Yes, My History Does Influence How I Perceive Things
Recently I’ve been in a few conversations where people have questioned if I perceive things differently because of my history. I think that’s an odd thing. Humans tend to pattern match. There are things that I notice today that I wouldn’t notice as much earlier in my career. I don’t think that means that anything that happened earlier wasn’t that bad, but more that I was blissfully unaware. Here is a quick example from school:
When I was an undergrad, we had a year-long capstone project with a team of seven. It was myself, one other woman, and five men. Even though I had work experience in the domain we were doing our project in, none of the guys would listen to me when I said it was near impossible to accomplish. The other woman and I ended up hanging back and letting the guys crowd around a computer because we realized we weren’t being heard. We finished the project (which was a general failure because I was right), got an A due to the white male confidence of some of my team members, and graduated. When I did grad school, I ran into a similar problem. I was doing a capstone project with four men. We were building a web app. I was the only one with web development experience. They refused to listen to me. This time, I contacted the professor because I wanted the experience. I didn’t just want to skate by on little work because I was being ignored. Instead of helping, the professor just put me in a group alone, and I had to do the entire capstone project by myself. It was worth it, but it was frustrating that was the response.
I will do a quick, anonymized list of all the absurd things that have happened to me over my 13-year career. I think some of this is gendered, and some are just ????
Was told I sounded angry in emails. Started adding emojis, changed nothing else, and no longer got that feedback.
Got feedback on my review that I was abrasive.
Had a coworker who would sit and stare at me during meetings while pulling up his shirt and scratching his stomach. I cannot make this up. I am not that creative.
Had a coworker and a manager conspire to get me to quit by making my work environment terrible.
Have been the only woman on my team (sometimes all of engineering) four times.
Would ask a coworker questions (as a new teammate) and then have him say, “I’ll just do it.” I ended up having nothing to work on.
Had HR talk to me for saying no to an offer of a doughnut and mentioning to a coworker that I wasn’t excited about the offsite.
As the only developer, had the CEO listen to investors who had never looked at the code over me.
Had a coworker tell me that since I got the benefit of working from home, I didn’t get the benefit of coworkers answering my DMs.
Was told when interviewing there were several women in leadership in the engineering organization. After I started, I discovered there were none, and the only women were on my team, plus one person in QA.
Was told I should write down every step I have taken if I want any questions answered.
After telling me I did not need to take FMLA, I was told I wasn’t performing at level one month after my husband was hit by a car (he is fine now!).
Was accused of anti-Southern bias. I grew up in Northern Alabama and spent seven years in Atlanta.
Have been told I don’t change my mind multiple times after I have given an opinion, listened to the opposing arguments, and still not agreed… even if I’m happy to commit to the consensus.
Had a male coworker refuse to work with me because I disagreed with him, even though I suggested that we both present our ideas to a larger group and get more input.
Had a tweet mentioning “bad behavior from white men in tech,” and when two coworkers saw it, they decided it was about them. Instead of asking them to consider why they would think that, HR talked to me.
When I questioned something, a male coworker told me that it was “universal knowledge” that it was wrong.
Have been called “pessimistic” for suggesting that an idea was unlikely to work.
And honestly… that’s not exhaustive. That’s just what is on my mind right now. Also? This is only 13 years! I’m fully expecting to have at least 20 more years of work. And I’m getting wholly burnt out on DEI work… it feels thankless and like there is never any improvement. The teams I am working on continue to be more diverse, but the problems still exist. Some are even worse than they were on teams where I was the only woman. This feels like a hopeless post. I’m not hopeless! But I struggle to feel hopeful at the moment.