Steven, you and I have never felt the same fear at work as we might feel being held down by bullies in an alley. And to us it seems unbelievable that someone would experience their cushy tech job as something so scary. But that’s precisely what many women and other minorities have experienced. The women I know in tech (and I know a lot of them) select companies based primarily on the toxicity of their culture and then the team, the product, and compensation are all second place priorities.

For those who’ve been kissed by a boss at the company Christmas party or been inappropriately grabbed or been mistaken for a recruiter for the hundredth time or been silently left out of important meetings it can be infuriating to work in tech. Often the first two to four years in the business women claim it’s going great for them but there’s not one woman I know who’s been in tech for at least four years who doesn’t have scars from the men they’ve worked with.

Here’s a more sophisticated description of this pattern: https://medium.com/endless/the-stories-of-women-in-tech-that-we-may-never-hear-7379f502fb52

So I had to come up with the improbably-to-us image of two bullies in an alley just to get folks like you and I to see how different it is for us to do our jobs than it is for some people.