2024 · originally posted on LinkedIn
It was 2016. After a really hot start in a new technical support role, I was feeling really proud of my performance. All of my quantitative metrics were strong, and I took a lot of pride in how things were going, settling into the team and the platform.
Something didn't feel quite right though, and I decided to try my hand at testing a hypothesis: was my competence, at least in part, based on privilege? I had spotted some curious trends based on the metrics from my teammates. Thankfully, this was fairly easy to execute on, as the lion's share of my work was email and chat-based at the time.
Audacious a risk as this was, I decided, initially, not to mention anything to my superiors, to try and control as many variables as possible in my N=1 experiment. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I adopted a corporate pseudonym and changed absolutely nothing else about my approach, effort, or demeanour with my work.
It was shocking. My escalations to my lead and department head skyrocketed. Client pushback on basic factual inquiries, ones supported by our own help docs, soared. My competence was put into question far more often. I was only soliciting about one third the number of smiley faces and shout-outs. People were far pushier and showed signs of contempt and frustration in chats. My CSAT dropped by nearly ten points.
All the while, I was more competent with the platform than I had ever been. In the prime of my twenties, I was cranking out tickets at 115 words per minute. I'd go on to receive two promotions in the subsequent twelve months due in large part to this intensity and hustle. And yet, during this experiment, every ounce of effort I was pouring in had significantly lower yield.
Erin Brooke worked every bit as hard as Aaron Brook did. Years later, I still reflect on what her experience taught me about the state of our world.