And she just kept pushing me until I finally
started crying and then she was like, "Look at me, Chloe. Look into my eyes,
you are incredibly immature. You are burning this bridge. You say that this job
isn't for you because you're a coward." Yeah! I think I should leave! Heyo! It is Couch Time with Chlo! If you're new here, welcome! My name is Chloe
Shih and I am a product lead at Discord. Previously, I was at TikTok, Facebook/Meta, Google. I studied IOR at Colombia and Management
Engineering at the Claremont colleges. Today, we are doing a *brutally*
honest career Q&A - inspired by Sarah Pan, who is a Google software engineer. She
recently did this on her channel and I thought the format was so intimate.
Loved it. Shout out to her! So I posted on my Instagram and LinkedIn what career questions you'll have for me because I know that on the internet we always showcase the best parts of our lives especially in career. It's always the highlights, the milestones, everything! And I've done a fair share of my own LinkedIn stalking. I felt really depressed about my own journey but now that I am on the other side - it is still not a walk in the park. This sh*t's hard and I'm here to talk about it. And to commemorate Women's History Month, I want to sit down and share with you my unfiltered stories of what my journey was like being an Asian American woman in tech and other factors that might have helped me back. When I posted this on my socials, I thought I was gonna get some like basic career questions like, "How much do you make?"
and "How did you get this job?" So I'm very surprised because I got a lot of hard-hitting questions and so let's just dive right into them. The first question is do you ever doubt
your career path or role? This is going to be a big topic. Well, if you ever looked at my career trajectory, you know that it is actually a hot mess! Like I was all over the place. I started out doing pre-med. I switched over to engineering but I thought that my strengths were in people so I applied for a People Operations job at Google. It turned out that it was like the
most bottom-rung job I could get. I had so many engineers disrespecting
me and then I left to do business development and that was the best and worst experiences I've ever had. I will get to it but I got majorly harassed by my managers. And then I switched to product development and that wasn't even product management. And that was like a whole other thing
and now I am finally in product management. So the time that I felt the most confused
about my career was like when I didn't want to be in partnerships anymore and I remember the very moment that I finally told my manager this. It was after an axe throwing team bonding
and I wanted to leave slightly early, not even like super early, but slightly.
I said, "Hey I'm gonna head out," and she's like "What? Woah woah
woah. Where are you going?" I said, "I'm gonna go home. I
need to rest. I have something else to do," She's like "Well, I'm still here, you can't go," I'm like okay and then she's like, "Okay fine! Let me walk you out," We walk out, I'm holding all my stuff. It is freezing cold and it's super foggy and I'm outside of my car and she's like, "What's going on? I know something's going on. Tell me, talk to me," and I said, "I'm just not ready to talk about anything. I'm just really tired," I kid you not, it was 30 minutes of back and forth of me saying I'm not ready to talk about things and she just kept pushing me until I finally started crying and I was like looking down at the floor shaking and then she was like, "Look at me, Chloe. Look into my eyes," and I was just like And I got all my courage to look at her.
I finally said that partnerships isn't for me. If success looks like these guys, who are you
know, really out there, I- I can't be that person. I just would rather stay more internal to
the company and I was like maybe I should go back to my roots. Maybe I should like, do
data. And then she looked at me and she said, "No, Chloe. You're being a coward right now and
you're trying to run away from your problems," And I just could not process that much
confusion in my career. So yeah, it was really hard to figure out my career path until
now. I feel like that was a really long answer. Next question, how do you get yourself heard in a
male-dominated tech industry? This one's hard. I really feel this one because I remember working
on a team of 10 dudes who were 5 to 20 years, my senior. And the way that we worked our
meetings was we went with whoever was the last loudest voice. So people were literally yelling
and shouting on top of each other and it was terrifying for me. So terrifying that my
manager - she gave me a bell to ring in the meeting should I ever have something to say.
And I was so humiliated that the company put me on assertiveness training so that I can speak up.
Honestly, I don't think there is one easy solution to this. I did a lot of things. I read a bunch of
self-help leadership books, which I will list here in this space. Reading these helped me build my
framework of thinking through problems. It helped me to have the vocabulary to put in my arsenal of
words to use when I am in this situation. And it just helped me spot patterns in the workplace too.
I think if I had to answer it would be number one building rapport with the team and number two
calling people out when you know that they're BSing you. I think something that I'm saying more
when people aren't being very clear is I just say, "What do you mean by that? Can you clarify?" and
if someone mansplains to me, I think I try my best to cut them short and just like, "No, no, I get
that." That's it. Just like try to get to the point of the question. But then for the people
who really just love hearing themselves talk, I don't know. I smile. I move on and I hope I
never talk to them again like I don't. I heard a story of a woman's UTO who was asked, "What
was the hardest part about work?" and she said it was coming into work and having to put on a
suit of armor every single day. It just feels like you're going to a battlefield and it's exhausting.
I don't think I'm making working in tech sound very fun for the ladies but I assure you there
are very good teams out there and you just need to find the right one for you. If you're looking for
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Now let's get back to the spicy questions. Okay, third question. What's the most painful
moment in your career and how did you overcome it? This one's a core memory and it is actually a very
long story. When I was working at the startup, I was the highest performer by a landslide. My
projects alone single-handedly contributed to like 30 to 40% of the top line metrics. After two
years of working there, being the most tenured person and the person with the highest impact,
I lost promotion to a white guy who joined six months ago - whose impact was less than one
percent of our metrics all because the VP favored him. Because they liked sports? I don't
know! And I actually alluded a little bit to this in one of my TikToks. My manager told me that she
would not promote me because I was just about to go to a one month long vacation that I had saved
up in the last two years not having taken any days off. After I lost promotion and right before I was
gonna go to my vacation, she and the VP of BD and the VP of people told me I couldn't go anymore
because I was mission-critical to this brand new strategy that I needed to stay and that
was a whole other battle. Eventually, I cried to the CEO and he was like, "Yeah, you
should definitely go get some headspace and come back," I ended up taking two weeks off and when
I came back from Taiwan, it became clear that I really wanted to go into product. When I finally
went to my manager to talk about it, she was like, "So what did the VP of people say?" and I said,
"Well, there's no head count right now but in the meantime we wait until something to open up.
Overall, people are very supportive," She was like, "But what are you gonna do when there's no
head count?" and I said, "I'd work on this team," and she was like, "No you're not. I don't want to
be working with someone who's trying to leave this current team right now. That is so unprofessional.
You are incredibly immature. You are burning this bridge. I cannot believe you would do something
like this. And you know what, Chloe? You say that this job isn't for you because you're a coward.
You only want to do things if you know you're going to succeed and that's the type of person
you are," I just said a lot of other things too. I apologized profusely. I was like, "I'm so sorry.
I didn't mean to come off this way. My intentions are to make this work out for both teams and
to help grow the company. I know this is a hard transition where things are up in the air but what
would you like me to focus on during this time?" and she's like, "Wait a minute. Are you telling me
to tell you what to do because you don't know what to do?" And then, she hung up on me. And I'm glad
that that conversation happened because it helped me move on. I decided that - Yeah! I think I
should leave! That was so unhealthy so then after three months, I left and I never want to go
through something like that ever again. And I'm still recovering from that to this day. Oh, that
was a lot. I am tired. We still have so much more. Okay number four, Hello Mayuko! What's the best
way that co-workers allies and leaders can show up for you right now? One time, my team was doing a
bunch of marketing deals with game developers and publishers. And I was the one to get my first
two agreements signed and done and I remember at the beginning of this meeting where you know
there's like always that five minutes of awkward "Hey, let's talk about anything!" and someone
asked me, "Chloe, how did you get your first two deals done? I couldn't even get any movement on
mine!" and I was about to answer this but someone else chimed in and was like, "Oh, I know how she
got her deals done. I don't know if anyone noticed but she's a young, attractive lady working in
the games industry and I'm sure who can say no to that? Am I right, guys? And it was like silent
for 10 seconds. I was so shocked because I was so young. I didn't know what to say and then finally
someone was like, "Dude, that was so weird," and they broke the silence. I felt really
supported by that other coworker, who chimed in. Even though it wasn't an ideal situation. I
think everyone was just kind of shocked. Another situation was- actually happened pretty recently.
I was talking during a meeting and this guy just like cuts me- just cuts in and says a whole bunch
of stuff and after his spiel, some other guy came in was like, "Oh Chloe, you're in the middle of
saying something," and of course, that calls the guy who cut me off out. And then it brings me into
the picture and I'm like, "Oh yeah, thanks!" So I think as a teammate and as an ally, you can really
have the power to call someone out when someone is exhibiting very non-inclusive behavior. Another
thing is give credit where credit is due and don't assume you know who the credit belongs to until
you verify that yourself. For example, I recently had a colleague give me feedback saying that I
don't give enough product insights and he gave me an example. He said that there are these two other
guys who came up with this user insight where users started doing x thing and I was like, "Oh
actually, that's not true because I was the one who told those guys that users are doing x things
in my observations when I was doing user research so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea
that I am not doing my part," Moments like that are really confusing because I don't know why I
have to spend extra effort to convince people that I did the work that I did. And lastly as a leader
or a manager or a confidant, if someone from an underrepresented background comes up to you and
shares a struggle and a challenge and is not able to do so in the most clear way, just listen.
Empathize. Try to ask clarifying questions. Validate the feelings and the pain because those
are very real and just know that she probably has been dealing with this problem by herself for a
long time and finally found the courage to speak up and ask for help. While she may not be in her
best form, she shouldn't be judged by her worst. Only look down on her if you're trying to pick her
up. And when she finally does have the courage to ask, foster that psychological safety to let
her ask in the imperfect way that she may. And also, everyone can just take unconscious
bias training! I think that's that's easy. And that is a wrap! I received a lot of
other great questions - that I couldn't cover because I really wanted to go into
depth with these four questions today. I don't want these things to get pushed under
the rug for no one to hear because they are real stories that happen over and
over again for many people. I know this probably spawns more thoughts. I would
love to hear your thoughts, your experiences, your other questions - that you want me to tackle
in the comments below. Thank you for watching! Thank you to the Unichlos, who have always
been supporting me! I will see you next time!
