Spacious felt like a very noninclusive workplace to me. I often felt like "the only one" in a room and not only had to deal with microaggressions, but be asked by the CEO and other coworkers and higher ups to explain why I was uncomfortable because they did not understand why something might be hurtful, racist, or offensive to someone else. In response to my concerns, the CEO got really wrapped up about not wanting to make any offending parties feel uncomfortable about their own ignorance. What about the loads of emotional labor, trauma, and discomfort that other people (usually POC and other folks with less power and privilege) faced all the time? It didn't seem like anyone cared about that. A majority of the decision-makers in the company was made up of higher management (c-suite, VPs, etc.) who would only consult each other to make really biased decisions about company culture, such as evaluate whether something was considered harassment (from a member or from another coworker) or not. It's a small company, so I guess it's easy to have a myopic viewpoint -- when I would suggest that the workplace felt cliquey, folks would defend it as solidarity and "being in it together" in terms of the startup grind. My take is that the folks on the inside couldn't understand what it felt like to be outside of it because of a complete lack of diversity. There just isn't enough representation in the room. I think the higher ups who said they were working on diversity also did not understand intersectionality and believed they were being plenty diverse because there were women in the room. This is the kind of workplace where folks referenced Jordan Peterson unironically, where folks believed in reverse racism, where I was tokenized over and over again, where the HR consultant was the most unsafe person to report anything to -- a lot of all-talk-no-walkers. I hope it changes, but I wanted to write this to share my experience (as a woman of color) with other URMS and POCs.
