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Workplace etiquette?
JellyJen
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So when I graduated it took me a while to find my first coding job, but I finally got hired! I was super excited - it's a small startup, 6 people total, 3 other coders. I was expecting the usual startup culture - you know, desks made from doors, working out of a rented house, long hours etc, but some things are really starting to get to me. I'm the only woman on the team, and there's a culture of hanging out and drinking and playing games late into the evening and having poolside barbecues and horsing around. It's like there's a party almost every night, and they're heavy drinking, but it's always billed as a work event. There are lots of other people, mostly in the neighborhood tech scene, who come over, but very few other women, and I feel like it's super awkward. I've tried to make excuses, but there's pressure to 'show up to work meetings', and they were certainly clear that there would be meetings and events outside normal work hours. How should I respond to this? I don't want to get fired or offend anyone, but it's really not my scene.
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Just try to complete your tasks during the day and start looking for a new job.
Start-ups are notorious for overworking people for a return of absolutely nothing. I point this out both because it is important to actually get paid and because that is what your party-hard colleagues are competing against.
Make sure you are seeing a real product being built. If you have no idea how your product is going to make money or grab users then run far away. If you don't see meaningful progress towards a product you do understand, then start looking for a new job because that one will be gone soon. Likely with some unpaid paychecks in the process.
Just...uh... Keep your resume up to date.
Reason: JellyRead, JellyJenny
A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors.
JellyJen
Honestly, how feasible is looking for another job? Depending on where you are, coding jobs may be pretty easy to find. That is definitely not what I would consider a healthy or acceptable work culture, and I suspect it may not be realistic to think that you would be able to change it in any way.
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Are there any fellow female devs in the organization, even if not directly on your team? If nothing else you can at least commiserate with them.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
It's unfortunate but I think the others have the right idea: You are unlikely on your own to change the culture there, and frankly it is a huge amount of effort and risk for very little reward. You would be better off in the long run finding another situation.
In the interim, I would defer to women here who have dealt with this kind of situation to see what they think you can do to mitigate or address things until you move on.
1) You should feel comfortable expressing that you just don't want to go to a social event. You don't even have to specify a reason. How they respond to this can serve as a personal litmus test for your working environment. If they disregard your decision or continue to strongly pressure you to attend, then you basically don't want to work there, because if they are going to be dicks about happy hour, then they will likely be dicks about other, more important things as well.
2) Is there an expectation that you will participate in "sales" or "networking" events as part of your job? Or are you just a code monkey and are these purely work social events? If the former, then they might want you to attend just so you can schmooze with potential investors/buyers (a topic which is its own can of worms for women in the startup industry). If it's the latter then I'd refer you back to #1.
3) Finding the right work environment is important. You don't want to be spending your time fighting these kinds of battles, especially as a newer developer. You need to be focusing on learning how to build products, work in teams, and most importantly build your own skills and network. There are definitely people out there who are professionals, and if you do good work with them, they will keep you in mind and refer you for jobs in the future. If this is not the kind of place where you can do that, and you are instead spending all your energy avoiding difficult social situations, then you probably want to move on purely from a professional standpoint.
I think the complication is that (based on my reading) these are being sold as "work events," not "social events."
So the normal responses for a woman to decline a social event probably aren't the same here. It's being presented as the OP not going to "work meetings," which has entirely different connotations. (Regardless of the fact that these seem to pretty clearly be social events.)
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Right. My point was that for advice, like "You don't even have to specify a reason [to not go to a social event with coworkers]" isn't maybe as helpful/applicable to the OP. Like, I'd be really curious what your senior female devs would advise for the problem of "the culture at my work meetings makes me uncomfortable, because they expect me to drink heavily and wear a swimsuit" or whatever.
It sounds super ridiculous having to type that out as a description of a "work meeting," but that's the framing the company is giving the OP.
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Agreed, it sounds pretty ridiculous. =(
The basic gist was "find another job", much like earlier in the thread. I had asked about specific things like providing a good excuse or trying to mitigate the situation somehow, but the surprisingly enough the crux of the advice was, "You have to set standards for yourself, and you have to enforce them, because often you are the only one who will. And it tells you whether or not it's a place where you want to be working."
On that note, she also mentioned the word "regret", which I meant to highlight but forgot to mention. She said that she has never regretted standing up for herself or moving on from a particular job because it wasn't a good fit or due to situations similar to what the OP is finding herself in. She has, however, regretted the situations where she didn't do so.