This guy recently had a disagreement with his girlfriend because he thinks she’s holding herself back in her career. But she says she’s being discriminated against at work, but he doesn’t see it. Here is the full story.
They Work in the Tech Industry
OP and his girlfriend have worked in the tech industry for five years, but they’ve had vastly different experiences.
For one thing, OP has been with the same company the whole time, while his girlfriend has hopped around to three different jobs.
For another thing, OP has been promoted multiple times and now holds a senior position with his company. His girlfriend, meanwhile, has managed to land just one promotion.
She’s Had Limited Opportunities
She says that lack of advancement is one of the big reasons she’s moved around so much. Despite the promotion and moving to new companies, she’s still in a junior position.
His girlfriend also complains to OP all the time about how unfair her companies have been to her. She says they don’t even give her a chance to try for a promotion and keep her locked down to menial work.
Even though she carried a 4.0 grade point average all the way through college, her bosses only invited her to meetings to take notes. They never want her actually to participate.
She Is Treated Like an Inferior
Things got so bad at one of her companies that she and another female employee lodged a complaint with HR about a co-worker being rude to them in meetings. After an internal review, led by another woman, HR said there were grounds for their complaint.
More recently, OP’s girlfriend had her annual performance review and was pushing for a promotion. But her boss shot her down again, telling her she needed to take on more challenges if she wanted to land a higher position with the company.
She complained to OP that she always tries to take on more challenging work, but her boss hands them to other people instead.
She’s Looking for Someone to Blame
For the most part, OP’s girlfriend believes that all of these slights are the result of rampant sexism in tech fields. OP agrees there is sexism in tech, but he thinks his girlfriend mostly makes excuses and looks for someone to blame for her lack of progress.
OP has pointed out to his girlfriend that her math and an electronic engineering degree is not as directly related to the modern tech world as his degree is.
He also suggested that maybe she should follow her boss’s advice and push harder to get involved in more challenging and high-profile projects. But that just made her mad that he wasn’t standing behind her.
He Couldn’t Agree With Her
OP wanted to take her side, but he didn’t agree with everything she was saying or her approach to her career. He didn’t think it was fair for her to expect him to support him blindly.
After reading through some of the initial Reddit comments, though, OP had at least a partial change of heart. He thinks he may have underplayed how much sexism there is in the workforce in years past.
So he’s trying to be more supportive of his girlfriend moving forward, even encouraging her to start looking for a different job again.
For the most part, Redditors seem to think OP was off base to start with since he’s not a woman working in a tech field.
He Was Way Out of Line
They say his girlfriend’s company has no business asking her only to take notes in meetings when she has such hefty academic credentials.
All in all, the message from commenters is that OP clearly has no idea just how rampant sexism is in the tech fields.
So, what do you think? Was OP as off-base as the Redditors say? Or does he have any valid points?
And is there any chance for him to redeem himself with his girlfriend?
The post Her Husband Told Her Failure to Excel in Her Career Was Her Fault Rather Than the Blatant Sexism in the Tech Industry first appeared on Wealthy Living
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Source: Reddit