Photo by David Bartus.
Track 3
On their new album, Everything is Love, The Carters have a track about being a boss. It’s called “Boss” and it’s worth a listen. There’s a couple of lines in the second verse:
Over here we measure success by how many people successful next to you
Here we say you broke if everybody else broke except for you
It’s been about 2 years since we started writing the co-pour, 18 months since we told our CEOs we were leaving to build raw signal group. This week we started demolition and built out on our own space. We’re so excited to show it to you all when it’s done – because over here we measure success by how many people successful next to you.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s Reading
Inside The Culture of Sexism at Riot Games
This is 8000 words about a company I don’t know particularly well and yet, there’s so much here that could have been written about many of the companies where I’ve worked. There’s the bad behavior, the toxic hyper-aggressive culture, the yelling to be heard, and the faux meritocracy.
Tucked about two-thirds of the way through the piece is this:
“When it comes to my growth, development and advancement, the reason why I am not advancing has been explicitly told to me,” she said. “I tend to be very direct. I tend to give open feedback. I tend to challenge other Rioters. Those are Riot’s on-paper values, but the way it translates culturally is that, often, important stakeholders, senior peers or my peers will feel that I am too direct.” She said her manager has told her she’s too emotional.
Modern companies love to report corporate values from an idealized place. We watched Simon Sinek’s TED talk. We read the think pieces about millennials need to connect their work to a deeper purpose. And so we say things that we wish were true about our companies, things that sound good on paper.
Unsure of whether your corporate values are reflective of the organization’s culture? Here’s a quick test. Ask yourself – What behavior will get you promoted? What will get you fired? And if your list includes unflattering bullets like “look like the founders” or “yell the loudest in meetings” – that’s where there’s work to do.
What Johnathan’s Reading
Ninja explains his choice not to stream with female gamers
Twitch streamers aren’t really our standard fare, but this cop-out is something I see a lot. Men in positions of power use this argument, and want it to look like gallantry. Like, “rather than risk the appearance of impropriety, I’ll just avoid the situation altogether.”
This wasn’t gallant when Mike Pence did it and it isn’t a good idea for you, either. It’s the privilege of being able to take your ball and go home. You avoid any imagined rumours about your own actions, maybe, but in the process you sabotage your colleague by hoarding power in spaces she can no longer access. That’s evil, please don’t be evil.
If you genuinely feel like you don’t know how to be around women without harassing or belittling them, work on that. I mean it, I’m not being glib. Men get taught terrible things about women, but you can grow and unlearn that stuff. Find a therapist, or a group, and get to work.
What Johnathan’s Watching
Saadia Muzaffar’s talk at OpenText’s Women in Tech summit is very good. 200 year perspective is something we’ve been talking about in our living room ever since.
