Out of Office is a new GeekWire series spotlighting the passions and hobbies that members of the Seattle-area tech community pursue outside of work.

• Name: Vivek Ladsariya.
• Day job: General partner and managing director at Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs, where he helps create and invest in startups as a venture capital investor.
• Out-of-office passion: Cooking.

Growing up in India, food was a big part of the culture and something that Vivek Ladsariya was immersed in at home.

His family had a flour mill and would buy wheat grain to grind it into flour. He watched his mother and grandmother cook, and he ate and enjoyed their food.

“When I moved to the U.S., I missed it tremendously, and there was no real way to get some of that home food except to learn how to cook it,” Ladsariya said. “That’s when I started to really learn how to cook all of those things, because I needed that food to consume. So, it was very much born out of necessity.”

His taste and skill goes beyond making the dishes he loved as a boy. He makes pastas and Taiwanese food. He likes to slow cook meat or use his fancy pizza oven. During a recent potluck lunch he made scallion pancakes.

Ladsariya and his wife cook every meal at home, and with a 7-week-old daughter, he finds himself “wearing” her around the kitchen while he’s cooking, encouraging her to taste what he’s making.

During the pandemic while living in San Francisco, Ladsariya got the chance to work in two restaurants — Merchant Roots and Sushi Hakko — as a chance to stay busy while his wife was busy with her healthcare job.

“I think that’s when my cooking game really elevated,” he said. “Up until then I enjoyed cooking, but I’d create a mess. Then I got really organized in the kitchen. I became really efficient.”

With a friend, Ladsariya also put together a pop-up restaurant in which they spent two months researching and prepping a menu and cooking for guests over three days. The proceeds went to charity, and Ladsariya called it one of the favorite times of his life. It’s a process he plans to repeat in Seattle.

But Ladsariya, who enjoys hosting smaller dinners for startup founders, has no plans to leave his day job for a life in the kitchen.

“You’re standing on your feet the entire day and you are unbelievably exhausted,” he said. “I think it’d get old really quickly, and I’d lose the love for this.”

Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: Ladsariya said that his day job is so high level and “in the brain” that it can sometimes can be abstract and lacking in the real-time feedback that he gets from working with his hands.

“I just fell in love with that aspect of cooking,” he said. “Everything you do is right there, you get the evidence of whether you did it well or not right away. The effort, the reward — that loop is just so instant and real and gratifying to work with your hands.”

And it’s not about feeding himself. For Ladsariya, the joy of cooking comes from feeding others.

“It’s the bringing people together, the community and all of that that food enables,” he said. “I’m able to provide a great meal and bring together people with something that scratches my creative desires.”

The lessons he brings back to work: Ladsariya finds a connection between how he thinks about cooking and how he thinks about startups.

“Cooking is really about high quality ingredients and not messing it up,” he said. “More often than not, bad food comes from bad ingredients. And I think the same is true for startups. As long as you have a good group of people, they can do something good. People are the ingredients of startup building.”

Furthermore, whether it’s a dish he’s never made or a startup idea that’s especially daunting, it’s best not to overthink things and just do it.

“It’s easy to be intimidated and say, ‘Oh, I have no idea how to do that or where to even start,'” Ladsariya said. “But with a little bit of research and work and just committing to it, you can do pretty incredible things.”

Read more Out of Office profiles.

Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: tips@geekwire.com.

Ten years into a dream to connect Vancouver, B.C., Seattle and Portland via a high-speed rail line, stakeholders and backers of the mega-project said Wednesday that they’re still very much onboard — and to prepare for a long trip.

With a lengthy and uncertain timeline ahead, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a speaker at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference in Seattle, cautioned many of those in attendance that they likely won’t live long enough to see high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest.

“When you build big things, they cost big money,” LaHood said. “It took us 50 years to build the interstate system.”

LaHood said the key is to “get on board” now so that “our children and grandchildren” will reap the benefits.

At Cascadia Innovation Corridor’s annual event this week, much of the focus was on how to strengthen the cross-border partnership between three growing cities and numerous locales in between. Leaders discussed ideas around innovation, housing affordability, sustainability, and economic development. They signed a Memorandum of Reaffirmation to solidify commitments.

And Wednesday was about the enhanced transportation connectivity that could help drive it all, and the work that lies ahead in building a coalition of public and political support across the region, securing funding, jumpstarting planning, and more. Even producing videos like the new one below is part of the massive outreach under way.

Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, Cascadia Innovation Corridor’s chair, said that a decade ago, high-speed rail was just an idea. The next decade can be a defining one.

“You would have thought we were thinking of doing something in outer space by the reaction,” she said. “Today, it is much more than an idea, and we are actually moving forward. While we do have a long way to go, as you well know, we’re funding the first phase of planning built on one of the most unique coalitions in North America.”

Envisioning a mega-region akin to Silicon Valley, in which Vancouver, Seattle and Portland are each only an hour apart, Gregoire highlighted the possibilities that could come with high-speed mobility.

“A UW student can intern in Vancouver, a family in Puget Sound can explore a job in Portland, and a cancer researcher in Vancouver can get home for dinner after a shift in Seattle,” she said. “It’s a new way of living, working and connecting, one that expands what’s possible for everyone who calls Cascadia home.”

The pace to make the dream a reality has been anything but high-speed.

In 2017, Microsoft — which has an office in downtown Vancouver — gave $50,000 to a $300,000 effort led by Washington state to study a high-speed train proposal. In 2021, officials from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia signed a memorandum of understanding to form a committee to coordinate the plan.

Last year, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded the Washington State Department of Transportation $49.7 million to develop a service development plan for Cascadia High-Speed Rail. A timeline on WSDOT’s website points to 2028 for estimated completion of that plan, and for 2029 and beyond it simply says, “future phases to be determined.”

Cascadia is not alone in its quest for high-speed rail.

LaHood, a Republican cabinet member in the Obama administration, recalled the former president’s commitment to rail transportation. He said the Trump administration “clawing back” $4 billion in funding for California’s high-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles should not be considered a “death knell,” despite challenges in that state.

LaHood pointed to Brightline train projects in Florida, connecting Orlando and Miami, and Las Vegas, with a plan to offer high-speed connectivity to Southern California. Another plan in Texas would connect Houston and Dallas. All are evidence, he said, that this mode of transportation is what Americans want in order to avoid clogged highways and airports.

“Once the politicians catch on to what the people want, boom, you get the kind of rail transportation that people are clamoring for,” LaHood said.

Here are highlights from other speakers at the conference on Wednesday:

• WSDOT Secretary Julie Meredith pointed to big Seattle transportation infrastructure projects that transformed the city, including the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and construction of the SR 99 waterfront tunnel, as well as the new SR 520 floating bridge. Even as work will continue for years connecting communities via Link light rail, Meredith said, “I so often describe this program as one I’m most excited about, because it’s an opportunity for us to so fundamentally transform our region up and down the I-5 corridor,” Meredith said.
• Chelsea Levy, Cascadia High-Speed Rail project manager, said the region can expect a 25% increase in population, or about 3.4 million more people, by 2050. “This pace and magnitude of growth really requires us to act,” Levy said. Among other things, WSDOT will need to integrate with B.C. and Oregon transportation networks and, Levy stressed, the scale and complexity of the project will require a streamlining of permitting processes across the 345-mile mega-region.
• Hana Doubrava, a Vancouver-based corporate affairs director at Microsoft, leads the Cascadia initiative for the tech giant. She said the company’s support is not just symbolic, and that Microsoft believes modern, efficient transit and transportation options are essential for improved quality of life. “Cascadia is all about partnerships and relationships — despite the current geopolitics or baseball scores,” she said in a nod to Canada’s team, the Toronto Blue Jays, denying the Seattle Mariners a trip to the World Series.

Related:

• Microsoft’s Brad Smith makes nuanced AI pitch: Huge potential, real concerns, and a Jon Stewart clip
• Longterm vision for Seattle-Portland-Vancouver mega-region will require a ‘consensus on growth’
• Study: High-speed rail connecting Seattle to Vancouver BC would spur $355B in economic growth

More than 117 years after Seattle residents first saw a flying machine in the sky, a unique aircraft over Jet City can still turn heads.

That happened this week with the arrival of Beta Technologies‘ all-electric ALIA CX300 conventional takeoff and landing aircraft as it dropped into King County International Airport – Boeing Field.

Photographer Steve Rice captured the strange-looking airplane with a rear propellor and posted images on Reddit, where aviation geeks launched into a debate about e-planes, range, charging times, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and more.

Vermont-based Beta wasn’t just doing a fly-by. The company brought the plane to Seattle for an official demonstration of the ALIA in an event that drew state officials, aviation experts, and industry leaders from across Washington.

In a news release Tuesday, Beta said Washington has a “deep-rooted aviation heritage that has long positioned the state as a global leader in aerospace innovation and manufacturing.” And the company said the state is now “actively advancing the future of flight through strategic investments in sustainable aviation and the critical infrastructure needed to support next-generation technologies.”

Beta founder and CEO Kyle Clark called the event at Boeing Field “a step toward realizing a future where electric aviation is accessible, reliable, and benefits local communities.” 

Founded in 2017, Beta is building two electric aircraft — the fixed-wing ALIA CTOL, and the ALIA VTOL, a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft — at a production facility in Vermont.

The inaugural flight of Beta’s first production model airplane was last November. The ALIA CTOL has a range of 336 nautical miles, and Beta’s planes are designed to carry passengers or cargo.

The company has also developed and is rolling out a network of charging infrastructure for use across airports and the electric aviation ecosystem.

Beta filed for an initial public offering earlier this month with plans to sell 25 million shares at $27 to $33 each — a price range that could value the company at $7.2 billion.

Vancouver, B.C.-based Helijet International previously placed orders with Beta for a fleet of eVTOL aircraft.

Other electric and hybrid aircraft makers are getting their planes off the ground in Washington, including Seattle-based Aero-TEC and Everett, Wash.-based magniX. Arlington, Wash.-based Eviation Aircraft paused work on its Alice airplane earlier this year.

A trio of veteran entrepreneurs have joined forces to create a new Seattle startup — and any mentions of the company across the internet will likely be tracked by what they’re building.

Alertmouse generates email alerts for people and brands who want to know what’s being said about them — or anything else they’re interested in — online. The goal is to provide a better offering than other monitoring tools, most notably Google Alerts, which Alertmouse calls “so bad it might as well not exist.”

The startup was created by co-founders Rand Fishkin (SparkToro, Snackbar Studio), Adam Doppelt (Urbanspoon, Dwellable), and Nathan Kriege (Blueprint AI, Fresh Chalk).

Fishkin, the CEO, posted about Alertmouse on LinkedIn this week, saying that while the side project has turned into a full-fledged business, he’s not leaving his other two jobs.

“It doesn’t take a ton of my time but it has been really fun to build this thing that I desperately needed,” Fishkin said in a video on his post, before listing his grievances with Google Alerts, including how it “doesn’t pick up everything you want, it sends you useless alerts” and more.

Fishkin said tracking his mentions or those related to his companies, whether it’s in a news article or in a Reddit thread, allows him to monitor what’s being said and jump in if necessary to reply.

Alertmouse says it searches the index of websites and pages it can reach two or three times each day for the unique string of words/phrases/rules a user has entered. An email is sent with the pages that contained them.

“It’s not rocket science, but it takes a lot of clever programming, testing, and iteration to make a good alert service,” the company says in its FAQ.

In an interview with GeekWire this week, Fishkin said there are enterprise tracking tools that do what Alertmouse does, such as Mentioned, Hootsuite, and Brandwatch, but they can be cost-prohibitive.

“Google Alerts has been this free alternative for a long time, but sometime in the last decade, maybe even before that, it just stopped sending me anything decent,” he said. “I have no idea what they’re doing under the hood. I suspect it’s a defunct product that no one maintains anymore, but I couldn’t tell you what’s really going on.”

On a website loaded with cheesy puns, Alertmouse has four pricing tiers, including Nibble (free), Slice ($120/year), Wedge ($600/year), and Wheel ($1,200/year).

Alertmouse attracted 1,000 sign-ups in the first several hours it was live, and Fishkin credits the fun interface and language on the website, and the fact that it’s easy to use.

“We wanted to make a brand that no one could confuse for AI,” Fishkin laughed. “This is not an AI company. There’s going to be no venture capital, there’s no AI under the hood. It’s just really simple, straightforward, fun, delightful humans.”

Fishkin, an SEO expert who founded and led Moz, a Seattle-based maker of marketing software tools, co-founded SparkToro in 2018. The audience research tool helps marketers and others understand their target audiences. He raised $2.15 million last year for his new independent video game studio, Snackbar Studio.

Doppelt and Kriege previously worked on vacation rental startup Dwellable (sold to HomeAway in 2015), local professional recommendation site Fresh Chalk, and task management company Blueprint AI together. Last year they teamed up to create a resource website for everything you’d ever want to know about smoke detectors.

Fishkin and Doppelt are also part of dedicated group of “Dungeons & Dragons” players.

The Alertmouse website says the startup has no plans to hire. But that could change after a morning in which lots of people were emailing with questions.

“If it keeps going like this we might have to bring someone on,” Fishkin said.

Reaction to a huge round of layoffs rippled across Amazon and beyond on Tuesday as the Seattle-based tech giant confirmed that it was slashing 14,000 corporate and tech jobs.

We’ve rounded up some of what’s being said online and/or shared with GeekWire:

‘Never been laid off before’

A megathread on Reddit served as a collection of comments by impacted employees who posted about their level, location, org and years of service at Amazon.

Workers across ads, recruitment, robotics, retail, Prime Video, Amazon Games, business development, North American Stores, finance, devices and services, Amazon Autos, and more used the thread to vent.

• “TPM II for Amazon Robotics, 6.5 years there. Still processing this, I’ve never been laid off before.”
• “L6 SDEIII, started as SDEI 7 years ago. I went L4 to L6 in 3 years. My last performance review I got raising the bar. Thought I was a top performer but guess I’m expendable.”
• “Never been laid off before feels overwhelming on VISA! Someone please help me understand next steps in terms of VISA, if I am not able to get H1b sponsoring job in next 90 days will I have to uproot everything here and go back?”
• “I heard AWS layoffs come after re:invent to avoid customer disruption and bad press.”
• “It’s heartbreaking how impersonal and abrupt these layoffs have become. People who’ve given years to a company are finding out in minutes that they’re done.”

Bad news via text?

Kristi Coulter, author of Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, a memoir about what she learned in her 12 years at Amazon, weighed in about the timing of apparent text messages that were sent to impacted employees.

“Wait, I’m sorry: Amazon made people relocate, switch their kids’ schools, and bookend their days with traffic for RTO only to lay them off via a 3 a.m. text? What happened to the vibe and conversations that only being together at the office could allow?” Coulter wrote on LinkedIn.

‘Reduced functionality’

Some employees shared how they were quickly locked out of work laptops, expressing confusion about whether that was how they were supposed to learn about being terminated.

“I lost access to everything immediately :( ,” one Reddit user said.

Others discussed how they should have found time to transfer important work examples or positive interactions related to their performance over to personal computers.

“One thing I would recommend for everyone is to back up your personal files onto your personal laptop,” one user said on Reddit. “I used to keep all my accolades and praise in a quip file along with all my 2×2 write ups and MBR/QBR write ups cataloging my wins. When I found out I got laid off my head was spinning so I went outside for a walk, by the time I returned I was locked out of my laptop and no longer had access to anything.”

Is this Amazon’s way of saying 100% laid off?

Any Amazon folks on the timeline – seen this before?#Amazon #layoffs #amazonlayoffs pic.twitter.com/1MCxoXjfHQ

— Aravind Naveen (@MydAravind) October 28, 2025

Why layoffs now?

Amazon human resources chief Beth Galetti pinned the layoffs in part on the need to reduce bureaucracy and become more efficient in the new era of artificial intelligence. Others looked for deeper meaning in the cuts.

In a post on LinkedIn, Yahoo! Finance Executive Editor Brian Rozzi said stock price is likely a key consideration when it comes to top execs and the Amazon board signing off on such mass layoffs.

Amazon’s stock was up about 1% on Tuesday to $229 per share.

“If the layoffs keep jacking up the stock price, maybe I can retire instead,” one longtime employee told GeekWire.

Entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis posted on X about how AI was coming for middle managers and those with “rote jobs” faster than anyone expected. He encouraged workers to become a founder and do a startup before it’s too late.

Hard-hit divisions

Mid-level managers in Amazon’s retail division were heavily impacted by Tuesday’s cuts, according to internal data obtained by Business Insider.

More than 78% of the roles eliminated were held by managers assigned L5 to L7 designations, BI reported. (L5 is typically the starting point for managers at Amazon, with more seniority assigned to higher levels.)

BI also said that U.S.-focused data showed that more than 80% of employees laid off Tuesday worked in Amazon’s retail business, spanning e-commerce, human resources, and logistics.

Bloomberg and others reported that significant cuts are also being felt by Amazon’s video games unit.

Steve Boom, VP of audio, Twitch, and games said in a memo shared with The Verge that “significant role reductions” would be felt at studios in Irvine and San Diego, Calif., as well on Amazon’s central publishing teams.

“We have made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work — specifically around MMOs [massively multiplayer online games] — within Amazon Game Studios,” Boom wrote.

Current titles in Amazon’s MMO lineup include “New World: Aeternum,” “Throne and Liberty,” and “Lost Ark.” Amazon also previously announced that it would be developing a “Lord of the Rings” MMO.

‘Ripple effects throughout the community’

Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), has previously praised Amazon for its mandate calling for employees to return to the office five days per week, saying that the foot traffic from thousands of tech workers in the city is a necessary element to helping downtown Seattle rebound from the pandemic.

On Tuesday, Scholes reacted to Amazon’s layoffs in a statement to GeekWire:

“As downtown’s largest employer, a workforce change of this scale has ripple effects throughout the community — on individual employees and families and our small businesses that rely on the weekday foot traffic customer base. In addition, these jobs buttress our tax base that helps fund the city services we all depend on. Employers have options for where they locate jobs, and we want to ensure downtown Seattle is the most attractive place to invest and grow. We must provide vibrancy and a predictable regulatory environment in a competitive landscape because other cities would welcome the jobs currently based in downtown.”

Zulily may no longer be a dominant player in Seattle’s tech scene, but physical pieces of the online retailer will live on in Evergreen Goodwill facilities across the region.

Hundreds of office chairs, desks, kitchen appliances, IT equipment, and more has been donated to Goodwill by Vanbarton Group, a commercial real estate investment firm that now owns the onetime Zulily building at 2601 Elliott Ave.

Vanbarton plans to convert the building, which occupies a full block near the waterfront, to 262 apartments, according to a Daily Journal of Commerce report from July.

A once-prominant online retailer, Zulily was a darling of Seattle’s growing tech scene when it was valued at $4 billion following its IPO in 2013. But after QVC parent Qurate paid $2.4 billion to buy the company in 2015, it was sold to Los Angeles investment firm Regent in May 2023 and eventually shut down.

In March, Zulily got a new owner for the third time in two years when Beyond, which emerged as a surprise buyer in 2024, announced plans to sell a majority stake in Zulily to Lyons Trading Company, the parent company of flash sales site Proozy.com.

Evergreen Goodwill said in a news release that the donation, facilitated by Vanbarton Group’s outreach, saved the nonprofit an estimated $100,000 in equipment costs and diverted valuable resources from landfills.

The office items are being repurposed in multiple locations, including Goodwill’s new Georgetown operations center, scheduled to open this fall, and job training and education centers that it operates in five counties.

Remaining items will be sold in Goodwill stores, with proceeds supporting free job training and education programs for people facing barriers to employment, according to Goodwill.

Previously:

• Zulily goes through another ownership change as Beyond to sell majority stake in retail site for $5M
• Zulily’s downfall: How the high-flying online retailer soared, sank, and shut down

Out of Office is a new GeekWire series spotlighting the passions and hobbies that members of the Seattle-area tech community pursue outside of work.

• Name: Maksim Surguy.

• Day job: Senior design technologist for Amazon Devices, working on concepts for new devices or new features on existing devices, such as Fire TV, Alexa, and Echo smart speakers.

• Out-of-office passion: Using machines to create art.

Before he pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Maksim Surguy made an initial — and brief — run at a bachelor’s in art.

“Two weeks later, I realized that I suck at art and I switched to computer science,” he laughed.

Fourteen years after completing his education at California State University, Fullerton, Surguy has found happiness and success in marrying the two disciplines, as a technologist and an artist in Seattle.

“My sketching is not to the level that I want, so instead I use code to create artwork,” he said in describing the “robot art” that occupies his free time.

Surguy not only relies on machines to generate his artwork, he creates the software tools that facilitate such art, whether the finished pieces exist as digital NFTs or as physical works such as pen plotter drawings made via scalable vector graphics.

“I spend a lot more time making the tools than actually using them,” Surguy said. “But other people use them to actually make something. So I enjoy both sides of this.”

Surguy is a 2018 graduate of the University of Washington’s Master of Science in Technology Innovation (MSTI), a program at the UW’s Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) — a joint initiative of the College of Engineering and Foster School of Business.

For a hardware/software project, he created a 3D-printed drawing machine with his own electronics program. During the process, he couldn’t find a community for like-minded people who make such things. So he started DrawingBots, a website/Discord that’s attracted thousands of artists and engineers.

Surguy was born and raised in Ukraine and was an accomplished breakdancer who competed as a professional in Eastern Europe when he was younger. He moved to the U.S. in 2004.

He’s been at Amazon for six years and his artwork has been displayed in the company’s headquarters buildings, in public exhibitions — including at Seattle’s NFT Museum, and on his website and social media channels. He’s also written extensively about technology.

And in the blurring space between human and AI-created artwork, he’s leaning further into technology.

“I use AI for a lot of things, and especially now with code, it makes it easier to create tools that are custom and specific for whatever use case,” Surguy said. “I just open-sourced one last weekend. It’s a tool that allows artists to preview their artwork, how it’s going to look before they make it on paper. So it saves them time and money and art supplies.”

Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: Surguy most enjoys the growing community he helped foster around the tools and art he makes.

“I got to know thousands of people that do this kind of stuff and are very interesting people,” he said. “Some of them were TED speakers. Some of them are PhDs, very well known researchers, scientists, artists. I had conversations with all of these people and consider some of them my friends. So that’s the most rewarding part.”

The lessons he brings back to work: “This kind of procedural and algorithmic art definitely has a place in making products that are digital experiences,” Surguy said of the connection between his hobby and his work at Amazon.

For example, his Devices team launched a dynamic art feature for Fire TV: a screen saver that created artwork on the fly based on data such as weather, time of day, and other inputs.

Surguy said the ideas he generates outside of work serve as inspiration for what he creates at work, whether it’s creative coding or simply expanding the boundaries of what he makes and how he makes it.

Read more Out of Office profiles.

Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: tips@geekwire.com.