Ling Chu is a proud Taiwanese American Tech worker advocate. Born in the central valley of California, she boldly moved to the bay area to seek a better life. She has been in the startup tech space for over 9 years and hopes to change the makeup of the tech workforce.

A few years ago, I started working for a company in the west coast of the US. It was Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t at all festive for me. I had just replaced a previous employee who had just left. I was desperate for a job, ignored all the warning signs during the interview process and reviews on Glassdoor. Reviews of the company pointed to a poor culture and bad management. When visiting the office of the business, I noticed everyone seemed depressed. I could tell the vibe was off. Upon my first week at the business, I started hearing complaints from colleagues about them missing the girl who had just left the company.

Furthermore, I received comments such as "I only hired you because Asians are more trustworthy." It didn’t stop there, and I was often praised for being "a good Asian worker", because I was quiet and kept to myself most of the time. I often heard remarks about the racial identities of office guests and comments on their mannerisms when they came in and out of our office. There were often complaints about compliance laws, and how much they cost the business. It didn’t stop there, and I witnessed colleagues who would greet women in the business by getting too close to them and kissing them on the cheek.

When it first happened I was shocked. I would be extra guarded and protect myself as shady business people would be brought in who would act in similar ways. One such person was super loud and required me to serve him water. At one point he would try to hit on me. He then started asking me questions. I would keep my distance while only doing the bare minimum to not attract a lot of attention.

Things didn’t stop there. There were moments where a colleague wanted to use me as a puppet to harass employees about their whereabouts when they weren’t in the office or make them feel uncomfortable while at work. During one employee termination, I was forced to be in the meeting and my colleague asked me to move my laptop camera because in the small office room "my boobs" were taking up the whole camera. When that was said, the guy being fired winced as he knew how the comment made me feel. You can tell on my face I was very embarrassed and flushed in the face. After that rude comment about my body the employee being terminated and I tried to act as if it never happened and continued with the meeting.

During one of my daily video call meetings, I got reprimanded for asking questions about when I was getting paid and how many hours I earned in paid time off. None of this was ever explained to me so I would spend nights researching for myself to better understand when I was getting paid and what were the laws in the state when it came to earning hours for paid time off. During a video call meeting, I asked to confirm my online research about my pay schedule and paid time of hours that I earned. When I shared my research, my colleague was very surprised by the findings. At some point, I was tested to see how much I knew as my colleague did not want to confirm my findings. After that meeting I could tell the unhappiness with me and the nervousness of how much I knew and what it could mean going forward if I were to dig up any other company discrepancies in employment policies and company practices. Since that meeting I noticed I was treated with a different tone regards to business related matters and there was also less openness with me about company updates as I was deemed untrustworthy with my questioning on such matters.

During my second year, I had my first annual performance review. Part of the performance review was for colleagues and managers to write feedback on each employee they worked with closely. I was worried that my former colleague would give me a bad review about my performance from the previous year. I was concerned my evaluator would document all the concerns that I mentioned earlier in this story about paid time off to pay schedules to highlight me not focusing on my work and being someone who was overly critical and not trustworthy. I wanted to keep my job and wanted to be recognized for all the hard work I put into the company. Before the evaluations were to start, I decided to talk to a legal professional in the company because I wanted to protect my performance evaluation from being used against me. I set up a meeting after work and showed my documentation of all the microaggressions and when they happened. There was a lot of shock and there needed to be a rework of my performance evaluation due to the documentation of the verbal, and physical harassment I faced. After a small investigation of the matter, it was decided I would move managers, and my work would be passed along through a chain of folks so I didn’t have to directly always work with those who harassed me. This arrangement allowed me to focus on my work and less have to worry about the harassment I faced. This lasted til the closing of the business and everyone getting laid off.

My advice

If there is anything I have learned from those 2 years, it is that doing research and reaching out to others can really open your eyes and help you come up with a action plan to protect your rights as a worker and as a human. Doing both allowed me to have the courage to go through the proper channels I had in front of me to stop the incidents from happening to me. Some things I recommend to those facing similar incidents, are 1) Reach out to a friend or colleague you can trust 2) Document all incidents of microaggressions in chronological order 3) Research your right in your state/city in the case you need to lawyer up. In doing these things, you are able to protect yourself and figure out how to best protect yourself.