#30 “I'm not sure where to begin with the amount of discomfort I've experienced in the work place. As a Black, woman in tech I'm all too familiar with being an extreme minority.”

Written By Disco Tech
30-07.png

“I'm not sure where to begin with the amount of discomfort I've experienced in the work place. As a Black, woman in tech I'm all too familiar with being an extreme minority. I guess you could say my discomfort began at the beginning of my professional career. I accepted a position at my company in a 6 month training program for recent college graduates. Upon arrival at orientation I realized I was the only Black woman out of 70 participants. 70 other co-workers and I was the only one. I felt completely alone and as if I had no one who could relate to my unique experience. From there, it was small incident after small incident that caused my discomfort to grow. From my technical trainer referring to me as Sheba, as in the Queen of Sheba, in the middle of a training session to my colleagues constantly questioning my intelligence, work became a stressful environment. It didn't help that when I tried to reach out throughout the company for assistance with existing in the workplace, I was often told to keep to myself and try my best to ‘fit in.’ It took me a while to find a support system but I'm glad I finally did because the amount of microaggressions I face on daily basis is often overwhelming.“

Disco Tech
Previous

#31 “I witnessed them berating him, belittling him in front of other coworkers, giving him unfair unattainable deadlines, denying him tools and resources that would accommodate his disability.”
Next

#29 “Every time I stayed late at work, when almost everyone was gone for the day, I would see this man walk over to talk flirtatiously with a couple of women engineers on his team…”