Everyday I sit in front of my laptop for 8 hours or more, to have discussion on new feature development, coding on new feature, enhancing existing feature and bug fixing. You guessed right, I’m a software developer, the only female developer and the only frontend developer in the team. I’ve been with the same company for 7 years, that is not a short timespan for young working adult in Asia.
I was fairly happy working here: flexible working hour, getting along with colleagues, learning new things through work… It keeps me busy enough and certain sense of purpose to be in the team, so I stay.
However, an uneasy feeling stirred inside me one and a half year ago.
One and a half year ago, my boss announced a promotion of one of my fellow team member to Senior Software Engineer.
I have to admit, I’m not the most exceptional member in the team, never the one that gets “Exceed Expectation” in every performance review; but I am still an achiever, never causing any trouble and meeting expectation of all my tasks. Given the years I spent and with all the new responsibilities I take up after someone left the team, I was confident this is the year I’m getting promotion! The other guy was great too, we both take up a lot of new responsibilities that year and I really thought both of us will get promoted together.
Frustrated, resentful, discouraged, all of these came to me abruptly the moment I read the announcement, yet I also felt guilty that I have all the negative thoughts, and force myself in joining others to congratulate him.
I cried so hard that night, I haven’t cry like that for a long time. In between all the sobbings, I still convinced myself that there must be something the other guy did better than I do, there must be some area that I’m still lacking, that’s why my boss never choose me.
Few days later, in my 1x1 performance review meeting with my boss, I voiced out that I’m slightly disappointed for not being promoted and my impression of him “thinking frontend development is so easy and not as important as backend development”. Of course, I manage to let him justify his action and he challenged me that I can do better than I was that time. Although still feeling treated unfairly, I stay.
Year 2020, the pandemic year, where many companies around the world go out of business or suffer great loss, many people lost their jobs, very fortunately our company did not let any of us go and we did not suffer pay cut.
Then comes the performance review month. Given the situation, I know there isn’t gonna be pay raise company-wide. Feeling disappointed but not frustrated against anyone, I can only call myself unlucky for having such bad timing, I’ve mentally prepared myself to not have any expectation.
I’ve already heard from my colleagues that our boss started having 1x1 review meeting with whoever that went back to office (we still working from home and only go back to office every fortnight), so I’m expecting to have the meeting when it was my turn to go back office. However, for the both days I went back to office, my boss left office early on both occasions, he didn’t call me for a meeting. I have the strangest feeling that my boss is avoiding me.
Days later, I scheduled a meeting with my boss on Teams. Still unable to shake off the feeling of being avoided, that’s the first thing I confronted him in the meeting. To my surprise, he didn’t deny!
Boss: “I had been wondering how to tell you this… As you already know there is no pay raise this year, as our business is impacted by this pandemic like many other companies.”
Me: “Yes I know.”
Boss: “So the thing is, you are being promoted, but there is no pay raise. I understand that a promotion without pay raise is utter bullshit in our culture, correct?”
Me grunted, just to give a response that I heard him.
Boss: “Here’s the thing, there are 2 people under me that get promotion this year. I already submitted both your names to CTO to request for a special pay raise, to see if they can make an exception. I didn’t want to have a meeting with you until I’ve heard from the upper management about this.”
Me: “How long ago was that when you made the request?”
Boss: “It has been weeks. My bad, I’m sorry, I should have follow up on this much earlier. Give me one week, let me talk to my boss about this, ok?”
A week later…
Boss: “This is bad but I must be honest with you. I’ve talk to my boss about the pay raise for both of you because you two are promoted, and they only make exception for Mr.T. ”.
Me: “WHAT? WHY IS THAT?”
Boss: “They say that Mr.T is having a big role change (from senior software developer to a team lead), whereas your job nature remain the same.”
Me: “This is so unfair! Not even a small percentage?”
Boss: “I know, but is best that you hear it from me than from other people.”
Me: “Can’t they have any other method to reward anyone in the organization who is like me, get promoted but not huge enough to get a pay raise? Like a one off cash / voucher reward, as a form of recognition and compensation?”
Boss: “No they don’t do that… I’ve make it a priority myself, that you must get pay raise on the next round of salary review.”
Me: “That’s next year right? So I missed out all the increment for this 12 months, can you all promise that I will get an increment of (X % + Y %) next round? X% being what I supposed to get NOW and Y % is for next year.”
Boss: “It doesn’t work that way…”
Me: “I’ve tried giving alternatives other than increment: one-off reward as recognition, promise to reimburse a certain percentage of what we’ve missed out this year. Yet they chose to give pay raise to certain people and ignore the rest.”
Boss: “So sorry, this year really is not a good year. I should have pushed for your promotion last year, so you won’t miss out the pay raise, but I thought you can do even better so I waited one more year. There is other way to compensate too, let’s say if there is any training you want to go, I will approve…”
At this point I’m hardly listening, I just want to end the call and be alone. A week later, I received the letter of my promotion to Senior Software Engineer from my boss, with email body “Long overdue. Remember to update your title in outlook”.
Fast forward to now, I’m still with the same company unsurprisingly, unable to leave this comfort zone. However, my feeling towards the management, my boss and my team has changed. I often have the flashback of the above conversations, questioning what is the implied message?
What’s the reason my boss postponed my promotion? Is it really because only 1 slot was available, or he simply thinks my achievement isn’t on par with my male coworker?
What’s the reason the management make an exception to another coworker but not me? Is it merely because he has much larger role change and responsibility, or it simply is a decision made by the subconscious bias that male are more capable than female in the workforce?
If this is how I’m being treated behind the scene, I can’t imagine how my treatment will be when I started to have kids, when I will take a lot of time off from work and will not be as effective as before…
Anyway, fingers crossed, hopefully economy is back on track this year and I will see if my boss keep his promise in few months time.
