It’s the start of week three on the new job. I’m overjoyed to be back on a college campus and surrounded by intelligent people.
But.
And ya’ll knew a ‘but’ was coming. It’s time to unpack where I’ve been for the last four years of my life.
Exactly four years ago, I emailed a resignation letter and never even picked up the things left behind in my office. I was a new mother.
I looked at those large brown eyes and determined that I was intelligent enough to find something work-wise that would allow me to seamlessly blend motherhood and career.
I quickly stumbled upon Upwork. It took 2-3 months to land a full-time remote contract. And by then the stress of new motherhood and chasing a check was starting to wear on me.
It was like this constant buzz that never went off. I was hyper-aware that I needed to make money and be a present parent in my child’s life especially since I was home.
A quick google search will tell you that the front runners for remote work were found in the start-up sector and the big money was in coding.
It took me a year to figure this out. All the while I was increasingly in denial of my ballooning weight and depression. I just sunk deeper and deeper, but I refused to give up on the dream.
I wanted both! I wanted, no, I demanded, to have a career and motherhood. Surely, my endless supply of energy and my strong anti-sleep stance would carry me to victory?
What I didn’t realize was desperation had taken root and bloomed. Contract after contract became increasingly worse. The pay shrank but the amount of work doubled. The almighty “you can work from home” was the sirens call.
Nothing would move me. Nothing would shake me. Until I realized my child passed their 2nd birthday and they weren’t speaking. He had become my office mate. We rose together, ate together, and I even took him with me to one of my many contract jobs.
A new challenge arose: make enough money to send my son to a learning academy.
Not just a daycare. A learning academy where a curriculum was firmly in place.
In the Atlanta area daycare is easily a mortgage payment. In fact, the place I selected cost more than a mortgage, but I was chasing the elusive salaried remote job. It took another year, but I finally got that job. I will never forget the start date: 8/6/2018.
I only remember because my baby had celebrated his 3rd birthday two days prior. I nervously marched my 3-year-old to a new school and ran to the car to start the worst job of my entire life.
There are articles upon articles about the horrendous diversity problem the tech start-up world pretends it doesn’t have. I’ve frequently been the only black person on the team and always given contract jobs never full-time permanent jobs.
When I finally landed a non-technical salaried position, I foolishly thought I made it. What I was not prepared for was the lying, the spying, the backstabbing, the manipulation.
It was constant torture. The environment was so toxic that one employee was frequently going to the ER for clearly stressed induced medical issues. Then my own medical issues started.
At first, I ignored it, but then I found myself turning off video so I could take calls at the doctors’ office. I would sit on the toilet and bleed for easy clean up while pounding away at emails.
I never took any medication on time because I was too terrified I’d oversleep or be too much in a fog to be productive.
None of this was a secret. Everyone knew what was going on with me at work, I overshared frequently with my teammates in hopes to get some sympathy. Or some modicum of understanding when an email was sent at an odd hour or I was slow to understand a new concept.
There was zero consideration or understanding. Silences are especially loud when Slack is your only form of communication.
And I couldn’t quit. My paycheck paid my little bills and the lion’s share (no pun intended) went to covering my child’s care. That was the dilemma, he was thriving. How could I quit and take this away from him?
My little lion was suddenly potty-trained, speaking, and dressing himself. The more and more he learned, the more I could see my dollars were well spent.
But things were continuing to escalate at work. Now, I was being openly made fun of, ignored when I was speaking….
My favorite anecdote is that one time I started to make a suggestion and was immediately shot down. Only for my colleague to finish my train of thought out loud and get praise. Other employees would dm me sympathy, but nothing would come of it.
My only advocates at work were temperamental. One bad day and they would go silent while I suffered the wrath of my employer. Only to come in and rescue me at their convenience.
I begged and pleaded to Yah for help. Towards the end, I thought how lucky my son’s paternal side was wealthy and kind, albeit a tad ignorant, perhaps they could take care of my munchkins when I killed myself.
And yes, it got that bad.
As the first woman on the team, I returned from leave only to find two white women in my space. I was only gone a few short weeks but once again I was being labeled a nuisance. I was only there to train and educate but was stripped of any agency or any real tasks to do.
Aspects of my job that were allegedly critical a few weeks prior were suddenly unimportant. I could see the setup. The writing on the wall that despite all the abuse I suffered. And I truly suffered, I was about to be pushed out of a job.
And so, I lay prostrate on my floors regularly praying and praying. Heartbroken that I did all this surviving for nothing. That despite how smart I was, I was not smart enough to save myself.
My son was starting to ask me why I was crying all the time and at night I frequented suicide chats because unfortunately, my twitter persona was Portia-positive. I didn’t want to bring anyone down with me. I didn’t want to scare off any smarter, black future techies.
I spent four years begging the tech industry for crumbs, I watched classmates with the same pre-made coding boot camp projects land jobs, and so I quit tech.
I started applying to everything under the sun. And I prayed a simple prayer: If it’s for me, bless me with it. If it’s not, block me from it.
If it’s for me, bless me with it. If it’s not, block me from it.
If it’s for me, bless me with it. If it’s not, block me from it.
If it’s for me, bless me with it. If it’s not, block me from it.
And then one rainy day I really got into it with my employer. He all but called me incompetent and slow. He wanted a deliverable changed completely due at the end of the day. He made this decision around 8 am. Did I mention my start time was 9 am? Little did I know this call would be a blessing.
You see Slack was in the process of making updates to it’s calling feature and because of this it appeared we were on a call with each other for 4 hours. Because of this, no one disturbed me for those 4 hours. I was able to go to an interview at a local university for an hour and return un-noticed.
I waited two weeks after that interview before emailing a “follow-up”. Honestly, I was desperate for feedback. I was consistently landing first-round interviews and not going any further.
While sitting in yet another leadership meeting where I was ignored, and my microphone was on mute. I decided to check my email.
Praise be to Yah I was on mute, finally a job offer.
My start date was exactly when I had resigned 4 years ago. The position? The same I had left 4 years ago.
I don’t know what those last 4 years were for, but it revealed to me the dark underbelly of the startup world. It showed me an entire industry that touts itself as being groundbreaking and innovative is just a wild west of dudebros perpetuating abuse under the safety of being too small for federal rules and regulations demand it does better.
I remember tweeting out that one employer literally referred to me as “the help” to my face and the response I got back was to report to HR.
What do you do when the HR department and payroll are all rolled into the same person who hired you?….
Permanent damage has been done. I flinch at email chimes, frantically busy myself whenever anyone walks by my office, and I’m quiet. Much quieter than I once was. The bags under my eyes have faded into lines that are not going away.
I have nightmares now.
All these permanent invisible scars because I thought the tech industry was wild enough to handle me and I must have forgotten.
I’m still Black.
I’m still a woman.
And that was my biggest mistake.
So now I head to the office and keep a watchful eye of my little ones on installed cameras. The learning academy only gives parents 10 logins per day.
I use every single one.
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