I reached out to Empower Work because I’d hit a breaking point. I’d been dealing with a bunch of issues in my workplace for over a year including a demeaning, bullying manager. I took every action I could think of to try to change things for the better, but nothing helped.
Pregnant and unsure how that would impact my job search, I decided to stick it out. But when I returned from unpaid leave, it was worse.
Read More
You got your first tech job at a hot start up, or scored that internship at a big tech company. Congrats!! You’re probably feeling excited, proud, and maybe a little bit nervous, anxious, or scared. That’s totally normal.
Starting a career in a new industry can be hard, especially the tech industry where the rules seem to be different from other conventional companies and careers. These experiences can be even more isolating if you feel like you don’t look, feel, or think like everyone else.
Read More
Take this quiz from Empower Work to find out if your job aligns with your values, and how to connect with a trained peer counselor to handle any work issues that might arise.
Read More
Olivia Bland went through a mentally and emotionally exhausting, not to mention likely manipulative and abusive, interview where the CEO “tore [her] and [her] writing to shreds” and caused her to “cry at the bus stop,” only to receive notification the next day that she actually got the job.
Almost everyone has had bad interview. Sometimes it could be regret about the way you answered a particular question, or perhaps you felt a little unprepared or nervous. Other times it could feel like something deeper was off, signaling a misalignment in values, expectations, or something else.
Here are some strategies on what to do if you’ve had a bad interview.
Read More
Ever felt uneasy about a project at work? Something that didn’t sit well with you? You’re not alone. Competing pressures and incentives in the workplace can cause good people to do ethically questionable things. Worried you might be in that boat? We’re here to help with ethical issues in the workplace.
Read More
Imposter Syndrome is the feeling that you haven’t earned your success, you simply got lucky, and you’re a fraud or “imposter” around people who actually earned it and know what they’re doing. It makes one feel that they do not have the skills or expertise to hold their current job, but instead made it there “by chance;” they think if anyone found out how little they know about their job, they’d be fired immediately. Imposter Syndrome can cause people to doubt themselves and their ideas at work. This can lead people to avoid sharing their work, leading initiatives, or pursuing challenging tasks for fear of being discovered as an “imposter.”
Read More
Gaslighting is a manipulation strategy that makes someone question their self-worth and sanity. The term is derived from the 1930s play Gas Light, in which a husband makes his wife doubt her perception by manipulating the gas light but claiming to see nothing out of the ordinary himself. In a work environment, gaslighting can make someone feel incompetent or unimportant, like they can’t do anything right. They can feel like they don’t understand what’s going on around them or what’s expected of them. Gaslighting can come from a variety of people—a power-hungry manager, a competitive coworker, or a condescending client.
Read More
Microaggressions are harmful small, everyday phrases or actions that are targeted at a person based on their membership in a marginalized group. These actions are often not explicitly about someone’s identity, but implicitly insult and other someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation or disability status. At work, they can make people feel alienated, unsupported, vulnerable, disrespected, uncomfortable, and hurt. Microaggressions often reinforce a message to people from underrepresented groups of, “You are not one of us. You do not belong.”
Read More
Shannon Lubetich talks about committing microaggression, an action that does not necessarily reflect malicious intent but can nevertheless inflict insult or injury, typically to members of marginalized groups and often related to someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation or disability status. They repeatedly send a message to people from underrepresented groups of, “You are not one of us. You do not belong.”
Read about strategies for if you experience a microaggression in the workplace, witness a microaggression, or even commit a microaggression yourself.
Read More
Ethical questions within workplaces are arising more frequently in the public dialogue. Ethical issues certainly aren’t exclusive to tech. They happen across every industry and field, from banking to nonprofit to healthcare. Most of these don’t make headlines, but can affect our day-to-day experience at work--and our careers. We can’t just switch off our personal values when we step into the office. As Yale professor Daylian Cain explains, “work is often the place where we have the most societal impact; if you can’t bring your ethical values to work, where can you bring them?”
Read More