Adam was a very prominent Chrome DevRel and top voices of the web platform. I personally owe to his content (blog, snippets, podcast, talks, youtube, social media etc.) to stay up-to-date on things.
It’s a bit of a shock to me that he of all people is getting laid off and that too in such an ugly way.
DevRel is unfortunately something that’s going the way of the dodo though now that interest rates are up. A position that doesn’t directly contribute to the bottom line of a company, so it’s easy to justify getting rid of.
A company will often try and avoid letting a candidate know that they are being considered for firing, or that the decision has already been made, until the trigger is pulled.
