A former colleague of mine sent me a quick email asking to catch up over the phone sometime soon. He had left the company over a year ago, and he had developed quite the reputation for himself. He rarely came into the office. When we had to travel to San Francisco and Napa for team events or the annual company kick-off, he would make every excuse from “my mom is having a tumor removed” to “my basement flooded during the storm last week, and I need to take care of it.” He frequently stole office supplies when he’d be in the neighborhood on the weekends (our office manager told me this, as she saw the footage on our office cameras installed by both entrances). And when we finally caught up over the phone, he admitted to fake expensing on average about $3K/month for his last nine months at the company. “I milked them for every last cent that I could,” he said, gleefully. He made up business trips to see friends who lived in other states who happened to be located in the same cities where he had customers in his book of business. He wrote in work notes that he was doing “quarterly business reviews” with customers, when in reality, he never went onsite to see the customer for more than a “hi, how are you?” Instead, he took them to expensive, plush restaurants and wined and dined them. Well, those were his “business reviews.”

In the end, he got fired, but in a “nice way”: he was given a few days to say his goodbyes, tell his customers he was leaving. Management wanted to frame it as though it was voluntary to make him feel better. They gave him one month’s severance and even paid health insurance for him and his family for two additional months.

I’ve seen a lot of shady and unethical activity working as a “white-collar” professional, but I truly believe that this guy really took the cake.

A few weeks ago, I had a 1:1 Zoom meeting with our company’s CEO. It was a little strange. The request came out of the blue, as he normally asks my opinion about topics ranging from company morale, New York City office morale, how I think the customer success organization is performing and what could be improved, to where I think he should travel next for vacation. He wanted to ask my opinion on what he could be doing as the company’s leader to create a more diverse and inclusive environment that is ultimately anti-racist.

Our conversation was supposed to be only 30 minutes long, but it ended up going for about 45. We discussed what I’ve read in the How to be an Anti-Racist book, as well as the White Fragility book. He made a verbal commitment to me that he would at least download the White Fragility audio book and listen during his daily exercise. But the part that he seemed to miss the most is that he did not understand the inherent fact that I’ve mentioned a number of times on this blog: that it’s impossible to have a conversation about racism and have everyone in the room be comfortable or feel included. The whole idea of discussing “third rail” topics as he likes to call them is to be confronting, unsettling, to spur one into action. He disagreed. “The whole idea of diversity and inclusion is to be inclusive,” he insisted to me. “If we are not being inclusive, then this is not what we want.”

I paused. He still didn’t get it. How could I make him, a wealthy, privileged white man living in one of the most expensive suburbs of Northern California in a $12 million+ mansion, understand the crux of this issue? I elaborated on the background of Robin DiAngelo, the anti-racism educator and author of White Fragility. I told him that she has specialized in researching and educating on this area for nearly three decades. She has workshops every single day with people who seek to be more anti-racist, but fail miserably because they want to speak in generalizations as opposed to zeroing in on their own actions and what they can personally change in their day to day life. To ask someone to change their daily behavior, daily thoughts, is EXTREMELY challenging, if not impossible. And if she, as a 25+ year educator on this topic, still manages to “upset” and “exclude” people due to their white fragility and self implosion when confronting these issues, is the problem really her, the educator, the one prompting these questions, OR, is the issue the people who she’s attempting to reach who refuse to be reached due to their white fragility? When I said this, our CEO’s face suddenly changed. He appeared more contemplative, a bit more empathetic, a little closer to realizing that maybe, just maybe, it’s not the educator’s fault, the one posing the question’s fault, that maybe, the audience who is crying their white tears is actually at fault.

I’m not sure if I really reached him. It may all have been an act on his part. It may have been his way of weaseling himself out of the conversation to seem like he could be bendable, amenable to tangible change. Or maybe, just maybe he actually wanted to see some real change, something really move within our predominantly White company. I will never know for sure. But what I do know for sure is that most CXO teams across organizations around the world now are facing the same issue: they all want to participate in this:

“We at [Brand] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter that express our commitment to fighting injustice.

To that end, we offer this solemn white-on-black .jpeg that expresses vague solidarity with the Black community, but will quietly elide the specifics of what is wrong, what needs to change, or in what ways we will do anything about it. This is doubly true if [Brand] is particularly guilty of exacerbating these issues.

We hope this action encourages you to view [Brand] positively without, you know, expecting anything from us.

-[Brand] (credit to Chris Franklin via Twitter)

For us, specifically, our CEO added a blog post to the company website noting that “Black Lives Matter,” that the leadership team would be encouraging employees to donate to these organizations as well. No monetary donation on behalf of the company would be given. No real changes made internally would be communicated via the blog post. It was an empty blog post that, around the same time, was also launched with BLM messaging added as a banner (which links to donating to Color of Change) when customers login to their accounts). At the same time, this organization is also happily taking money from organizations that support the Trump administration (many people in our sector of tech were happy and quick to point out this hypocrisy on LinkedIn posts that went viral). How does this organization reconcile this hypocrisy, if at all? Or do we just continue the BLM messaging on our blog and user platform while at the same time oppressing the lives of people of color?

For the last 12-plus years I’ve been working full time, I’ve worked both in SaaS as well as at digital marketing agencies. Although I’ve had many ups and downs during the course of my full-time working career, I’ve never stopped feeling grateful for all the good fortunes I’ve been privileged to have. I know that I have it better than probably 80-90 percent of the full-time working population given the opportunities I’ve been given, the perks and flexibility I’ve enjoyed, and the travel I’ve been lucky to have done to various parts of this country, not to mention how I’ve been paid. But even within our moments of gratitude, we also need to acknowledge what is right and wrong within our bubbles and identify what needs progress and why. I think that’s something that a lot of people fail to do for various reasons: they are scared to deviate from the status quo and “stir up trouble,” as that may put their own jobs and positions in jeopardy, they don’t want to create controversy, particularly because that disturbs their own comforts they get to enjoy, and well, they’re just lazy and don’t want to do anything that will require any proactivity on their part. It could also be a combination of all the above.

During my time working in the agency world, I realized how easy it was to get too comfortable with everything from the status quo, mediocrity, substituting activity for achievement (oh, this one is a HUGE theme across work in general and is not just about the agency world, though given that agencies make their money based on a percentage of spend from brands, this plays quite prominently here), and just doing your day to day, literally paper pushing.

But what has also happened is that a friend of mine who has remained in the agency world (and is still at the same agency I left) has repeatedly told me how toxic and awful the tech industry is once I rejoined it in 2013 because of the rampant politics, sexism, and racism that has gotten the spotlight due to reports from major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the like. He’s insinuated to me that he doesn’t think I should work in tech anymore and that my desire and decision to leave was misguided. My general feeling about this is that it is true that the tech industry is not perfect; it is part of the working world, isn’t it, just a specific sector, so it will never be immune from the issues that our society or world faces. Yes, the tech industry wears a mask of being more progressive, promoting diversity and inclusion efforts internally, and taking care of its employees more than the average (read: crappy, cut-throat, bare-bones) American company through its offerings of attractive perks that range from “unlimited PTO” (I will deconstruct this myth/recruiter selling tactic in a later post), free snacks, daily lunches, reimbursement of all commuter costs, 100% employer-covered medical/dental/vision premiums, fitness/gym/massage reimbursements, to even fertility and egg freezing benefits, but because they do actually go above and beyond with these types of perks on average vs. other industries, that is enough to make someone want to jump over from another industry into tech. Why? Because the relationship you have with your employer is transactional, as I learned pretty much the very first time I got laid off in 2009. You offer your expertise and services to your employer in exchange for a salary and whatever benefits they are willing to offer. There is nothing more to this relationship, so you should not think anything more of it… because we know, for sure, they certainly will not. They will not hesitate to cut you when they no longer think they need you (whether that’s because you actually are under performing or, in most cases, because certain key people may not like you. Hello, politics). Because of this cold, blunt fact, why should we, as potential employees, not want to take advantage of every potential benefit and perk an employer is willing to give us and milk it for as much and as long as possible? We’re only maximizing our own gains, and if we do not think of ourselves first, it is guaranteed that no one else ever will — and certainly not your employer – past, current, or future. Therefore, with that said, this is why I strongly believe that unless you are working for yourself and can call all the shots, the best industry to be working in to maximize the “you” benefit is in tech. Just don’t work at one of those loser, backwards tech companies that offers zero of the attractive benefits noted above — otherwise, why are you even working in tech?! Do you think you are going to change the world? Don’t be that naive and take care of yourself — knowing that no one else will.

I had a call scheduled this morning to chat with Chris’s friend who works at a company that I’m interested in. He’s been friends with her for a few years, but I’d never met her before since he likes to keep separate parts of his life separate, and there was really no reason for me to meet this person, so I never really cared to ask. So I called her to get a sense of what the company was like and how she liked it, and it was clear from the beginning of the call that she really loved working there. She talked about the company leadership, the culture, the nature of her work, and she gushed endlessly about how great it was. It got to a point where the entire conversation just seemed like the type of conversation I’d have with the company’s HR or recruiting team; she said glowing, nearly-canned positive things about the company like “great work-life balance,” “everyone is so amazing here,” and “senior leadership is really accessible, their ‘door’ is always open for you; the only blocker to developing a relationship with them is yourself.” I nearly vomited in my mouth a little when she said that last part. How often have I heard that from recruiting teams in the past, or people who truly drink the kool-aid.

While I appreciated the time she spent to chat with me, I didn’t really appreciate the PR-spin on her perspective; it came off as too enthusiastic, a bit disingenuous, and well, not authentic. Luckily for me, I have other contacts I can speak with at the company through personal connections, so I can get a more well rounded perspective, but it just struck me as odd that she was technically supposed to be a personal connection through Chris, but she gave me a not-very-personal perspective of the company.

My mom always says that the older you get, the wiser you get. I actually don’t really agree with this. The older I have gotten, the more confused I have gotten about why and how people are so twisted and weird.

In 2009, when I got laid off, my dad cutely asked me, “Well, will they rehire you later?” When my dad used to work at a glass company, they would occasionally go through temporary layoffs due to lack of services requested. When the requests for glass installations decreased, team members would get let go, and when the requests increased, they’d get called back. So my dad thought that maybe this would how it would work in the white-collared world. Nope, that’s not how it works. Once you get laid off, you’re laid off. Though I have heard of some snafus where some individuals who were laid off were requested to come back months later, that is pretty rare to non-existent.

My mom tried to be comforting, but she was a total wreck. She thought she was thinking about how I was feeling and being sympathetic. But from what I could see, all she felt was shame for herself to have to say that she had an unemployed daughter. She sent me a hundred bucks to make me feel better. But that’s kind of where the comforting ended. She insisted many times, at varying volumes, that I move home (yeah, I would have rather dropped dead). She insisted that the recession was so bad “because of that Black man in the White House!” that I would not find another job in New York, so I should just give up. She also didn’t want me socializing with anyone, saying that everyone would look down on me for not having a job. She didn’t even want me to go to my cousin’s wedding the next month (I still went). She made me feel lesser than for not having a job. I obviously moved on, but I never forgot how she made me feel worse about myself based on no wrongdoing of my own.

That’s the thing, though. That type of thinking is not necessarily unique to my mom; as Americans, it’s nearly ingrained in us that our jobs define us. That’s why most of us are assholes, and when we in America meet people for the first time, we immediately ask after exchanging names, “What do you do (for a living)?” Why? Because our (paid) work defines us. Because our paid work makes us valuable to society. Our paid work contributes to our national GDP, our sense of self-worth, our sense of being. Our salaries say to us, “this is the dollar amount you are worth as a human being.” But… isn’t that sad… and just… wrong? How can your kindness be measured? How does your generosity factor in? What happens to all the good deeds you’ve done so selflessly? Do they just get completed and then taken for granted and forgotten?

I would love to exist in a society that did not measure people based on their salaries and net worths, to be viewed as a contributor of society based on my passions and strengths as a person. But that is a utopia and so far from what the United States would ever be — a country that devalues so much that is important about human beings.

When I first started full time work after graduating from college, I graduated into a recession. Just four months after starting at my new job at a SaaS company, the company had a layoff, which resulted in a number of my colleagues getting let go. Given my connections to the HQ, I knew a second layoff would also happen soon after. All signs pointed to it — employees not getting their bonuses, being forced to take X number of days off before the end of the year. The writing was on the wall. I started applying for new jobs because I knew I’d get laid off — last ones in are usually the first ones out. I even packed up the belongings on my desk a few weeks before the second layoff happened. That made it easier for me to make a quick escape when I finally did get laid off; no need for a big show of packing up my desk. I spent three months being unemployed, which ended in two full-time job offers and one full-time contractor offer. It was not a fun time at all, but in the end, I learned to never be that loyal to any company because at the end of the day, every single one of us would always be discardable. Very little protects you when you get fired or laid off; you’re powerless as an individual.

So when I realized the second recession of my adult life was coming, I imagined getting laid off again. I’m in a very different place in my life now and am way more comfortable then I was in 2009, but you know what? No one wants to involuntarily leave their job. No one ever wakes up in the morning and says, “I’d love to get laid off today!’ It’s demoralizing. It’s a huge ego hit. It is especially hurtful when you know that you’ve been the top performer on your team, but even that does not make you immune from a layoff. But it’s a further reminder that the working world is full of politics, gossip, backstabbing, and the game of favorites. And if you are not a favorite, your employment is always at risk.

People like me don’t fare so well in that schema because I don’t like to suck up, and no one would ever, ever label me a kiss-ass. I just want to be who I am and I will stand for what I believe in, and I won’t kowtow to people because of their positions and their standings as “favorites” among the CXO team.

If you aren’t going to be true to yourself, then who are you going to be true to?

Like many other tech companies who are attempting to be seen as “woke” and progressive during this period of heightened awareness of racial injustice, my company granted today, June 19th, or “Juneteenth” off as a holiday to allow employees to take time for themselves to educate themselves about this day in history. Juneteenth, rarely taught in schools, is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free. However, the issue here is that this news came to Texas 2.5 years AFTER then President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which had become official on January 1, 1963 (funnily enough, this is basically like how the country is run today; just because something becomes national “law” does not mean individual states instantly start enforcing these laws).

We had a series of programming lead by our Diversity and Inclusion Group (DIG) team along with our Optimizely.org rep. I joined one of the early sessions on the history of Juneteenth and also spent the day exploring the much quieter Manhattan Chinatown, buying different foods I’ve missed out on over these last few months, exploring bakeries and noodle/tofu shops that I’ve been wanting to buy from, and just wandering the streets to get a sense of what life is like now given so many businesses are either still temporarily closed, or have even permanently closed during this COVID-19 shelter-in-place period.

Throughout the day, I continued listening to the White Fragility book and lamented the fact that this book, like so many books, movies, articles that are so informative and enlightening, will likely never be received and consumed by those who need this information the most. It’s sad to think that even when people have willingly participated in anti-racism training with the author herself, Robin DiAngelo, that they will get angry when their own racism is called out in incidents they themselves chose to willingly share, and that they would then be a live example of white fragility in a classroom led by the White Fragility author. I am sure that similarly, many of my colleagues who so severely suffer from white fragility refused or declined to participate in our company’s Juneteenth events, likely because they are so consumed by their own feelings of *potentially* getting hurt in a situation where their hurt doesn’t even matter.

As a female person of color who has been working in digital marketing and in tech for the last 12 years, I can say that unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of not thinking about race. I have to think about it pretty much every single day. I am oftentimes the only woman in a meeting, the only person of color, or in endless cases, the only person of color AND the only woman in the room. So, I am constantly asking myself, how are people going to perceive me and my actions as an Asian female here? I know I am the minority; the last time a colleague and I manually checked our stats, about 15% of the entire go-to-market organization were people of color. Are they going to immediately assume I fall into the “model minority” stereotype, that I’ll be quiet, passive, never speak my mind, simply take orders and carry them out? Needless to say, I do not fit that stereotype at all, and I know for a fact that my failure to conform to a racist stereotype has brushed a lot of individuals along my career path the wrong way. Here is just a handful of incidents that have happened to me personally, but does not include all of them: 

1. I have repeatedly voiced constructive feedback about my team to a former VP. Though I know the feedback I gave was shared by a number of colleagues, including several white colleagues who spoke to this leader, I was the only one out of all of us who was told that she is “one of the most negative people on this team. For your career growth, I suggest that in the future, you consider how you ‘package’ feedback.” Now, what makes me different from all the others in this group? 
2. I was once told that I was “rude,” “unprofessional,” and spoke with a “demeaning tone” when asking a colleague who was speaking far above normal office speaking volume to please lower her voice. She had antagonized a number of colleagues sitting around us to the point where most of us did not feel comfortable being around her or sitting at our assigned desks. Yet when a white male colleague literally yelled across the floor of the NYC office, on multiple occasions, “Yo, <employee name>! LOWER YOUR VOICE!”, everyone merely laughed and took him as the joker of the office. Nothing was reported in that incident. When I mentioned this to our HR rep, she responded to me, “Well, I wasn’t there,” and shrugged. 
3. I, along with another Asian colleague in New York City, have been told repeatedly by a colleague, in an attempt to be “woke”/ aware, “I can tell the difference between Asians.” 
4. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve been asked by white colleagues, “Where are you really from?” after telling them that I was born and raised in San Francisco (to be clear, this is a microaggression that implies that I am a perpetual foreigner and not truly American). 
5. I’ve repeatedly been mistaken for at least half a dozen different Asian female colleagues across offices, via Slack, e-mail, and in person.
   1. One European employee gaslighted me, insisting I had been in San Francisco in April/May 2018 when he had actually confused me for another Asian female colleague. I told him that I hadn’t been to San Francisco since kick-off that year, and I would obviously know when I traveled from NY to SF. He kept insisting I was wrong and that I was in his meetings in SF that week. 
   2. These mistakes have also been made by members of our CXO team.

How do I know that any of the above was actually racist or prejudiced? In the day and time we currently live in, all of the above would be quite hard to prove as “racist.” And if I were white, I’d have the luxury of never even thinking for a second it could be about my race because I would be the majority group. The majority group is the default group, the “normal” group to which everything else is compared. But that’s the thing: You don’t need to yell racial slurs to be racist. You don’t need to be a member of the KKK to be racist. You could easily donate to progressive causes and vote for Democrats and still be racist. The Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper situation was a classic case of white privilege and racism in action, as her actions silently said, “Your position in society does not allow you to talk to me like that. Now, you’ll be punished for not knowing your place.” This was all because she couldn’t tolerate a black male birder calling her out on breaking the law.

It doesn’t seem to matter where you go, what you do, or what industry you choose. Racism is pervasive everywhere. And the worst part is: the people you think will help you, the ones whose jobs are actually to help you (hello, human resources teams, I’m looking right at you), make the situations worse. They gaslight you. They question you to death until you question your own sanity and sensitivity. They try to make you “consider other viewpoints.” They try to make it NOT about race. BUT IT IS ABOUT RACE. It IS about sex. The white moderate is the issue here. The people who think they are helping are NOT helping. They are making the situation worse and perpetuating the status quo, which is to continually oppress people of color and under-represented groups in a white male-dominated society.

I was on a Zoom call with two colleagues today, and it began with a discussion about the protesting across the U.S. My male colleague said, “I don’t understand why they are protesting. The cop got arrested.”

My female colleague and I looked at each other. We had to address this in the most civil way possible.

Me: Getting arrested is not enough. It was third degree murder when it should have been 1st degree. And it’s not a guarantee he will get convicted. That doesn’t even include the other three cops involved. Then there’s Ahmaud Arbery getting chased down, shot and killed, and us finding out about it two months later? What is that about? And then there’s the long history of black men unarmed getting shot by the police that has been going on for hundreds of years. How can you answer for any of that?

My female colleague: Well, I have a black fiance who I’m going to be marrying, and if we procreate, that means… I believe, that I will have black babies. So, I have a black future husband and black future babies, so I am personally invested in solving this ongoing issue.

My male colleague’s face was hard to read. He looked a bit defeated. He simply responded with, “Well, I hope justice is served.”

I hope it is, too, but I also wish that he would acknowledge that his lack of understanding is 100 percent his fault. Who knows if anything that we said got through to him. It’s not up to other people to educate him, particularly people of color. It’s his own personal failing as a human being to not seek out resources, whether that’s a GOOGLE SEARCH, news articles, blogs, opinion pieces, books, documentaries, movies, NETFLIX or HBO. The digital world we live in makes it so damn easy to find information, but the key part of finding the information is to SEEK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF. And if you choose to whine and whinge, insist that you “just don’t understand,” then you are part of the problem and will only exacerbate the oppression.

I’m sure he got off the Zoom call and ran to his wife, complaining that “My liberal colleagues ganged up on me!” Well, I’m not going to apologize for hurting his white fragile feelings because this is beyond politics. This is a human rights issue, and if you do not care, you are not human. Clean and simple.

A colleague and I were chatting about life in general during an age of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine. She asked if I was planning to still take time off despite the fact that my three trips between May and July have officially been cancelled.

“Wedding cancelled in May, Ecuador trip that I’d be leaving for tomorrow is not happening, and my Sri Lanka trip at the end of June/early July just got cancelled and refunded,” I said to her. “If I’m not traveling, what exactly would I be taking time off for?”

“You can go to the park!” she suggested. “Read a book! Exercise more!”

I sulked further. “I go to the park for a walk nearly every single day when the weather is good since I live two blocks away. I’ve read 11 books this year already when my usual goal is 12 books per year. And I exercise every morning before work in my bedroom! I’m doing everything! I’m even doing all these cooking projects I kept adding to my list but never getting to!”

“WHY ARE YOU SO PRODUCTIVE?” she exclaimed. “I do nothing outside of work on the weekdays, and my only activities are on the weekends!”

I’ve always been obsessed with productivity and efficiency. It’s a really good and a really bad thing. I obsessively look at the time no matter what I am doing. So when quarantine first began, I told myself that I had to make the most of all this anti-social, no travel, no life-outside-of-the-home time. I wanted to maximize everything I possibly could: the podcasts to listen to, books to read, lists to organize, nooks and crannies to clean in the apartment, videos to edit for my channel, cooking projects to test out and film, increase my social media presence for YMF. All the things I could do within the apartment to be efficient and productive are all the things I immediately thought about as lockdown began.

But all of that seems exhausting sometimes. Sure, I’m happier because I’ve done a lot of these things, such as edit a ton more videos than I would have if COVID-19 had not hit, or read a lot of amazing books that had me completely hooked, but everything just seems so mundane when you have nothing tangible to look forward to, whether that’s a restaurant to try out, an oldie to go back to, or a new destination to explore.