Yes, My History Does Influence How I Perceive Things

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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.

Don't Tell Me I Have Imposter Syndrome

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The article about Mailchimp that I mentioned in my last post was finally posted last Monday. This was fun:

Jennifer Konikowski, Mailchimp's only female engineer during her tenure from 2011 to 2012, told Insider that her managers criticized her "tone" in a performance review and that a male coworker complained about her simply for disagreeing with a different coworker.

Unbeknownst to Konikowski at the time, her managers had explicitly conspired to get her to quit, according to Jared Van Aalten, who said he was in the room during their conversation. The managers worried firing Konikowski could be perceived as sexist, so they discussed giving her projects outside her skill and comfort zone to make her look bad and avoid suspicion, Van Aalten told Insider.

Konikowski quit, but her managers — both white men — were eventually promoted to senior management. Van Aalten said the promotions troubled him because one of those managers had called him a Nazi, despite knowing he's Jewish. Multiple former Mailchimp employees also said that the manager questioned whether people with Down's Syndrome were "real people" because they inherit an extra chromosome.

It’s a little off: I only had one manager (Brandon Fouts) and the other person (Matthew Grove, the one who said the gross comments) was not a manager at the time and just a year senior to me. Another oddity is that I wasn’t technically the only female engineer: there were frontend engineers at the time, but they were totally separated and referred to as designers. Somehow I only realized this recently and, every time I see this, I feel like I’m erasing them. Overall, it was a solid article and I went on a whole tweetrant about it. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned since the article came out is this: despite leaving on what I thought was a positive note, Matthew disparaged me to other people on the delivery team for at least a year after I left. People who didn’t know me heard my name in a negative context. I know there’s been anger from me recently, but I didn’t say anything against Mailchimp for years. Until a month ago, I thought Brandon had been a good, supportive boss. He had actually apologized to me when he had cc’d HR after Matthew reported me for telling Van he was wrong. When I asked not to share an office with a different coworker who creeped me out, he seemed to support that and did not move me back into the office. I blamed everything that happened afterward on Matthew. I didn’t realize that Brandon and Matthew colluded.

This whole situation has me revisiting the article “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome” by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey in HBR. Definitely go and read the entire thing, but here is one (of many) parts that really jumped out to me:

Imposter syndrome took a fairly universal feeling of discomfort, second-guessing, and mild anxiety in the workplace and pathologized it, especially for women. As white men progress, their feelings of doubt usually abate as their work and intelligence are validated over time. They’re able to find role models who are like them, and rarely (if ever) do others question their competence, contributions, or leadership style. Women experience the opposite. Rarely are we invited to a women’s career development conference where a session on “overcoming imposter syndrome” is not on the agenda.

The label of imposter syndrome is a heavy load to bear. “Imposter” brings a tinge of criminal fraudulence to the feeling of simply being unsure or anxious about joining a new team or learning a new skill. Add to that the medical undertone of “syndrome,” which recalls the “female hysteria” diagnoses of the nineteenth century. Although feelings of uncertainty are an expected and normal part of professional life, women who experience them are deemed to suffer from imposter syndrome. Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition, and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism, often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women to deal with the effects. Workplaces remain misdirected toward seeking individual solutions for issues disproportionately caused by systems of discrimination and abuses of power.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’ve had some supportive coworkers and a couple of decent managers. But I’ve also had this happen. And I’ve had a manager and HR have a talk with me about refusing a doughnut (not joking). I’ve had a manager tell me I was not performing at level during a time when my husband was recovering from seven broken bones (after having previously gotten positive feedback). Then that manager told me I shouldn’t ask any questions unless I had fully documented everything that I had attempted. At a few points during that position, I actually cried at work. I felt worthless. I felt like I couldn’t do my job. I didn’t know why anyone would ever hire me again because, clearly, I couldn’t code. When I was reading this article, I felt both sad and vindicated. I often don’t have a lot of confidence and there are distinct reasons why. It’s not imposter syndrome. It’s a past of regularly having my abilities being questioned. I know I’m not the only one. So stop telling women they have imposter syndrome.