’t something I had to do, calling simply to check up on them, but it was important to me - to express care.
I find myself asking that question a lot.
What does it look like if care becomes a priority in how I do my work?
How do I treat the people I work with?
How do I treat the people I interview?
How do I treat myself?
How do I take care in all of these situations?
On the 3rd of July, I sent an 8-minute voice note to my friend. In it, I talked about my relationship with work. I talked about how I often see it as an opportunity to let others down by not doing well enough. I talk about that briefly in my last essay. I also talked to my friend about how a conversation I had with my managers made me feel taken care of when I was already feeling like a failure. I felt like I was falling behind and expected to be called out on it but instead got asked how I could be better supported to feel less like how I felt. Then in the voice note, I went on a similar rant as I have above. In the end, I reflected on the recent trend of layoffs in tech and media.
I think about how many of them didn’t have to happen. I think about how many of them happened because the people in charge were only asking one question: ‘How can we maximize growth?’
In situations like this, when companies stop growing and growth stops being the priority, people lose their jobs. In my mind, if we thought to take care of our people, these jobs might never have been lost.
I sent a similarly long voice note to another friend the next day
When an idea keeps coming up in my conversation like this; when I can’t stop thinking about a thing. An essay becomes necessary.
Thank you for reading to the end.
This is one of those rare essays that was written in only one draft.
Act Two started out being about anxiety but now, I think it is more about care.
As someone who has been reading your newsletter since 2022, I just want to let you know that your care is valid, the way you approach yourself and your subject interest, is valid. Regardless of the noise, I do believe we are growing a generation where care becomes an increased priority over exponential and linear growth. And when these care figures begin to matter, I know I’ll think of your newsletter.
Take care❤️
It's funny how I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday about how a lot of businesses lack empathy towards their staff and their customers. It's important that care have a high ranking position in the value system of a business.
The little branches, when taking care of, are the ones that bear the leaves up to help the tree reach the sun and grow well.