Here's what happened. I used to be the tech lead of platforms. For months and months, I was left out of meetings and conversations about the direction of platform infrastructure. I repeatedly asked to be included in these meetings. I escalated this.

There were some cases where eng leadership agreed I should've been included, and whoops, so sorry we forgot to include you. But as for being in the meetings about architectural direction, I was denied. Even though I was the tech lead of that team.

Then some team changes happened, and I experienced bullying and being constantly undermined by a male eng manager. Myself and the two other women on my team all left. Again, I raised the issue multiple times, with multiple people.

Within the past month, HR reached out about it even though I never reported it to them. Someone else did. So the idea that my claims are totally unsubstantiated is ridiculous - there was an HR investigation that I didn't even initiate.

After months of crying every day at work and feeling nobody in leadership had my back, I decided I had to leave infrastructure. I joined the data group because my earlier manager was there and he had been v supportive, and I wanted a supportive manager again.

The first two projects I worked on in this group were killed due to office politics that had nothing to do with me.

Then my manager left, and I was to report to a director, who also happened to be a new employee. All of the other principal engineers reported to someone in senior tech leadership, except me. My new manager was a very nice person, but I lost a lot of access and advocacy.

I explicitly asked to be given a manager in eng senior leadership, as all the other principals had. I was told it wasn't a problem, and this request was denied. It felt like a demotion.

I pointed out that the one female principal eng was the only one reporting up to someone more junior. Again, this was disregarded.

Then I had honest conversations with my male peers, namely principal engineers outside of Atlanta. I spoke to principal engineers in Brooklyn, Colorado, North Carolina. Every one of them had higher comp. This includes two men who were promoted to principal after I was.

Fast forward to last week, I'm informed my reporting chain will change and I'll report directly to the CTO. I still hadn't brought up the pay equality issue, and I asked to roll it into our first 1:1.

He asked me what the topic was ahead of time, and I told him it was compensation equality.

Then in our 1:1, suddenly I'm given the first negative feedback I've literally ever received at Mailchimp, and this is used to justify being paid less than my male peers.

No performance issue was ever mentioned to me before, until I explicitly asked for a conversation about pay equality.

I acknowledge I HAVE been struggling to feel engaged due to [see everything up thread], over a year of gaslighting, being undermined, etc. When I point out that I was bullied off platform, the CTO - my new manager - just said he didn't know much about that situation.

None of this even touches on what happened before that, which is that my promotion to principal engineer was held up for months for reasons that don't appear anywhere on our eng levels ladder. Namely, that I'm "abrasive on Twitter"

So anyway. That's a very quick summary of what happened from my perspective. I wish I could hope a single person in leadership at that company would listen to this and understand, but they won't. It's easier to say my claims are "unsubstantiated."

What really gets me about that email saying my claims are "unsubstantiated," is that none of this is out of the blue. I raised all of this internally because I WANTED TO STAY. I had multiple conversations about ALL of this!

Btw I'm leaving out some of the details about just HOW frustrating this was.

My team would make decisions that were undone in meetings we weren't invited to. Our requirements were constantly being changed and we had no input. https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/1362665659918741505?s=20

Decisions made without us were constantly undermining the work, and it made it extremely, extremely difficult to lead a team.

I think I did a pretty damn good job regardless. The one thing I'm the most proud of is how I enabled and lifted up the engineers on my team, trusted them and helped them grow. That was the most rewarding thing.