Shelly

I worked for a biotech startup in Boston for a few years. From the start, my manager (a White woman) would routinely take credit for my work, speak over me in meetings, and not acknowledge my contributions in meetings (but if someone else repeated the idea I brought up earlier, she would acknowledge them by name, and not me). This was especially an issue because she would insist on attending all meetings with me. Moreover, as I successfully completed projects and gained more recognition from the larger organization, the more my manager tried to suppress my voice and undermine my work. About a year later we hired another colleague to the team who happened to be a White woman. She was treated very differently from the start: our manager did not insist on attending meetings with her, she was given much more independence, and credit for even small contributions of work.

I did discuss some of my concerns with my manager, and successfully advocated to be credited for my work on several occasions, but I can also see now that this made me a target for retaliation.

I later found out that much of my work was then used as the basis for my manager’s promotion.  (The work she produced herself was often full of mistakes and hardly presentable, but this was overlooked time and time again – another example of starkly different standards for White vs non White employees.)  Meanwhile the goalposts for my promotion kept getting moved back, and more responsibilities were added to my job description. 

I would bring up ideas to the team, which my manager would then discuss separately with my White colleague and have her put together work based on my ideas; my manager also began giving higher profile assignments to my colleague, even though I was more qualified and could have easily done the work.  

Long story short, when it came time for promotions I did not get promoted. My manager later said she simply forgot and that she did not understand the promotion process (despite recently going through the process herself). I was let go in a layoff shortly after.

Unfortunately, it seems that we are often put in a bind: if we don’t advocate for ourselves, we are exploited; and if we do advocate for ourselves, we are retaliated against. I’ve also found that racism against Asians is not often acknowledged in the workplace so I hope that sharing these experiences will help raise awareness of what’s going on. 

I want to help those who might be experiencing similar treatment know that this is not just in their head and they aren’t alone!