Another reason for open plan offices to suck - when you're a minority

Oh... and a little follow on from last post... which I realise was months ago... the two consultants I was out in the field were both female. Hey ho, you know how it goes when you spend your entire time writing and speaking gender neutrally that you forget to specify when it matters.

And 24 hours after that I had an epiphany to my answer of "would you encourage girls to do STEM?" but I wanted to think about it for a bit in case it was mainly just heightened emotions. But it isn't. And it's real. But I'm still thinking about it still so will post later.

But... to the thing that actually inspired me to bother putting fingers to keyboards months later... Open Plan Offices.

We are going to take it as a given that the excessive noise is both stupid and unproductive. Yes?

We are going to take it as a logical follow on from this that if you are doing work tasks that do not require you to work with others that this is a direct negative worse than usual.

Ok... well what about if you work in an office with that sort of condition on your work where no one actually needs to talk to you and you're a minority.

How to emphasis the loneliness.

So here I am, STEM person, sorry.... STEM _female_ person and... well... they don't need to talk to me, so, it could go all day with no one talking to me.

And yet here I am in an open plan office.

THANKS GUYS.

Maybe this shows more about me and less about open offices. I hear that some workplaces actually ask about friendships at work as a measure of quality. But hey, single (hetero) female, married guys with families. They don't even like going out to the field with me if it's just me and them. I had a friend I would go out to get takeaway coffee with in the afternoons and always got the sense that sitting to drink it wouldn't be welcomed and lunch with just the two of us was totally out. I eventually asked. He said that when he had moved into our team two of the guys had asked him if he had slept with me and with another female. He didn't tell me because he knew I would be shocked and upset. I was. I was shocked and upset.

So yeah... friendships... work.. when we were all younger there was friendships. But no more for me as a single female.

There is an older Pakistani man who has worked in our group for a while who I thought it was lovely to see as more Indian and other Asian people (read mostly guys) were employed started to include him in lunches and discussions. It warmed my heart and I mentioned as much to one of them. He's such a sweetie.

But here's me. Who unless I talk to others no one will talk to. All day. In an open plan office.

That's actually kind of cruel.

There comes a time...

So on Friday I was out in the field with two consultants and one of them mentions that they'd lasted only 10 months with the company that I'd had consultants from on Wednesday and Thursday.

They asked me quite seriously how I dealt with sexism in the industry we're in. And waited for my reply.

I'm afraid I started to cry.

I pulled myself together and went back to being professional again but... um... really that's a sign isn't it? Time to go?

Today the new boss of our new little team agreed that we needed a get together. And looked and me and the graduate (female) and said we should organise something. Hmmm. I mean, it could be co-incidence.

Also, I asked my brother, as another memory came back, had he ever had it when he had made a technical statement and someone had looked at his boss standing next to him and asked if that was correct. He said he couldn't remember a time. I was the only female in that room of about 8 people. Was it because I was female? Was it because I was me?

I am heartsick. It hurts so much.

Wood. Trees. Building furniture or building bonfires.

The problem with this all is that I am both so close and so far away. While I say others will dismiss it all as individual incidents, even I myself, when I step back from it a bit, think, oh woah, that's insane.

How to react? What to do with this all? What is best? What is most loving? Part of me wants to pile it all in a heap and really get that fire going, a flash of ire for all the rage I didn't even realise I had reason for until these last few months.

But I've mostly all post processed it now, moved on and got over it. Mostly.

But still, I have this "thing" here, that I'm tossing from hand to hand wondering what I should do with it. My story I guess. And stories can be powerful things. I suspect most would say to just throw it away. But maybe my story could help someone? Or maybe not. Telling it could hurt me too. But part of me just doesn't care any more.

I do know that if someone were to say to me, would you recommend engineering as a career for girls I would still straight up say absolutely not. Or at least not if you are not in the top 5% of your class. I love it as a concept - engineering is totally where it is at if you get what it is - but as a practical reality? Be very careful if you are female making such a decision. I really wish I'd had someone to advise me personally against it.

But WHO should control this brave new virtual world of ours?

I realized today that one of my safest pieces of personal information - safe as in safe from identity theft - is my mobile phone number. It has to be unique by the way it is set up in the network, and any changes I will immediately notice or will be notified. Therefore by extension the network provider you choose is one of your most trusted agencies - whether you realise this or not. They always know your location, your history in terms of where you have been, who/what you have interacted with virtually, and all your personal details on your account.

Possibly quite obvious to all these large 3rd party providers and OS currently flouncing around trying to lever their way into every aspect of our lives.  And meanwhile mired in small-minded locality without realising how amazingly valuable what they have is, are the carriers sitting on this amazing connection - and people aren't talking about it.

Instead Apple has released a new watch.

Hilar. Even more hilar are the tech journalists who don't *get* how absolutely stunningly obvious this is.

R. E. S. P. E. C. T. isn't dealt with by discrimination training and proactive management

Hmmm. Well this is kind of fun... I am at the apex of what I suspect is an epithany trying to assimilate the view.

Recap:

So my colleague described a minor incident, which she commented about normally being able to laugh it off, which means it had happened more than once before. And there was enough in it for me to get a chill of recognition.

So I was trying to think of other times when I didn't recognise sexism.  Both in my own work and it happening to others when it was just 'minor' but there. And I remembered a chemical engineer I knew who changed jobs and she tried to give me a reason why. And what she said.

And I had read this article Why women are leaving the tech industry in droves and had been nodding along going ... yup yup... and then she concludes "respect" and I'm going "yes of course".

And then, while doing some training today for one of those must-take-so-we-can-tick-off-business-rules stuff I noticed I had been enrolled in discrimination training (again) last month - odd as we weren't told about it - so I thought I would knock that off while I was there.

And... respect doesn't come into discrimination/bullying/victimisation ... in a sense. I mean... it's obvious that if you're not disrespectful of someone you won't do those things... but it doesn't work the other way around. As in, you can not do those things... and still have no respect... but who wants to work in a place like that? And that was the end of that article - the note they decided to conclude on.

I've also been reading Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller.  Which goes through reasons why work exists in this world, and the value of work. Like... there was work in the garden of Eden - to tend, not paving over, not leaving wild, but to develop for the good of humans - both food and flowers. If you can't develop the world at your workplace, well then, it's a pretty dead place.

So... what is 'respect'? Still thinking about that. What it is and what it isn't. When who/what I respect often shows a lot more about me than the person/object that is my focus. And this is helping me tease apart a little of my history and what happened to me.

And then I come home from work and I found this:Why sexism and inequality in tech is bad proven by maths by a journalist I respect because from the start of the gamer gate (deliberately separated for obfuscation) he has had the guts to fight back clearly and with care and thought. My sincerest thanks to David as his article is like the piece of sky that has been missing from this puzzle - the history, how to change, and some more of the why.

There is probably zero hope for my group at work. I mean, seriously after all this time? But it definitely changes the way I think about it. And more importantly how I think about it in relation to myself.

Hmmm. Probably be a two part post this one. But the view is mighty fine.

There are no angels and demons here

A friend pointed out that with all this STEM stuff, when I ranted on facebook, I'm getting angry at the wrong people. I'm getting angry at the people who encourage girls to go into STEM without realising the huge emotional cost this could potentially be to those girls personally, even if it is to some greater society benefit.

She points out that the people to get angry with are the perpetrators. But it's just not that easy.

Sexism in the workplace for the most part is like the death of a thousand paper cuts. You barely realise it's happening - either to yourself or to others. Most of the time it is the sum of many, many little things. Perpetrators and the managers and organisations under which this happen quite rightly see all these things as very minor. Because they are.

So I'm still at this job where all this stuff happened that has made me take this stance - things having settled down as everyone is polite to one another now and I'm respectfully given separate types of work. We have a reorganisation coming up though which means I should be given exactly the same type of work as my colleagues. Should be an interesting comparison. But anyway, I was chatting to one colleague in my team, and she mentioned a slight annoyance that she says happens from time to time but most times she can just laugh it off, and this particular annoyance she mentioned to anyone who hasn't been through this may have seemed like absolutely nothing.

But my blood ran cold. What she said is exactly the kind of thing that happened to me.

And it's happening to her. Right in front of me. She gets the top rating in performance reviews and it's still happening to her.

For the most part they are all nice people. And this is no big deal. You can't demonise these people, and there are many good things about them. But this is why people don't understand how sexism happens here.

My facebook friend says I should write about it. Still thinking about this. Because frankly even if I give you a lot of examples you, dear reader, will tell me that they are minor and nothing. And for the most part I will have to agree with you.

So why am I in tears? Why am I ripping myself apart over this stuff? Why am I trying to tell the world (and girls in particular as more and more I suspect this is gendered), if you are in a workplace or industry like this, GET OUT.

Ok I'll say it

I keep wanting to say this in public, going to say it, and then retracting it.

So screw it I'll say it here.

I regret doing engineering.

I am not 'naturally brilliant' at engineering. I didn't think I would end up STILL being in an engineering job after all these years. I thought you know, I love English, but I can always have that as a hobby, but if I do engineering I'll always have a job. Engineering will be a good base degree that I can do to launch off into other things.

But then I found myself with a job in engineering. Bullied my self confidence, never very high, plummeted so I was convinced I was totally unemployable any where else and that I would never get a job anywhere else, and so I'm still here.

From a period from about the year 2000 to the year 2009 I was bullied and victimised. And because I was in such a bad mental state I didn't really realise I was being bullied as they never used that term. It was "difference of personality". I couldn't really clearly tick any specific boxes on it being bullying until the rules changed in February last year. What is more as I glanced down the next list which was victimisation I realised I had been victimised too. I'm not a victim. I don't think of myself as a victim. But according to the way the rules have changed to my bemusement apparently I am because I can tick off so much on that list too.

Sexism? Most likely. With a lot of these things it's hard to say and again I don't tend to think in those terms. Do I think it would have happened the same if I was a guy? Of course not. But as people will tell you that proves nothing.

At least the bullying stopped. And the victimisation stopped too. Although is it actually victimisation if you don't know it is? I just knew it was unfair when they took work and responsibilities away from me. And then they took more away when I said it was unfair. And then they gave me managed work.

If I had been technically brilliant they wouldn't have been able to do that to me. But instead I've always just been average as I've always just been an all rounder. I mean, that's ok because a lot of guys are too. But when you're female and you don't fit in though you have to prove yourself. At a bare minimum that requires a certain level of technical flair above and beyond your peers or else they have an actual reason to dismiss or target you rather than that they don't actually like you. If I had been brilliant then my complaints about unfair treatment would have stood. As I wasn't brilliant my flaws and ordinariness were just useful hooks. Better to have no hooks.

I'm trying to work out what exactly about engineering it is that I regret. I mean the profession itself is pretty damn cool. It's science and technology and making it useful for people and solving real life things. I mean, it's hard to argue with the awesome if you get a total buzz out of tech. And I definitely do. And I can do maths. Well enough maths to get by. And I can do the sciences enough to get by and understand what is important.

Does it mean you shouldn't do engineering though if you're not totally brilliant and maths and science? I mean, I passed all my subjects. I even had a female supervisor for my thesis so there can not be complaints of bias. I didn't choose her - I just liked the elective as I liked the real world applications of error control coding. I scraped passes but I passed. We got sympathy from other degrees because engineering was so hard compared to theirs. I am actually pretty damn proud of the fact that I got an engineering degree. (And a science degree but really that was an extra year of fun in comparison to the difficulty of engineering. Oh and all while very very medically depressed.)

So I get a buzz out of tech and love the usefulness of engineering - I think that's what hooked me in actually. And that could be a bit of my gender in that hook - the usefulness. Wanting to fix the world. Wanting to make the world a better place. To care for the world. Not that guys don't want that too. But some of that nurturing maybe?

And then the call to 'all girls come do engineering as we need more female engineers!'. Another hook to be 'useful'. At what ended up being huge personal cost.

I mean seriously, and I do mean seriously, it's kind of lucky I am still here to type this. Because the bullying I received because I was a female engineer combined with my medical depression was very almost the end of me.

So why do I regret engineering? I regret doing engineering for me personally for the years and year s of demoralising funk that I didn't even realise I was in because I thought it was just me. I regret that right now as we're starting to talk about sexism and bullying and equality and all that, that there is this huge rage in me. I find myself really angry at people trying to encourage girls into engineering while not warning them that at least for some it's a really toxic place to be. High school girls don't know. They haven't had the life experience. And yet adults and encouraging them just for some sort of societal justice? Don't they know what might happen to those girls?

I regret that the younger me wasn't told 'this is what might happen'. I regret that I wasn't given skills to know what to do with bullies and with people who discriminate against you. I regret that no one was there to me to say 'it's not you - it's the people around you - get out before it makes you think even less of yourself than you already do'.

Not sayin' nuthin'

I'm finding it hilarious all these threads and posts and tweets and news items on women either not being heard when they speak or being dismissed as bossy and unlikeable if they speak.

How to win? Don't speak!

And quietly wander out the door and do something else. Plenty of other things to do elsewhere. With and for better people.

Voicelessness is a funny thing. You can have no voice on the outside but be content with your voice on the inside. And develop a great sense of humour. Which no one knows about.

We all experience voicelessness in a lot of different ways - unless we are amazingly blessed people are entire lives and thoroughly spoiled. But even then...