No. It sounds like her line manager was every single untrained techbro manager at a startup.
Everyone hates HR and managers. And there are a lot of reasons to. But taking someone who is “good at technical work” and expecting them to understand how to manage people is a mess. You almost immediately find out about all their “under the surface” biases and they genuinely have no idea how to work around those.
Like, it is good that people are acknowledging how massively fucked this is. But people should really understand that… this is “normal” for women in tech. And you get the occasional “Oh god, that is horrible. Good thing things aren’t like that here” as your co-worker screams internally because she learned that rocking the boat at all is a good way to never get promoted again.
This is why I’m so glad that there are open union campaigns occurring at my tech company. It has promoted a speak out culture where people say something when they see a problem. Management won’t listen to us, but at least we’re there for each other and empathize even if we don’t sympathize. Coworkers have told me that the support that we provide makes them feel validated, even if the law does not agree with our assertions.
No. It sounds like her line manager was every single untrained techbro manager at a startup.
Everyone hates HR and managers. And there are a lot of reasons to. But taking someone who is “good at technical work” and expecting them to understand how to manage people is a mess. You almost immediately find out about all their “under the surface” biases and they genuinely have no idea how to work around those.
Like, it is good that people are acknowledging how massively fucked this is. But people should really understand that… this is “normal” for women in tech. And you get the occasional “Oh god, that is horrible. Good thing things aren’t like that here” as your co-worker screams internally because she learned that rocking the boat at all is a good way to never get promoted again.
This is why I’m so glad that there are open union campaigns occurring at my tech company. It has promoted a speak out culture where people say something when they see a problem. Management won’t listen to us, but at least we’re there for each other and empathize even if we don’t sympathize. Coworkers have told me that the support that we provide makes them feel validated, even if the law does not agree with our assertions.