I Survived Having a Sexist Manager in Tech

In the country ranked 1st for gender equality in the EU

Photo by Robert Bahn on Unsplash

I walk into the meeting room in our Stockholm office and I see my manager smiling and more cheerful than usual.

I wonder what he will tell us, because the meeting invite mentioned that he had some news for the team. It looks like it is good news, I think to myself.

And it was indeed. We had acquired a small tech company, and their employees would join our team. After the transition period, my manager would go for early retirement, and the CEO of the acquired company would become our new manager.

Little did I know that after six months, I would consider this the worst news ever.

Getting a New Manager

The new colleagues were all male, and their CEO addressed the females in our existing team with the words,

I have always had only male employees, I’m excited about this new journey together.

We looked at each other confused and worryingly. He said he had been running his own businesses for the past 15 years. Why did he never hire female employees?

The time when he becomes in charge arrives pretty fast. And week after week I start having fewer and fewer projects.