“I was working for a startup which had an amazing culture!

I had a wonderful manager, who taught me how to implement all the tools you would need to ensure diverse hires. This was the best job I ever had. The leaders believed in the culture, they wanted to have an amazing, diverse, healthy, and happy team. The founder was very vocal about making people the priority.

As we were growing fast due to VC funding, we got a new HR Director. When they came, I met with them and told them about the culture here being precious. They responded by saying: “in order to grow we will have to give up some of that culture”. I was shocked! The first person to leave the company was responsible for DEI. This person was extremely passionate about the role and did an amazing job until one of the directors (a white lady) told them their role was not needed now. Then the HR team removed the possibility to give anonymous internal feedback because a lot of it was directed at them. They argumented this decision with “it opens the door to racism”. Immediately voices were raised that the HR team was not being monitored. What we heard back from the C-suite was that HR is the auditor and doesn’t need auditing.

Performance reviews stopped focusing on impact and collaboration and facilitated a rat race and competition. Derogatory language for BIPOC people was used during management meetings, and more and more people were leaving or being fired.

People’s mental health was getting seriously affected as this amazing culture we fell in love with was being completely dismantled.

The racism and humiliation were constant. All the work we did to ensure diversity recruitment was reversed.

When my performance was being so unfairly assessed, while the managers covered each other's back, I started collecting evidence and I submitted a formal complaint to the legal team about racism. I also shared a list of my observations with the C-suite, and I said that I couldn’t work in this way, and we needed to find a solution. Their solution was to lay me off. The racism investigation went nowhere, despite having evidence and witnesses. I got a lawyer and managed to get a higher severance but I feel like I sold out. I should have taken it further.”