Leaving Linode’s Leaders
We’re speaking truth to power as Our last act of service to the Linode coworkers We lovingly advocated for the best We could. Small, tech companies like Linode are often beloved by their employees & community. Unfortunately the cloud infrastructure provider is equitably complicit in employee oppression and allowing power consolidation to nurture the same abuse & toxicity often attributed to larger organizations. Progress is metered out, yet cultural competency is never developed, power is never equitably invested among team members, & we each remain, ultimately, disposable.
Learning Linode originally presented an exciting environment with potential of actually being receptive to developing equitable cultural competency & empowerment for staff. Instead of leaving a company for their systemic issues, We could help champion needed improvements as defined by their employees. It was possible for Us to help make Linode the best place to work for all of it’s employees. Only Our help wasn’t enough, & the reasons are connected to the greater labor struggle.
While interviewing Linode’s then Director of Support about their state of culture & diversity prior to accepting an offer, they theorized that the biggest barriers to accomplishing improved diversity was that there wasn’t one person whose primary focus was to be bringing that expertise to strategizing and implementing. We joined to hold them accountable for what they said their intentions were, by providing the resource they said they were missing in order to accomplish their goals.
We over performed in Our primary role, investing Our whole self, weekends, nights, & emotional resources into empathetically advocating for the meaningful developments needed, requirements most marginalized people in corporate America will inherently understand. What we found was that the problems were not just that they lacked a subject matter expert or someone who was willing to invest the time & resources to facilitate these developments. They also had a serious problem of unchecked power consolidations, reinforcements of toxic, unhealthy cultural conditions holding positions of authority, & a failure to invest in the resources that would prove most effective in bringing employee thriving to fruition.
As the sole owner of Linode the C.E.O has, in theory, total power over the business’s decisions within legal reason. It is made evident by direct quotes & the way that he is known to interact with his executives & staff that he may also believe he has the total power to speak to people as disrespectfully as he likes, gaslight dev teams regarding product development, belittle engineers complaints about concerning risks to security & resource mismanagement, & that benefits are privileges, rewards for profitable business developments. Free of a mechanism to challenge him, leaders seeking to make systemic improvements had to play to his emotions & anticipated negative responses to questions of benefit increases or company wide trainings. Instead, they often attempting to avoid, reframe, or delay the conversations at all while excluding DEI representatives participation. Employees had no meaningful means of objecting to being blatantly, intentionally insulted by him in meetings or strategically pivoted & overworked while being blamed for delays.
The problem extended beyond the CEO. Common symptoms of white fragility, toxic masculinity, & implicit biases disenfranchising marginalized workers were common among staff who had been with the company the longest, many of them executives or upper leadership. The more that cultural power was being actualized through the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion collective, the more the old guard ego’s scorned the progress developing around them. Their perceptions of a quaint, family Linode were challenged by the ugly realities shared by their coworkers that were finally finding a collective voice.
As equity developed as a valued focus of cultural developments at Linode, suddenly the structures that had been formed to encourage autonomy, exploration, & growth were suddenly being reworked by leadership to cement hierarchies. Departments were targeted for employees to be pushed out so they could be restructured without room for the repeated risk complaints that had been raised. Public praise for advocacy or organizing efforts turned into private chastisements, documentation negligence, & disenfranchisement of previously provided opportunities to do the work even when performances were exceptional.
Our own journey ended with this drastic change of tune about how employees would be treated & supported at Linode. In the spring We had been issued time away from work & access to quality mental health support services after a traumatic event left us injured, traumatized, & clinically depressed. A mere six months later, a traumatic event with the then Director of Human Resources clinically worsened Our depression. Suddenly Our mental health issues were simply that — Our issue to figure out on Our own despite being transparent with Our leadership about the Director’s impact. When We were issued a final warning for failure to call out on days we woke in a fit from nightmares after the start of Our shift, We informed them that since We had no control over this aspect of our symptoms that they were effectively firing Us in advance. It was then that we were informed for the first time that Our depression was likely to be eligible for reasonable accommodation under the ADA. No leniency would be offered in the meantime. Our prediction was true, & We were fired the same day We brought in the paperwork for the accommodation.
Linode claims to care about its employees but since Linode really means the capitalist, toxic CEO along with the folks who align with him enough to be permitted to remain in positions of authority, they actually don’t. It doesn’t matter that it was small, that they don’t have any shareholders, that they offer some helpful perks. They continue to fail, harm & oppress their employees, as profit driven companies always do.
If your organization doesn’t have someone whose job it is to make your ability to thrive there a meaningful reality, you’re being failed. If they have someone in that position with no relationship to the employees on a personal level, you’re being failed. If the work that they’re doing is primarily focused on bringing people into your organization, not caring for the people existing in your organization, you’re being failed. We haven’t seen one profit driven, privately owned company yet that isn’t failing. And the truth is the reason that they are all failing, is because pursuing profit means capitalism succeeds. When capitalism succeeds, people lose.
Hope lies, as always, with the people who care about one another more than the status quo. Without the systems they exist in sharing & acting in accordance with collective needs to thrive, people’s environments will always continue to fail them. Linode fails it’s employees, but they haven’t yet failed one another. Many Linodians deeply care about what meaningful, tangible ways they could provide real life support to the folks around them who don’t share their privileges. They may not know everything the folks around them are going through, but many of them invest themselves in advocating for one another & being the best coworkers they can learn to be. They raise one another up, advocate for those are not at the table, encourage resiliency & solidarity among one another. They can work together to grow. The same things cannot be said of it’s Leaders.
So to the people we worked alongside, We have not left you. We are with you in spirit, in solidarity, and on Signal whenever you need advocating, or a place to talk about your frustrations & oppressions. We call on you to remain united, to take the risks of talking to one another honestly, to documenting your personal struggles to legitimize your collective experiences as systemic. As we have seen that collaboration is unsuccessful, unionizing offers another path to thriving professionally as well as personally. You are far from alone in fighting for what you deserve instead of what you are being given.
If discussing unchecked power consolidations, reinforcements of toxic, unhealthy cultural conditions holding positions of authority, & a failure to invest in the resources that would prove most effective in bringing employee thriving to fruition reminded you of your work place, gave you feelings of indignation about capitalism with a side of hopelessness in the pit of your stomach, or made you question how someone in your position could possibly manage to make any meaningful systemic difference, We have some hope to offer you. Please connect with Us.
We’re happy to help get us all #FreeToThrive.
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Photo by Jean van der Meulen from Pexels