If You Could Turn Back Time... The Support and Resources You Would Have Needed

This week's question: Think of a specific time when you went through something where your rights were being violated, you were harassed, you were punished or fired for retaliation, or you witnessed someone else in that situation. 

1. Brief description of what happened. 

2. What did you wish you had known at the time? 

3. What support or resources did you wish you had at the time?

Anna: At a previous employer, I knew that I was being underpaid, and had discussed with others what they were making. I approached HR and told them what I would like, and I was given that number (which, I'd later learn, was still underpaid). But I immediately turned around and told others who were making my previous salary so they could too go to HR and say "I would also like a pay increase to X in line with my peers." 

Naturally, had folks in more privileged positions told us what they were making, we all would likely have gotten a better salary because we would have known to ask for more. 

Employers may even go so far as to tell you that you cannot discuss your compensation with other employees at your studio, etc, but this is simply not the case, and it is your right to do so. 

For magic-wand thinking, I think that pay transparency should be the absolute standard: salary bands should be posted on job listings, and you should be able to know what different people make to be sure that you are being compensated fairly. Know your rights: collective bargaining works!

Andi: I witnessed many situations where women at my last company were treated unfairly. In some situations I was able to help, in some I felt powerless, in some I honestly just did not know what to do about it. Here are some major themes with examples: 

- Having to leave to advance your career: I remember a woman's promotion I was a part of where two men were holding her to an unreasonable standard for a junior position, one of which I later found out had been verbally harassing her. We managed to push her promotion through narrowly, but she had to move teams. Later on her new team, she was denied a promotion to a senior position when her work was evaluated to an arbitrary standard that disproportionately undermined her strengths and impact. She left and found a different company of similar size that gave her an upper-range senior position immediately and better pay.

- The loudest voice often makes the decision (and it's usually the wrong one): I remember a hiring loop where a candidate coming back from a break in the workforce had the majority of us, including the women in the group, and her potential manager behind her hiring, only to be vetoed by the hiring chair, a man, after another man on the loop aggressively petitioned against her.

- Outperforming only to be told you underperform: I remember a manager in our organization, a young woman, tell me she received an underperforming rating during the review cycle, despite being widely recognized and praised as the most talented and effective manager at her level in our organization with the happiest team of people under her and no attrition in her tenure.

- Sexism and racism (still) manifest without repercussions: I remember a meeting where a white man in a position of senior leadership told an Asian woman to stop talking. The same individual in another meeting told a separate individual, also an Asian woman, that she wasn't allowed to ask a question for an arbitrary reason that he made up.

- Allies find themselves in escalating stakes when they challenge the status quo: I remember a manager, a strong ally, telling me that he had to stake his entire reputation on a woman's promotion discussion because of how toxic the committee was. And that he nearly quit because of it.

- It's easy to look away when you've already looked away: I remember a manager, a man, questioning why I was spending time mentoring a woman in a junior role, a person being overlooked for opportunities.

As I grew more senior, I felt more empowered to speak up and take action. And that is the problem! Ideally, we would all be empowered to speak up no matter our level. But hierarchies have this way of making us feel more or less valid in accordance with level. Which is exactly how we end up with people in leadership abusing their power. What I would have loved to have was a little handbook "see this... do this..." "heard this... say this back..."

Catie: I worked at a start up where I wish I knew their company culture.

They made it sound like they were about diversity, and they sort of made that plug. But they were not about diversity and my manager actually said he didn’t want to hire any more women. So having a way to verify if their company culture was as great as they said it was would have been useful. They didn’t have a Glassdoor page because they were such a small company. 

There’s so many small companies in the Bay Area and they all need some kind of company culture approval rating, and more accountability toward positive culture. 

I also didn’t get a clear answer about my salary or a contract that guaranteed it for the first week. I had to confront my manager to make sure we signed a contract and he was too busy to come to the office and sit down with me so he avoided signing a contract. He also made the excuse that he didn’t have a printer. When I got him to sit down and talk to me, he said I was still on probation and he was evaluating me. But he’d already given me a desk and a lot of tasks to do, and I’d been working there for a week. 

I wish I’d had a document that described a protocol and a list of checks that I could follow to make sure a company owner couldn’t give me work to do first, and then avoid guaranteeing pay later. I also had trouble getting my last paycheck and had to go back to the office and walk him down to the bank to get him to pay what he owed. He had a gaslighting “are you ok? You seem upset” type tone the entire way. I was annoyed because I wasn’t buying his dismissive apathy about my being paid on time. It had taken me several experiences with start ups that avoided paying me to know exactly what I was dealing with. I wish I’d had a contract template besides what they had on Google docs, or a basic understanding of how contracts should work. By that point in my life, I’d realized that contracts that don’t have a due date on them mean that, they can pay you any time, like six months later. 

I wish that there was more accountability in the local area for small companies and their reputation. There’s just so many small companies with toxic behavior and there’s no record of their misdoings, but they all network and go to the same events and conferences. They all claim to do well for the world and there’s just such a disregard for treating their employees with respect, and an excuse of taking care of their own business first.

I also wish that someone hadn’t treated me like it was my fault, my naivety, and a bad situation I’d gotten myself into.

Leslee: There have been two times earlier in my career (and at the same studio) where I was pushed out - first it was out of my department, then it was ultimately out of the company by leadership that wanted to clean house of, uh, dissenters, basically. We had a big “Yes Man” problem at the time.

I wish I had known to document everything at the time. Follow up every conversation with an email, send emails to HR proactively, forward my (great!) reviews and any other documentation to myself as well. I don’t think these would have changed the outcomes, but they would’ve been nice to have in case I needed them in the future. I was fully aware of the situation and went into it eyes wide open but didn’t know how to manage it — just having “proof” would have saved myself a lot of angst.

I wish I had better management support in the first instance, although my manager ended up getting axed around the same time. He did support me in getting me into a new department ASAP, but I wish he could’ve fixed the situation altogether by being able to defend his team and fight against toxic leadership. In the second instance, I think I got the support I needed at the time. I wish the overall situation had gone differently, but my manager stepped up for me and made sure I didn’t get fired (even though I ended up leaving because of this specific situation) and many teammates talked to HR after witnessing this specific incident. I probably should have consulted a lawyer at the time, though!

J: There was a situation where we had a new hire that started making our workplace very unpleasant, it got to the point that it was very clear he did not respect me as a coworker, the moment I had the courage to speak to my lead about it I was told that I should take the time to understand him, that "he didn't mean it that way". 

Needless to say, I felt really small after that and I felt guilted. I was fortunate that I spoke to another coworker about this and he immediately had my back. Even if there was nothing much done from our reports to our manager, I felt like at least someone knew what I was going through and had that support whenever something happened. 

I wish I had known that if I had talked to another hire up rather than my lead there would have been more action but I feel like it shouldn't be that way and my manager/lead should have my back or you know actually do something about it. That experience made me feel very uncomfortable in the team as time went on and pushed me to leave that studio.