A friend of mine who normally isn’t particularly opinionated and has responded very passively to my comments around feminism has been chiming in more about this in the last couple of years. It’s likely because she’s finally noticing that she’s not getting treated fairly as a female person of color, so she’s feeling the pain directly. At her office, she participates in a book club where they read Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. After she mentioned it, I put it on my NYPL Libby app request list and got to digitally borrow it this weekend.

Here’s an interesting fact that I learned from this book: For most of the 20th century, the New York Philharmonic was nearly 100% men. Then, in the 1970s, the numbers of female players started to go up… due to blind auditions. The hiring committee would not be able to see who was playing in the audition because there would be a screen between them and the player. The screens had an immediate impact: by the early 1980s, women began to make up 50% of the share of new hires. And today, the proportion of female musicians in the New York Philharmonic stands at over 45%.

So, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could do this for all job interviews?! It’s hard in practice given you cannot really give a presentation or even a phone call screen without hearing the person’s voice/seeing the person’s face, but it really brings into question all the biases, whether conscious or subconscious, that we have when evaluating candidates and defining “meritocracy.” The concept of meritocracy is a complete myth in the workplace no matter what any Human Resources team tells you, as anyone who has half a brain knows that women do not get treated the same way that men do at work. We get criticized for our behaviors, emotions, personality at a far higher rate than men do. And the situation only gets worse when it’s a female person of color, not a white woman.

I’m not completely sure this was the best time to be reading this book given that during the day, I’m angry about the failure of our federal government in acknowledging the gravity of the Coronavirus sooner, for de-funding the CDC, and for calling this “Chinese virus” a hoax; I’m also angry about the level of racism/violence against Asians as a result of this global pandemic (I do not recall anyone getting angry and having racist fits at white Americans when swine flu happened?!). So, in other words, during the day, I’m angry about politics and racism against my own kind, and during the evening, I’m angry while reading this book to think that something as basic as the design of restrooms and cars, office temperature settings, and even city infrastructure planning are biased against women (I actually once asked my driving instructor about the design of air bags and whether they would really protect women given that on average, they are smaller in stature than men, and therefore the airbags are not designed for that smaller sized person…), and that the ‘norm’ has and will always be considered “male” and women, as Aristotle once famously said, are just “mutilated men.” To this day, our medical communities across the world do not think there’s a reason to spend more money and time on research to ensure that both men AND women are included in clinical trials… because how on earth can women’s bodies respond differently to drugs and treatments than men’s?

Yep, women are screwed. And women of color are even more screwed in the world. And this is 2020.

Our CEO is in town here in New York this week, which means that all of NYC leadership is going to dinner with him. A colleague commented to me that the entire dinner will be white men, with the exception of one Indian-American man. I shrugged and said I wasn’t surprised, but that’s our company. What are we going to do about it? This is not really a real conversation that is going to go anywhere. I do not know why we are even bringing up such a moot point.

I’ve realized that voicing concerns like this really do not make any difference and prompt no change. When it’s convenient, someone from HR will say something callous like, “it’s diverse on our leadership team: our CMO is Japanese.” Or, “there are two (white) women on this team’s mangers/directors list.” They think they are helping; they are not and only making things worse. They are tokening the entire diversity situation. The most we can do is fight for ourselves and our paycheck, get whatever we can out of the company (which usually means.. trying to outperform as much as possible so that you are not only maximizing your paycheck but also adding a lot of business value for the customer and ultimately the company), and tune out all the politics and the genuine care. We cannot really survive in the business world if we are constantly caring about things that are fully out of our individual control.

A former colleague and I met for smoothies this afternoon to catch up. He left our company last summer after being angry about a lot of the processes and politics he faced internally. The company he went to was a public company but had no New York office, so he was 100 percent remote in his role. Initially, he found it great: he could work from home full time, make a proper breakfast every morning, schedule everything around his gym sessions. But gradually, he got lonely and felt miserable. He felt like all he did was stay at home for work and after work. There was no separation of time. It would be 8pm suddenly, and he realized he was still working and hadn’t eaten any dinner. The work itself plus the remote nature of his role got to him, so he ended up resigning this week.

The grass isn’t always greener when you leave. I thought about this when I was leaving him and going back to my office today. He decided he wanted to leave this type of role completely and is trying something new. But he says he still has no regrets about leaving our company — he couldn’t take the politics anymore.

But realistically, when do you ever fully leave politics? You can leave a company and its individual issues, but then you’ll move on to the next one, and it will have its own set of issues and back talking. It just keeps going.

I realize that this June will mark twelve years of full time work. This feels very strange to me, as it really doesn’t feel like that long ago when I graduated from college, completely green and wide-eyed at the idea of the white collar corporate world. I thought I could do anything then as long as I worked hard. I’ll be fierce and outspoken and prove them all wrong about what an Asian could be. Shrill? I won’t be “shrill” like a woman — I’ll be assertive and lower my pitch so that I’ll be taken seriously. My race and gender won’t hold me back! I’m going to climb that ladder and show them all that I can succeed!

Well, all that got shot to shit. I climbed the ladder… sort of. I started making a lot more money year after year. But none of it really felt that fulfilling at the end of the day. If I knew I was going to die the next day, there’s no way I would look back on my life and be proud of my line of work and felt like I made a true contribution to the world, that I actually made a difference. And to top that off, I had to deal with endless internal politics, perceptions of myself that were just flat out false and fabricated. Oh, and that hasn’t stopped.

Today, I sit at my job, at a company where I know I am deeply privileged and get to experience luxuries like literal free lunch, zero health premiums, the ability to work from home when I want, yet I still feel stunted and like there is more to life than this. I think about my good fortune every single day to acknowledge that I am grateful for what I have, and I am reminded of it even more whenever I meet with friends, family, and acquaintances who cannot believe the types of benefits I get where I work. But I still want to do more, see more, experience more. I want to get away from the politics, the back talking, the gossip, the nonsense of corporations. I just need to keep doing things that are fulfilling outside of work to keep me motivated about life.

After qualifying for president’s club last year, when I found out what the criteria would be for this year, I immediately started crunching the numbers to see if I might get in again (I didn’t really realize I’d become that person, but I started getting addicted to the bragging rights, the prestige, and the free luxury trips). And based on the numbers I did calculate, I would qualify again, but I wasn’t really sure if I’d make it… I always feel like there’s some force out there going against me that is going to randomly make objective qualifications based on the actual data suddenly subjective and based on their own personal opinions. So when they announced my name on stage tonight, my first thought was “wait, those numbers were actually lower than what I calculated.” Then, my next thought was, “fuck them all,” as I walked on stage, to everyone who either doesn’t think my contributions have mattered or is against my success not only here, but overall.

I’ve known this since my middle school years when I was known for being super friendly and kind to everyone that it doesn’t matter what you do or how kind or selfless you are, but there will always be someone out there who not only does not like you, but wants everything bad for you and is even out to sabotage you. There will be people out there who will try to twist your words and actions into something that was never truly your intent. I was recently reminded of this with an unfortunate situation at work, and as I was told by someone close to me in the organization, “You are going to rise above it.” I have, and I’ve done it quietly and without much fuss. But that does not mean that when I succeed and can speak to my successes that I won’t be thinking about them in the back of my mind in glee, knowing that I’ve proven all of them wrong. Screw the haters.

The last two go-to-market kickoffs have been really exciting: the first is always the most exciting because everything is new: the people, the process, the place, the schedule. The second one was fun because I felt like there was a massive buzz and people were really engaged and ready to go out there and do some great things. This year, I feel like the tone has changed. For those who are new, they are always excited because this is their year one, which for me, was two years ago. For those who have been here a while, the feeling was quite muted. For sales people who haven’t been hitting their individual or regional numbers, it was clear that they were all business and had no desire to mingle with anyone who they either didn’t know or could personally benefit from. That was sad to me today to observe. I had a lot fewer people greet, hug, or say hi to me than I normally do. Most of the people who have advocated for me who I was a fan of have left. And as I walked through the halls and desks of our company yesterday, I realized… I don’t totally feel like I really belong here anymore. That sense of belonging was once really strong. And now it’s not.

The day after a layoff happens, an office usually has an unusual level of trepidation and silence.. the kind that is slightly oppressive, ominous, where you are uncertain of who wants to say what, who knows what, and who is sharing what and with whom.

Then there is the question of: what now? And what are we doing and why?

One of the most awkward things about RIFs is that you don’t really know who was let go and affected unless you work directly with them, or you get a bounce back from their email. It’s frustrating and upsetting, but there’s really no nice way to handle it otherwise.

And what is worse is when your customers find out about it and start asking you questions.. before you are even supposed to know it happened and before your own company even makes the official announcement!

Today, my company had what we officially call a “reduction in force,” or an RIF, where about 12 percent of our employees were laid off. It was a sad day, and one that was quite surprising for a lot of people, but honestly given how we’ve been looking quarter over quarter, it didn’t really come as a surprise to me. There were some palpitations after the announcements and murmurs that there may be a second round coming. I kind of shrugged my shoulders and said, if it happens, it happens. We can’t control for it, so what is the point of worrying?

After getting laid off from my first job during a period that is likely the worst recession of my lifetime (at least, to date) in 2009, I can’t really sweat the small stuff anymore. It happened to me once and was terrifying and upsetting, and yes, if it happened to me again, I’d also be upset… but it’s never as bad and shocking as the first time. Been there once, and I could go through it again. I hope I don’t have to, but hey, you never know. You just have to keep your head up and focus on the present. The older I am getting, the more I am realizing that it’s such a waste of time and energy to worry about things out of my control. That is easier said than done, but hey, that’s what meditation and yoga are for.

My good friend came to drop off some things for me at my office today. While I thought she would just wait for me downstairs, I realized she actually came up to our floor and was waiting for me in our waiting area near the front desk. She even surprised me with dried flowers (which should last pretty much forever until they’ve collected enough dust and cob webs). She is the most thoughtful friend I have — surprising me at work with flowers in hand!

I gave her a tour of my office, introduced her to a few colleagues, and of course, walked her around our kitchen, complete with endless snacks, healthy and unhealthy, kombucha, cold brew, beer, and even red wine on tap. She took a good number of snacks and packed them away in her bag (I mean, why else did she want to come up, right?).

She said she imagined my office would be something like this given what she’d seen and heard of other tech companies — she just didn’t realize we’d have things like our bottled tea selection, packaged boiled eggs (??), or Muscle Milk (which, we found out today actually has no real milk, just “milk proteins” — whatever that means, and no real sugar (they use fake sugars!). “So this is what it’s like to work in tech, huh? You guys just get tons of free shit and gain weight over this!” she exclaimed.

Yeah, that’s kind of true. A number of colleagues have told me that within six months of joining our company, they find that their waist lines get bigger or their clothes in general just start feeling tighter. Even when you think you are ordering healthy foods for lunch with our lunch stipend, too much of a healthy thing ends up still being… well, too much, and too much food makes you gain weight. We’re definitely very lucky with our food and perks here, and it was interesting and amusing at the same time to see my friend marvel over our office, our food, and all the things I just find “normal” and take for granted every day. It was a novelty for her, and I could tell she really enjoyed being there and did not want to leave.

When you come back from a good, long, far-away trip, what you may be tempted to do is to tell everyone who even half asks you, “How was your trip?” about all the amazing minute details that you found so intrinsically fascinating and mind-blowing while away… that they really couldn’t give two shits about because a) they cannot relate at all unless they have traveled to the place you went, and b) what may be amazing to you during your travels is not amazing to them when they are thinking about whatever boring thing they were doing in the last couple weeks. I’ve never been one to gush excessively about any travel experience to colleagues, but after reading an article a while back on “why no one cares about how your trip was,” all the points were dead on. And so I’ve scaled back any response to, “It was really good! Thanks for asking!” unless pressed upon any further. Some colleagues asked about what the food was like. Others asked if we saw a lot of tourists outside of Bali in Indonesia. Several who haven’t been sleeping under a rock this whole time asked me how Australia was given the wild fires and if Chris’s family was affected at all. Sometimes, it’s just the little things, but it’s still nice to be asked.