Working in Tech and Living Queer: One Queer-Tech Experience of Many
This isn’t a story about coming out at work.
I am aggressively out at work without much effort at all.
I joined the board of Lesbians Who Tech Toronto in April 2017 and managed their social media and promotion for more than a year. In September 2018 I joined the planning committee for Venture Out, an LGBTQ+ tech conference that connects queer people with tech jobs, tech talks, and other tech people.
This week my event planning partner Sam and I wrapped up the Venture Out Career Fest — the first career fair to feature a drag queen dressed as Steve Jobs, I’m sure of it. We registered 260 queer job seekers and attracted 28 of Toronto’s top recruiting companies, like Wealthsimple, Ritual, and Wattpad.
I’ve posted about my involvement in Lesbians Who Tech and Venture Out on LinkedIn and Twitter. I use rainbow emojis with abandon on both platforms. I’m about to post this article about being queer and working in tech.
🌈🌈🌈! 💥💥💥!
My (external) life has been very queer for more than nine years. My work life has been very tech for just over two. Now my life is queer and tech at the same time, and I’m taking a moment to reflect on how that feels for me, as a white, cisgender, queer woman.
(This is a privileged thing, to reflect in public. I know this. I am grateful. And I want the same for people who have less privilege than I do.)
Before I landed in tech, I worked for a well-established health charity. I wasn’t out for most of my time there. See, I had a boyfriend when I started my position, and I didn’t want to have the “how can you be queer when you have/had a boyfriend” conversation with folks who see Ellen as their only LGBTQ+ reference point.
Then my boyfriend and I parted ways, I landed a position at a fintech company, and nobody cared when I mentioned the great date I had with “this girl named Stephanie”. No one. Cared.
But 2+ years and three companies later, I’ve noticed some stuff.
I’ve always been one of very few out queer women in my workplace.
I’ve worked with a lot of queer men. They’ve been lovely. But where are the queer women?
(Seriously, where are you? I would like to date you.)
I haven’t been lucky enough to work in a place with an LGBTQ+ ERG, so I’m always doing my own queer reconnaissance to find my queer tech family at work. Those people usually identify as male.
So either I haven’t worked with a lot of queer women, or I have but I just don’t know because they’re not as loud about their queerness as I am.
Queer women — let’s be louder. Tech companies — invest in ERGs (like, with money) so queer women can find each other and form community.
Straight white men in leadership have been welcoming of my personal queerness. They also like systemic meritocracy.
Men in leadership sometimes go out of their way to make me feel accepted in my queerness.
They ask about “the girl I’m dating” at the company holiday party. They tell me about the lesbian couple who found each other during the early days of the company. They tell me about their queer children, and we have meaningful conversations about what queerness looks like for the next generation.
I love all of this.
But then I throw in a question for town hall about what the company is doing to hire a diverse team, and I get this answer:
“We hire the most qualified candidates so we can produce the best work.”
And then my brain melts a little bit because that statement could not get more flawed, but it’s hard to explain why to someone who has never experienced systemic oppression. But I will do so, succinctly, here:
- When you say this, you are assuming equality of opportunity. You are assuming that people applying to your job postings come from a diverse set of life experiences, but that they just have varying degrees of talent. Truth is, your pool isn’t diverse to begin with, and you have to put some effort into making sure it is.
- You cannot produce the best work without hiring a diverse team. If your products are going to serve a diverse set of people, you’ll need a diverse set of points of view to build that product.
Diverse ecosystems thrive, while homogenous ecosystems are vulnerable to failure at the slightest environmental instability. It’s just nature, yo, so don’t argue.
Tech companies want to queer up their brand. Diversity is “cool” now.
So, we did it. We’ve made diversity a cool thing for tech brands.
When we were planning #VOCareerFest, Sam and I did not struggle to find companies who wanted to participate and recruit LGBTQ+ talent. In fact we had to create a waitlist because we feared the venue couldn’t house more than 30 recruiting companies.
Sam and I talked to the most enthusiastic people from these companies. Some of them were out as queer and we knew them, but most of them were not. They really seemed to get the importance of the career fair.
Working with them was fantastic, and the night couldn’t have turned out better.
But because I’m me, I still worry. A lot of tech brands seem to genuinely understand the basic principle that diverse teams create stronger products that serve more people.
But do they also understand the importance of inclusion and belonging for queer people once they hire them?
The hard thing to ask is this: How can I know that my queer sisters and brothers will be treated with respect if they end up getting a job because of the career fair?
The thing is, I can’t. So the least I can do is leave you with this.
TL;DR: If you know nothing else about the queer-tech experience, know this.
It takes significant mental energy to be queer within a heteronormative tech world. Like, energy in your brain that could be spent on:
- the near-constant testing and optimization required to meet — and smash! — your KPIs
- the mental acrobatics needed to pivot and pivot and pivot again
- the discomfort of navigating salary negotiations so you’re paid even just market value (women, queer people of colour, trans folk … you know this pain especially well)
…is instead spent on:
- worrying about what pronouns you’ll use when you’re talking about a partner or your dating life for the first time with new coworkers in a high-turnover industry
- wondering how much you should reveal about all the queer things you did on the weekend when someone makes small talk with you on Monday
- ruminating on all the things you’ve said to anyone ever, concerned you are being “too queer in the workplace”, and then letting that kind of rumination spill over into other parts of your day because, oh yeah, your brain is hardwired to second-guess your whole existence because — YOU. ARE. QUEER.
Straight people working in tech do not expend mental energy in this way.
They experience pitfalls, sure, but they aren’t dragging around an anvil of queer second-guessing behind them while they experience those pitfalls. So they’re better equipped to bounce back fast and get on board for the next switch up in strategy.
So when you’ve recruited a queer person, know that’s only step one. Steps two, three, four, through to a million are compensating for the aforementioned “brain energy debt” by:
- embracing a culture of inclusion and belonging through amplification
- giving credit where credit is due
- adopting a no-tolerance policy on macro/microaggressions
- …and all the things Yiorgos Boudouris says better than I do during his brilliant talks.
Take care of your queer people, Toronto tech. You’re lucky to have them.
