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    No-Mi SkyeJoanna Rothkopf
    7/25/15 5:19pm

    She’s totally right about leaving if you can. There comes a point where you just have to leave a job if you’re not feeling valued. Those feelings aren’t imagined or coming from nowhere. You’re feeling them for a reason. Sometimes fighting the good fight or trying to doesn’t fix shit. Leave before you become convinced that whatever they’re giving you is all you’re worth.

    I did it just last year and I’m much happier in my new job.

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      BlondieRock13No-Mi Skye
      7/25/15 5:51pm

      Totally with you on that. I stayed at my last job 4 long years and was utterly miserable because the pay/benefits were awful and I wasn't getting the respect I had worked my ass off to earn. I left for a much better paying job and I'm so much happier now. I will never ever stay in a job that sucks again. If you find yourself feeling trapped, learn new skills to make you more marketable to other employers and make the leap.

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      FrancoisNo-Mi Skye
      7/25/15 6:02pm

      Felt the same thing after five years in industry; 28 years of social work and clinical counselling were a better alternative.

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    ILikeThunderstormsJoanna Rothkopf
    7/25/15 6:55pm

    I worked in HR at Google for nearly eight years; I quit two months ago and am now taking some time off to write and other shit and also stop commuting 4 hours a day and answering emails 24/7.

    Everything she says is true. While there are tons of great individual people at Google, and I do believe that it treats its employees in general much better than the average company, it’s just complete shit at diversity and is still a boys’ club like the rest of the Valley. The turning point for me was when my VP at the time (OF HR) called ‘black kids’ from HBCUs stupid, essentially, in front of my entire team (including the ‘black kid’ one year out of Morehouse I was mentoring, who burst into tears right after the meeting and quit the company <6 mos later!); I complained to my boss, saying it was racist, and she told me I was ‘overreacting’ but that ‘feedback would be given’ and the VP would apologize - neither thing ever happened. The nail in the coffin was when I had to cover for a colleague on vacation working with two male VPs who were so rude and dismissive of me (the only female in the room in most meetings) that I cried every night for a week straight working with them.

    I was white woman working in HR and the often blatant sexism and racism drove me nuts; what the women and POC deal with in the tech departments is obviously worse and most of us in HR were powerless to do much to stop it because it means making a bunch of white men in power feel somewhat bad about themselves and if you do that you get in mad trouble! Ugh.

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      TurkishDelightILikeThunderstorms
      7/26/15 12:42am

      I work at G and this whole thing makes me so sad. I don’t see this severity of a problem in my group at all. It saddens me that my situation has made me unaware of what is going on in the rest of the company. I’m in tech, but I work in groups that sometimes are majority female engineers. That consciousness toward hiring might be the difference.

      I’m so sorry you had to experience such a horrible event. :-(

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      SummerFunTurkishDelight
      7/26/15 9:53am

      What color is your skin? That might be the difference. Lots of people don’t see discrimination unless they are the one being discriminated against.

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    Cocopop!Joanna Rothkopf
    7/25/15 5:17pm
    GIF

    I like her. I would like to invite her to dine with me at JJ’s Diner.

    On a serious note though, this sucks. “Peer bonuses” were withheld from her, but not from other employees involved in creating the spreadsheet? No waffles for you, Google.

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      ad infinitumCocopop!
      7/25/15 5:58pm

      The world would be so much of a better place if JJ’s existed in real life. And if Leslie Knope existed. I think I could die happy if I could eat waffles with her just once.

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      The Noble Renardad infinitum
      7/25/15 6:55pm

      The scene in the final season with her eating lunch with Madeleine Albright is the best thing in the history of best things.

      Edit: okay maybe her stroking Biden’s face is better.

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    むっちりJoanna Rothkopf
    7/25/15 5:32pm

    Alternative to tears and therapy: form a union.

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      Cocopop!むっちり
      7/25/15 5:41pm

      I’m sure the execs at Google would welcome that. She’d probably get a bonus.

      In all seriousness- I support unions. I am active in my union. If that forming a union would help a person avoid tears and stress, you might want to think again.

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      SummerFunむっちり
      7/25/15 8:17pm

      Lots of engineers are opposed to unions. Not sure if that would be popular at Google.

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    SoveryoldstillJoanna Rothkopf
    7/25/15 5:41pm

    Ultimately, tho, IANAL, or the Oracle, or Mrs. Cleo, or any other magical negro, so I can’t tell you what to do in your various situations.

    I shudder to think what kind of emails would elicit this response. Good for her in calling it out.

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      RosevkietsleJoanna Rothkopf
      7/25/15 5:26pm

      Yep. This is the conclusion people always come to and they are totally right to do so. Who wants to be the person who files a messy, hard to prove discrimination case like Ellen Pao and then have it follow you to your next job? This is also why culture changes so slowly within a corporation. There is no motivation (or logic) in someone staying who doesn’t fit the existing ethos. The ones who stay either fit in just fine, or are completely demoralized and not in a position to change anything.

      Google though. don’t be evil my ass. It's not like they don't have resources to throw at workplace dynamic problems. If they are not succeeding in diversifying their workforce, it is a lack of will.

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        under_electricliteRosevkietsle
        7/25/15 7:59pm

        Google though. don’t be evil my ass. It’s not like they don’t have resources to throw at workplace dynamic problems. If they are not succeeding in diversifying their workforce, it is a lack of will.

        Its the problem everybody runs into when trying to diversify a workplace. They think its just shoving some POC into the job and that’s it, everything is cool, everybody will acclimate . Nevermind that these new POC have to interact with people who haven’t had to work with POC around them for a long time. All of a sudden jokes that no one blinked an eye at are now getting brought up by the new colleagues, awkwardly and uncomfortably, as being insensitive and “a little racist”, all of sudden. Or certain projects being designed for a “certain demographic” seem a little insensitive. And then of course people start taking thing personally and blame the “new people” of trying to ruin the harmony of the workplace, the “harmony” that just so happened to exist before this whole diversification thing started.

        Kind of like the Jon Stewart/Wyatt Cenac debacle. Its not just about bringing POC into an office, its also about acclimating to the new foreign perspective in the office and not losing your shit and making it personal when that formally isolated perspective is challenged. That’s where the real work in diversification lies, and its not getting done well.

        Of course, its not getting done too well in society in general, so, there’s that.

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        Rosevkietsleunder_electriclite
        7/26/15 12:48am

        I agree. I used to have lunch with an older woman at my company who said that in the nineties the struggle for women was to get the right policies in place—flexible hours, daycare assistance, etc. and they thought it would improve work for women. It has improved, but women are still not thriving. The stuff that is left to do on diversity is the really hard part. I’m not a person of color, so I can’t speak to their experiences where I work, but I imagine it is a similar thing of many small indignities until you just can’t fucking take it anymore. It just feels mean to tell you coworkers that they are pretty sexist, especially as most of them think of themselves as either neutral or very supportive of women in the workplace. Who wants to hear about it at all and why would they want to change? It is what has worked for them for decades.

        I want diversity in the workplace because I think everyone deserves a fair shot at success but I also think that it really will make teams work better, and certainly recruit better if they have a rep of being a good place for marginalized groups.

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      Ann Smith 123Joanna Rothkopf
      7/25/15 6:01pm

      Speak up if you are able to do so. Even if nothing happens immediately, with many voices, change can occur. Nothing will change if everyone remains quiet. I am a plaintiff in a gender discrimination case heading to trial. I will attest that it is a stressful, unpleasant and public experience, and yes, it will follow me throughout the rest of my career. However, I have no regrets about speaking up for myself and other women. I know I would’ve had regrets if I had not.

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        ILikeThunderstormsAnn Smith 123
        7/25/15 7:02pm

        I mean, everything that Erica has written and said is constantly under discussion at Google (I still have a ton of friends who work there), so her speaking out IS changing things, just very slowly, despite what she thinks. Even if it’s just to avoid a bunch of horrible negative press, they are making way more effort now vs. even 6 mos ago in diversity because of Erica and other ex-employees who have spoken out.

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      Non Sleeping GiantJoanna Rothkopf
      7/25/15 5:35pm

      This. Just. Fucking. Sucks.

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