A Practical reboot
by Matt May
Hi, all. It’s been about a month since my last newsletter. I went on a long vacation (with a COVID chaser!), and since then I’ve been doing some thinking, particularly about the work I want to do, for whom, and from where.
TL;DR I’m retiring the name Practical Equity and Inclusion LLC, and focusing on working with individuals on their ethics, their careers, and what comes after.
For those of you who somehow don’t track my corporate affiliations, a recap: I soft-launched Practical at the end of 2023 with some paid office hours for folks doing equity work in tech. I really liked that. Early in 2024, I expanded into solo consulting. My first client ended up being over 90% of my billable time, and so for the last half of the year, I mothballed Practical to become their chief technology officer. We shipped a product in November, but the founders couldn’t find funding for it. I had ethical issues with what they wanted to build next, so I left at the end of the year. My main project so far in 2025 has been a chapter I wrote on burnout for a book on ethics in accessibility.
As you are likely aware, the United States had an election last November. One of the results of that has been that the name of my company, the subject of my master’s degree (inclusive design), and two of my previous job titles (namely: director, product equity; head of inclusive design) would, if published in a paper sponsored by the federal government, cause it to be flagged for potential removal. Of course, that’s the tip of the iceberg: I know government employees who’ve been fired or sidelined; academic colleagues who’ve been stripped of millions in funding; corporate colleagues who’ve gone to ground.
From a business perspective, it’s safe to say that a DEI organization in the United States, particularly one run by a white guy, does not have product-market fit. But more importantly, at least to me, is that my unique value to corporations is in growing internal product DEI teams, and the #1 trend in tech right now is replacing every role player with AI, which will subsequently repeat and magnify the means of exclusion that are trained into it. I’m selling broccoli to candy companies, whose factory runoff just happens to be destroying the broccoli fields.
Friends, I used to love technology. My first tech job was at 18. I built and sold PCs at 19. My first web development gig was at 21. I really, really believed the web would be durably, and positively, transformational. So much so that I worked on its technical standards. And I think I was right, for a time. We had search engines that worked, content written and edited by humans, even this thing called “blogging” where folks talked about what mattered to them, on sites they controlled and could move around at will. My inner infojunkie aches at the nostalgia.
But now, I’m all out of love. The web is now balkanized, paywalled, choked with ads and cookies and slop and scams and disinformation. It seems most startups are content to farm the LLM homestead, building mindless me-too apps designed to appeal to funds that were created by the major investors in OpenAI, et al., in order to prop up demand for their big bets. With precious few exceptions, large companies give lip service at best to the effects their products have on society and the ecosystem. When it comes to making life easier or better in any meaningful way for actual humans on planet Earth… well, good luck raising a seed round unless your deck has “AI” and a smiley face on every slide.
So, yeah. I’m kind of done. And I know I’m not alone.
This isn’t a new feeling. I wrote about a lot of this last April in a pair of posts called The Dancing Bear (part 1, part 2). I recommended that everyone do a consequence scanning exercise to contemplate the ethical outcomes of the work they do. And so, I did that for myself, with the kind of work I could be doing.
I have a couple hard limits about what I can and can't do for an employer:
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I can’t offer my services to a company I believe makes a toxic product; and
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My ethics don’t allow me to work somewhere I cannot be honestly critical, or to represent something as ethically made when it’s not.
As a result, a lot of organizations I once had positive associations with are now off my list forever. Given where we are right now, that all but rules out working for a US-based, for-profit tech company. (Conveniently, that’ll save me a lot of resume submissions that’ll never be read by a human.)
I’ve decided to add one more work requirement:
- I will work from anywhere I choose (apart from work engagements).
Which means I’ll most likely remain self-employed.
My main focus for the rest of this year will be helping people explore their own ethics, and apply them to the work they do. I’ve talked with hundreds of people over the years who feel burned out, and hopefully my book chapter will help. But I also think it’s only scratching the surface, and I’m not seeing much in the way of material support for people who don’t know how to reconcile their own ethical concerns with their jobs. And little to nothing about when it might be time to let go and find something they’d get fulfillment from. Some people know it’s time to go, but just have no clue how to get out of tech, sort out their finances, and do something totally different. They’ve just always had a tech job, which they hate and feel conflicted about doing every day, but are just terrified about what would happen if they didn’t have it. Those are the people I want to help.
The Practical Equity and Inclusion name, however, doesn’t really fit for this next chapter. I’m not going to be marketing myself to corporate DEI programs, and never really established it as a brand anyway. I’ll be doing some work that won’t really be considered to be DEI. I’m also happy staying solo for the foreseeable future. And so, I’m just going to go with the only brand of mine that’s recognizable: Matt May.
Next up, designing that website I put off while I was working the startup. I’ll also be working on the building blocks for the ethics evaluation: readings, worksheets, videos, talks, workshops, that kind of thing. There’ll be more on this later, but there should be a range of approaches from full-on DIY to intensive guided evaluations, a kind of co-design for a client’s future. I am not a life coach. The coaching thing has always felt kind of icky to me. What I am is a design researcher who knows how to build things together with others, instead of for them.
I will still do free office hours, of course. I shelved those over this break, and I’m going to take another week or so to spin some of this stuff up. But I’ve done a lot of this work pro bono, and will continue to do so.
That’s the news! I’m here to help you enter your villain era. More soon.
Real call to action here
If you made it this far, thanks, and I have a favor to ask. Take two minutes right now and email me your thoughts. Do you think this is needed? Would this help you, or someone you know, and if so, in what format? Is somebody already doing this and you think it’s a waste of my time? You can literally just email me “I read to the end.” I’ll need little bits of feedback wherever I can get it until this thing is off the ground, I really value your input, and I won’t use it or your contact info against you.
Thanks to everyone for following along.