I came into Depop bright-eyed and ready to hit the ground running. I joined a phenomenal team, that believe it or not, actually felt like family. My ideas were treasured and my feedback was often implemented internally within my team. I had recently left a toxic work environment and quickly became enthralled with my new work setting.
Within my first month of employment, I had the opportunity to discuss DEI practices throughout the company and the lack of spaces created for Black employees. Because I had only just begun the job, I was taken aback when I soon learned horror stories of my own colleagues who had been at the company much longer than myself. Traumas included a lack of safe spaces, rampant microaggressions, facades created by leadership to champion diversity, and a host of items that would add to my personal growing list as my own time continued at the company.
Upon joining, I had several wonderful bosses. The type of positive leadership you read about and so infrequently come across in the work setting. However, after my first two-three months at the company, we were acquired by Etsy, and I noticed a departure in leadership. In a span of two weeks, I lost my direct leadership and was greeted by many new arrivals. As change began, I found myself handling a total of 14 projects due to decreasing team size. In addition, I found myself handling a rather complex DEI issue – by myself. More specifically, an issue that led to regular harassment and distress as I tried to also address my growing list of projects.
As the weeks went by, more and more team members began to leave. It was clear team morale was low and I began to inch increasingly closer to burnout. Along with what became regular daily and weekly announcements of departures, a new meeting was added to my calendar for a meeting to occur the following day. In the meeting, my team was informed of a team-wide restructure. We would be losing two more members of an already four-person team. Fear began to creep in. After the meeting, in a 1x1 I expressed my own distress which was met by a new proposition. I would be granted the opportunity to take on a “much bigger” role. My previous function on a two-person team focused on our US community, was expanded to cover all programming across the US and UK – by myself. I was informed it was a great opportunity tailored based on the leadership I had shown over the course of my time at the company leading up to this point.
I was naïve in thinking this functional change would lead to a salary change. When I asked about remuneration, it took several weeks before I was told there would be no remuneration for the role because my workload remained the same. Naturally, I created a five-page document to display my value-add and highlight just how different the new role was. When I entered my next 1x1 to discuss the document, I was shocked by the conversation that would ensue.
Prior to the meeting, I had experienced a rather traumatic racial profiling incident. I informed leadership of the incident and upon joining our 1x1 was questioned why my camera had been off for the week, noting, “I wondered if the incident impacted you more than I thought.” I found it rather strange to start the meeting in this manner and should have known it would only continue to go downhill.
After re-focusing the conversation, I asked if leadership had read the document I sent a week prior detailing my value add and past work. I was informed it wasn’t read and leadership had already decided my salary was appropriate. My salary – already below market value, was in no way adequate for the new work I was doing. As I continued to list out my work, I was told “in the nicest way possible, your work doesn’t add value to the company. I could not go to our CEO and let her know how you’ve increased revenue as a result of your DEI work. Correct me if I’m wrong.” Again, I found myself taken aback.
Following this remark, I was told I needed to also reflect on the income I was making out of college as leadership “made significantly less” upon starting their first job. As a Black woman, engaging in a conversation with predominantly white leadership, it became increasingly clear that this wasn’t a space to be candid about my professional needs. I graduated from a top ten university where many of my colleagues make close to six figures after school, my salary came nowhere close. And frankly, I found it inappropriate to discuss the experience of leadership when the meeting was created to discuss my own.
Following this remark, I was told that my pleas for more pay due to my experience handling DEI comms for a situation in which I was regularly harassed for two months, was ultimately a fault of my own as I “needed to have tougher skin”. To be insulted as a Black woman and told I don’t have tough enough skin to deal with literal harassment in the workplace was shocking. At this point, it became harder and harder to navigate the conversation.
Finally, I was informed that I needed to consider the stock I would receive because of the acquisition as a benefit. In many ways, it felt like a nod to stop asking for more and be grateful for what you have, despite a growing workload and decreasing team.
After that meeting, I began to truly question my purpose at the company and the role I occupied on my team. I had already been made aware that I was the most underpaid person on the team, and I was the only Black woman on the team. Safe space was non-existent. I found myself in an environment that continued to be a far cry from the space I was invited into when I began.
Three weeks into the course of my new role, I was informed of my grandfather’s rapidly declining health. I remained transparent with leadership regarding the stress and the increasing workload that was extended to me. It felt like talking to a wall, as I discussed my own distress only to be met with more work week after week. My grandfather soon passed, and there seemed to be no sense of empathy extended by my internal team outside of colleagues that I had grown close to within my personal life. I’m not asking for a hand-out, but an acknowledgment of my own grief and pain would have been nice.
A few weeks after the funeral, my performance review ensued. I received overall high marks with one comment to “contribute more” in meetings. Again, I found myself taken aback. Throughout the majority of my time in the new role, I was following the heels of the conversation with leadership in which I was told my work didn’t have value. Secondly, I was dealing with the emotional strain of dementia on my family – having lost two family members over the course of two years. All notes which my team had been made aware of. Again, it felt like I wasn’t being heard and there was no sense of grace applied for a space in which I was explicitly told the work and ideas I was contributing (predominantly DEI based) were not valuable to the company. To top it off, in the new year, I was expected to go from running four programs per quarter across the US and UK to running 12, simultaneously, again – by myself. Showing a complete disregard for my pleas regarding the severity of the workload I was already extended. Not to mention, a raise that was still seemingly nowhere on the horizon for the amount of work I was to be given.
Ultimately, I wanted Depop to be a space I could thrive. But, it quickly became a space in which I realized marginalized employees were not celebrated, I was being significantly underpaid, and my identity as a Black woman was consistently misunderstood. I was described by leadership as a superstar or a person who doesn’t stay at a company long due to a desire to do more. In reality, a superstar is a person who doesn’t stay at a company long because of the inability to handle criticism and areas of growth. I’m not a superstar, because I did my best to grow while at Depop. However, one can only grow so much in a space that has already shown you are not valuable to the company they are building.
