Hypocricy of an "inclusive" liberal minded team regarding debilitating migraines.
My friend is a developer at FAANG (not Amazon). Almost half of her team are liberal minded women, which was one of the reasons she liked the team in the first place. The entire team is constantly participating in diversity events, doing talks for BHM and talking about LGBT and women in tech. They seemed really supportive of her (being a self-taught woman engineer who made it to multiple FAANG). Unfortunately she suffers from migraines that are triggered by various factors but usually working long hours, crunching and not getting enough rest. She is taking prescription pills but refuses to identify as having a disability since they are manageable most of the time. I was surprised when she told me how this group who constantly talks of support for disadvantaged social groups has almost no compassion towards her. Examples of situations: 1. She pair programmed with a person on another team to deliver their away work faster. It took longer than expected and they stayed up until 11 PM. She sensed a migraine coming and said would be stopping for the day. Next day she had a "coffee chat" with her manager about dropping abruptly because of "being tired". 2. After working late deploying a change she underslept and had a migraine next morning. She emailed her team that she would skip morning meetings. 40 minutes later she was pinged on the chat whether ahe could do a quick code review. 3. She had a migraine midday and said she wont be able to finish some work. A team member literally said "sure, take your time, lets sync in an hour". After an hour she messaged that her migraine was still there and didn't finish the task. In next days standup the entire team said they were all blcoked on her and that this shouldn't happen again. I have to add here that migraines literally make her cry and sometimes go to E.R. The reason I'm posting this is just today she was asked why she didn't attend a BHM talk when all her team did, and when she said she had a migraine she was told it was a "good excuse". #diversity #hipocricy
I have a chronic migraine Dx and the issue mostly is that people donāt understand that migraines are a neurological condition. Most people think migraines are just any old headache that people get. They donāt understand that it is debilitating and itās not the migraine sufferer being dramatic. We literally lose vision sometimes or itās so blurred that you canāt even read. The brain stem migraines are just lovely, youāre fully disoriented. People jus donāt get it that migraines are neurological. I am on seizure meds (I donāt have seizures) which improves my quality of life. I never chose to disclose it as a disability because of this. The industry doesnāt actually give a shit, they do the bare minimum because they are forced to under ADA.
I feel sorry for her š
If sheās hiding her condition from management and using generic excuses for missing work, itās going to be pretty hard for the rest of the team to understand whatās going on. Sounds like she needs to have a chat with her manager about accommodations.
She is not hiding it. She told everyone she is having migraines the first time it happened. In her previous job with normal WLB she had maybe one per month according to her.
Oh okay it sounded like you said she didnāt want to identify with it.
Virtue signaling is just another way of making a career. Donāt think it has much to do with real compassion.
Sounds like a shitty team and has little to do with this weird diversity/women are bad angle you are trying to force. Id be pissed if I was pairing till 11 and then someone dropped with little reason or thanks. Also if she is picking up blocking items knowing she cant complete also sort of her bad. Like work with your team and your situation
From my personal experience, some of the least compassionate/empathetic/ and general "niceness" people I know are also the most "woke", and "progressive" I know.
Thats the reality. Most of these woke liberal people are nothing but egotistical virtue signallers. In reality they have no compassion for others and just want handouts by being victims
people who support this diversity and inclusion thing is to use it and secure job / go forward in their career.. not to help others.. in the end all humans are the same
This. DEI initiatives are just used by those liberal women to go up in their careers. Their empathy for fellow human beings is the same as others.