This job is undoing me

… in the best way possible.

My protective casing of hard-earned cynicism is being rubbed away by all this genuine kindness, cooperation, good culture, and all that jazz. It’s honestly kind of uncomfortable, like molting.

You need to understand – I have this hard-ass candy shell for a reason. My first job in technology was 1996. My first college boyfriend introduced me to BBSing through what we would now call a troll community. I have been “one of the guys”, and “that girl”, and “the writer, whats-her-name”. I have gotten my ass grabbed at work and gotten dirty texts and chats from co-workers and been propositioned in creepy ways at conferences. The technical writer is hired too late and fired early in the startup process, but I love startups. No company has ever previously make me feel like I have valuable things to contribute and they consider themselves lucky to have me.

I thought at first it was perhaps due to the change in my role, this exciting new job title that means I never have to write release notes, but today I realized that it wasn’t that. I was walking with the new person on my team, and trying to download to her what I’ve learned about the company and the things I asked about and can just tell her.

1. You will not get fired because The Internet Hate Machine is angry about something. We know about the internet hate machine and don’t consider them valuable feedback.
2. No one is going to yell at you if you mess up your expense accounting, especially at the beginning. We’re all working from a place of mutual respect and shared interested and assumed good intentions.
3. You are not required to sacrifice quality of life to save company money. Be reasonable, stick to the budget outlines, but it is worth a hotel night to have you bright and functional instead of trying do do a conference after an early morning flight.
4. You have time to learn your job. We’ll be happy as soon as you contribute, but you need time to ramp up and that’s expected and normal.
5. It’s ok to ask questions. No one expects you to know everything, we hired you because we think you have the potential to learn. Very few of us knew about this technology or industry when we started. You don’t have to know it all when you start.
6. Maintaining human relationships with your coworkers and other people in our ecosphere is important, and will be counted as work, not fluff.
7. If something happens at home while you’re on a business trip and you need to leave, it’s ok to just leave. No single event is more important than your outside-of-work life.

How am I supposed to maintain a cheerful cynicism about people who genuinely like working together and also sometimes hanging out at tea parlors with a kid in tow? How is my cool detachment going to go when I get raises and positive feedback without even asking for it? What if it doesn’t feel like high-stakes gambling to be able to bring my whole self to work, even the wacky futurist parts and the parts that can’t code and the parts that are noisy feminist politics? What if “being me” is not high stakes, but table stakes, for everyone?

This job is breaking me because all of that shielding and cynicism were adaptive for other companies, but not actually very useful at this one, and in order to succeed here, I need to take all that armor off and be real, and vulnerable, and let people help me. It’s terrifying, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.