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- DINT 77 - TikTok Workers Sue Firm for Racial Discrimination and Retaliation
DINT 77 - TikTok Workers Sue Firm for Racial Discrimination and Retaliation
PLUS: Ways I create an oasis of peace as I report on Big Tech.
Lisa D. Sparks
September 22, 2023
Cisco comes through with some big news after announcing the largest M&A of the year so far. Plus TikTok adds more controversy to its brand by receiving two credible allegations of racial discrimination in the workplace. It’s tough to report on these kinds of stories so I included a few items in my self-care toolkit. 💝
Friday Feature
TikTok Workers ⚖️ Sue Firm for Racial Discrimination and Retaliation
Workers hired during the pandemic faced isolation at TikTok from 2020 to 2022, alleges a potential class action lawsuit accusing TikTok of discrimination and retaliation for reporting said racism to the firm’s human resources department.
From ‘exceeding expectations’ to 😡‘angry black man’ in one year
Joël Carter, based in Austin, TX, began working in TikTok’s ad policy group in 2021. He was the only Black person on the 80-member team. Carter experienced:
Being severely underpaid in comparison to colleagues in his same role and with similar experience
Accusations of slamming doors in anger (in a building with only hydraulic doors)
“Exceeds expectations” performance reviews in 2022 and “tense and angry” in his 2023 review after he filed complaints with human resources about mistreatment and lack of pay equity.
Carter came to realize he was being portrayed as a problem by managers who created a negative narrative about him whenever his name came up.
Mental health consequences, isolation 😔
In CNN’s coverage of the lawsuit, the media firm revealed the mental and emotional toll false narratives have on Black employees in hostile, toxic workplaces.
Carter told CNN that he felt his managers were trying “to establish this narrative of me about being the ‘angry Black man.’” Carter grew emotional as he talked to CNN about the pain and “the historic significance of using that kind of inflammatory language, especially when it’s unfounded.”
Carter reported feelings of hopelessness and helplessness since his reasonable, calm requests were being portrayed as aggressions. Sadly, Carter wasn’t alone in experiencing this treatment.
From ‘Black creators influence mainstream culture’ to Black employees are ‘unsafe, unsupported or suppressed’
Inspired by TikTok’s “message to our Black community” just weeks after the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd, Nnete Matima decided to apply for work at the firm.
The sentiments in the blog post, Matima soon discovered, did not extend to the firm’s Black employees.
First, to our Black community: We want you to know that we hear you and we care about your experiences on TikTok.
When she was onboarding, she noticed her non-Black peers getting time to absorb sales training materials. She had to begin work almost immediately while taking onboarding classes at night and on weekends.
Matina reported being called a “black snake” by her direct supervisor and that the Vice President of her sales division said a “Black Snake” was the spirit animal he associated her with.
The proximity between the animal and the African American subject, which points back to the chattel (etymologically affiliated with cattle) status of the slave in America, carries modern ramifications that are increasingly being addressed in scholarships and publications.
“This view of Black people as animals, essentially, is more than just a mean name to call someone. It has had violent, history altering, culture destroying effects upon people of the Africa diaspora, effects still viewed today …”
Unrealistic expectations
After completing the onboarding stage, Matima was then put into full-time work as a business development representative, also known as a BDR in the tech world. A BDR finds potential customers and evaluates them as viable sales leads for other salespeople in the organization. It is difficult work which, if done well, can lead to high paying sales roles with equity, base pay, and commissions.
Matima details how she was assigned unrealistic expectations that weren’t put on non-Black peers.
More work than peers. Matima had to bring in 75% of her group´s objectives and key results, also known as OKRs in tech. It´s a fancy acronym for goals and performance metrics. Collectively her peers were responsible for the other 25% of the OKR.
Extra team training responsibilities. She also had to train the other people in her recruitment class. She was the only Black person on her 40-person team.
Set up for failure. Matima details how she was spoken to in a demeaning tone, and she was given several task with little to no instruction on best practices and company norms.
After reporting the mistreatment to human resources, Matima experienced more “toxicity and racism” in her department.
Related Coverage
Matima was then:
denied a promotion
prevented from finding employment in other parts of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and
after an investigation, the human resources department decided there had been no discrimination. ⁉️🤔
👎🏽 One month later, that who called her a black snake was promoted to vice president of the division.
The full filing goes into detail about the discrimination Carter and Matima faced during their time at TikTok. Matima-Carter v. TikTok Charge Packet (pdf) 📄.
Both were fired in August. Their attorneys filed this EEOC complaint just three days ago on September 20. The filing is in preparation for what Carter and Matima’s attorneys say could develop into a class action lawsuit including other current and former TikTok employees who were mistreated / discriminated against at the firm.
Editor’s note
It is heartbreaking to report on this topic. I have experienced all of these things in my career. It hurts to see it still happening to those who look like me. I don´t understand this. I wish there was some form of fairness, protection, or retribution for us that would stop this blatant mistreatment.
I´ve done my best to summarize the case for you. But the detailed filing to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) shows a litany of mistreatment that follows a pattern I and many in the tech industry have experienced in our careers.
Take care of yourselves out there.
A few ways I deal with the stress of reliving the discrimination I experienced in the tech industry:
Prayer: I follow Christ as best I can. He often went to quiet places to talk to and listen to God. Doing the same helps to give me strength. It doesn’t give me answers, though, and that can be hard.
Stretching: If you saw me as I stretched you´d probably say I was doing yoga. You´d be mistaken. I do something called prayer stretching that matches physical movement with Bible scriptures. It´s a wonderful release and refocuses me on what I can and cannot control.
Mindfulness: I often use an app to help me grow stronger in accepting and processing negative memories, separating them from me while still acknowledging that I was mistreated but it´s over now and I have good things in my life now and will experience good things in the future.
It may seem overly simplistic but it´s authentic. It´s real life. And it is keeping me alive as I work to expose the side of the tech industry very few people outside of it get to see.
What’s Happening in Tech
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