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Feb 27, 2023Liked by Rachel Katz

Thank you for articulating what I’ve been struggling to explain to myself and to others - why did I, and many other women, leave strong and growing careers in male-dominated fields? While we stayed, why did we get so physically and mentally sick? And what was it that finally helped us wake up to the unreality of the game we were playing and our real role in it?

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Totally, thanks for chiming in, Sarah. It took me a really long time to write this essay, I think I did it over two years. The reason is that it is just so dang hard to articulate why I couldn't go on.

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This would have been in Sheryl Sandberg's books if they weren't protecting so many reputations and shameful truths. Thanks for writing.

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Sigh. I finally read Leaning In this year after hating on it for many years without reading it (bad form, bad form.) Yeah...I mean I fundamentally disagree with her on a lot of things, but the most basic and important disagreement is that her position takes the current system and what that system values as a given, and provides advice about how to succeed within it. Given everything I wrote in this essay and so much more, I just don't think that approach will ever be a winning one for women. Ultimately, we need to engage in the larger project of changing what the system values.

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Feb 26, 2023Liked by Rachel Katz

Love your bravery Rae.

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Thanks, Erno <3

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Oh wow, I am enraged, frustrated, shocked, horrified, infuriated, sad, and feeling connected simultaneously.

"Like, for example, if you were going to try and get me to leave my wife, you would really, really have to convince me." As someone who has worked as a software engineer in the Bay Area for over 10 years, comments like this should not surprise me. Yet, here we are with me going - WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! as I read about your experience.

"so privileged and so miserable" - I HEAR YOU!!

I keep going back and forth between wanting out and staying to fight the patriarchy. It was more manageable in my 20s. In my early 30s, I am burnt out with little energy to deal with it. Although I might steal your idea and respond with an update on my menstrual cycle next time someone asks me to tell them something wild about myself, LOL.

Again, thank you for sharing your experience with such beautiful words. I know it is not easy. OH, and for what it's worth, "women like you" is what this misogynist industry needs. So, thank you!!

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I have never been to Silicon Valley but I know deeply that every word you wrote is true. Those men, those behaviours continue to exist everywhere even while we pretend that they don’t. It is a grand lie and a delusion to think otherwise.

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