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Overcompensating and bulletproofing
110 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, we start out by breaking down a tweeted photo of Elon Musk with his “extremely hardcore” employees. We discuss the superficial meaning and the subtleties of this picture and unearth the potential repercussions and the narrative presented by this photo, questioning what options employees on visa status truly have in a “hardcore” organization.
We reflected upon the concept of overcompensating/bullet proofing in our own line of work and how we have navigated the tendency to be “pigeon-holed.” We share personal examples while drawing from findings from the organizational psychology research, touching on how Asians are confined to certain non-leader roles and how we as podcasts hosts are working to break that narrative.
Elon Musk with “hardcore” employees
Articles for Nerds:
Prevention vs. Promotion Focus
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00726/full#B26
Saying “No” at work
https://hbr.org/2017/01/hbrs-best-on-saying-no-to-more-work
Chat GPT Haiku
Break free from the mold
Embrace your unique journey
Flourish on your path
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bulletproofing and Overcompensating
00:00:10
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of Hitting in Plain Sight. I'm Echo. I'm Derek. And I'm Jenny. Great. So today's episode is going to be about bulletproofing and overcompensating. And we'll talk more about what those mean and define it and provide some examples.
Twitter's Hardcore Culture
00:00:31
Speaker
But I thought it would be nice to open up the conversation with an article that we think is appropriate for today's topic.
00:00:40
Speaker
Or should I say an image? And this is something that Echo found recently. It's an image of employees at Twitter. And could one of you describe what we're seeing here?
Visa Challenges for Twitter Employees
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, looks like a bunch of Twitter employees. Mostly Asian, South Asian, East Asian, a few Caucasians in there, but mostly
00:01:06
Speaker
Asians in there giving the thumbs up or he signed along with Elon Musk right in the middle ball. I think this is when I think Elon was asking, you know, we only want you here if you're hardcore. Yeah. So I guess this is him trying to say like these are the hardcore folks.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I also remember reading about people who were fired or who resigned because they didn't want to be part of that hardcore culture. And I think Elon was spending like nights in the office and trying to do those like code reviews with those people. Like you're supposed to work around the clock. You're supposed to live here. And if you are not able to do that, then you're not worthy of being an employee at Twitter.
00:01:50
Speaker
So how are you feeling about
Cultural Implications for Asian Employees
00:01:52
Speaker
this? The fact that, you know, as Doug, you said, a lot of the people here are Asians. You know, I'm kind of looking at that picture and I'm kind of cringing a little bit. I think there's some hidden things in plain sight here. And if I could ask these folks in this picture of this
00:02:09
Speaker
this picture could actually answer me. I wonder how many are on Visa? Because if you're on Visa, you don't have another job or if you're fired from your job, you have, I think, about 30 days or so to find another job or you're forced to leave the country. Yeah, I think there's like a grace period of like 30 or 60 days. I can't remember that. That's not a long time. That's not a long time. So we're assuming that a lot of these engineers who are here aren't here because they want to be here because they have to be
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, look, I'm sure they could have taken a compensation package, right? Like three or four months salary and taking a vacation if they can't find a job within like, was it that 30 or 60 day period? They're forced to leave the country. That's actually pretty frightening. So it seems like maybe for them or for those who are in that situation,
00:03:01
Speaker
you know, you really only have one option, but to be hardcore. And what are you going to say? Like, yeah, like, give me this money. And then, you know, this is during like the time where we have this like recession in tech, you know, how are you going to find another job in tech right away within 30 to 60 job search can take anywhere like 60 to eight months. Yeah, the level of experience that you're looking to come in at.
00:03:27
Speaker
I love what you said about cringe. So I do cringe at this photo and I wonder what the repercussions would be when people look at this and they don't think about the things that we just talked about. Like, you know, these engineers are here because they have to be here. That's the handcuff, right? The golden handcuff.
00:03:45
Speaker
And they might think, oh, so the hardcore engineers who decided to stay are the Asians. Of course, they're the Asians, you know? And it kind of perpetuates this idea that Asians are still less intelligent. We are not those Twitter employees, of course. So we can really stay on behalf of them. We don't know if they're actually willing to be there or they're forced to be there. But one thing for a fact is like, if you continue to see those pictures, those images,
00:04:14
Speaker
patients working hard, you're going to internalize that. And some way or the other, that becomes the expectation to work hard. It's exhausting. It's exhausting just to even hear that this is a continuous problem that's going on.
00:04:31
Speaker
And if this is what people have in their mind when they think about, you know, or think of Asian employees, what happens when you don't want to do that? Like, I don't want to spend my nights in the office. I don't want to work 70 hours a week. And then what happens when for people like that who don't conform to those stereotypes.
00:04:48
Speaker
You know, this is interesting because, you know, um, around June of this last year, I was let it go from my job. And one of the first things I thought I saw a lot of people do is that they jumped right in the market. I need like three or four months off. Like my mind is tired. Like I need to give myself a break. Uh, and I thought about like, you know, if I don't do this, I won't have enough money.
Personal Experiences of Job Pressure
00:05:10
Speaker
Of course the whole, uh, because I'm a citizen, uh, I don't, I didn't have to worry about being
00:05:16
Speaker
kicked out of the country. I worried about being kicked out of the apartment because it's New York City. I don't want to perpetuate this thing where it's like I'm chasing after money or I'm just jumping from one thing after another without taking that time to really reflect and understand what is it that I want, what is it that will benefit my career in the long term. I think it's beneficial for folks that have the ability to do that and the
00:05:46
Speaker
course, the finance finances. I mean, that was a luxury that I had and I wanted to give to myself. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. Talking about overcompensating in that picture, I think we can also talk about our own experiences.
Overcompensating in Academia
00:06:08
Speaker
You know, Jenny, Echo and myself have gone through a PhD program. And
00:06:15
Speaker
you know, there's, you know, there's things that I've noticed, like little trends that like all of us, like each of these students do within that program. And I was just curious to kind of understand or know whether you overcompensate it in the work that you did in the program or are you still doing it now? I almost feel like as I
00:06:38
Speaker
reflecting upon this were like overcompensating. Like what drives that? Like is it because we just hold a higher bar on ourselves? So we wanted to live up to that? Or this is literally like, hey, because I'm being Asian and I don't want it to look bad in front of other people. So I ended up like overcompensating for that. And also what's the penalty that you pay when you don't conform to those stereotypes?
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, maybe it showcases like, oh, every time they do their, you know, this person does their work, it comes out perfect and things work out all the time. And that's what we should expect every time. And there won't be any flaws or any, you know, missteps in that and becomes the standard versus
00:07:27
Speaker
you know, what, you know, sometimes things take no time, right, to go through, like, you know, in writing, it's a native process for us, right, where that first draft is always going to be trash. Later on, when you look at it later on, it's going to be trash, or like, it's going to be totally going to change based on. I think, speaking from my experience, I think it was, you know, there's this
00:07:54
Speaker
also this aspect of like saving face and that embarrassing myself, you know, and thinking like, you know, maybe others are good or better, or really at their highest point of their game, and I want to make sure that I meet that as well, too, in the program. Part of that was always there. And part of me wanted to also take time and just, you know, become good at this craft that
00:08:23
Speaker
you know, that we were learning, right? To be a good psychologist, how to carry out a good study, how to make sure we set up certain things in the right way so that we can have actually maybe significant data so that we can publish on and talk about it. Because I think that the work that we're doing is, you know, it's cutting edge stuff. We, I feel like we get a chance to do a bit of the work that we want, right?
Cultural Upbringing and Work Behavior
00:08:51
Speaker
So I feel like
00:08:54
Speaker
I wanted that to reflect or show up. And I didn't want it to be or come off as shoddy work or like, just half, half thought, half thought out or near essence. You know, yeah, I just, for me, I just didn't want that. That's interesting. I pick up on this word as like, prevent from like losing face or having this like a face culture almost like made me think about
00:09:22
Speaker
this like a regulatory focus theory where the prevention focus versus the promotion focus. So for the prevention focus people that they
00:09:33
Speaker
look at that, like how much loss they can avoid in order to drive them to do this thing versus like a promotion focus or more like, here's the rewards I'm going to strive for. That's why I'm going for it. And from what you talked about earlier, it's almost like I'm trying to avoid being like look bad on me. So I'm working hard to compensate it. Do you think that's going to be like more seen into Asians?
00:10:01
Speaker
Or is this more like just a personal style, like the personality itself? Oh, that's a great question. I don't know. I mean, for me, I'm the first one of my family to go to college and, you know, my mom, like, has like a second grade education. And of course, like I gleam a lot of knowledge from my mom, even though she doesn't have the education background. I know that every time I, every class that I've been in,
00:10:30
Speaker
high school to undergrad. Sometimes I may be the only, in high school, of course, I may be the only Asian person in the group in Iowa. In college, I may be the only Vietnamese. We know this story about Vietnamese refugees, three different waves that came in through.
Bulletproofing for Black Professionals
00:10:50
Speaker
The last thing you want to do is to showcase that these refugees that came in decades ago, their kids are finally going to school and working as hard. So maybe it is, in a way, like trying to fight certain stereotypes that are out there in a way to disprove it. But in doing so, it creates more work for myself, more work that others have to live up to as well, too, if they want to perpetuate the stereotype. And in a way, it's kind of
00:11:19
Speaker
unfair to others if we're comparing ourselves and we allow others to compare themselves to us as well. What do you think, Jenny? Well, it's interesting what you say about how your upbringing sort of influences this tendency to bulletproof in the workplace, right? Because I think in my case, I don't think it was my upbringing. I think it's the projections that I got at work, at school. It's not that I was
00:11:47
Speaker
I feel like I have to overcompensate or bulletproof to begin with, but to give you an example, whenever I
00:11:54
Speaker
do work, people assume that I can do more than I can. So they'll start giving me more, more and more work, and I'll accept it. And initially, like early on, I never said no. So I would say yes to a lot of things. So at one point, I was spread so thin, because I had so many different things on my plates. And then, you know, that's the new benchmark, right, that people kind of judge you by. And then if you say no to things, or if you let something go, then
00:12:19
Speaker
get penalized for that. And so in that sense, I started to kind of overcompensate and bulletproof my work, because I feel like that was the expectation that people had. That's so fascinating. Just thinking about the concept, like, saying no, like how much that consequence that has upon you, because even like in those days, we heard people are saying like, hey, as a woman, as a
00:12:42
Speaker
as an underrepresented group, you should start to say no, because it itself is a power that we should be seeing more things. I think there was an article that read, there's no need to even say the reason why you say no. Just say no.
00:13:01
Speaker
And I wonder like how much that would differ from person to person, in terms like the consequences in this brain. Like, for some groups, where your stereotypes are being or the expectation of you is like being like, non dominant and being like submissive, like, not gonna say no, think, yeah, not gonna say no. What does that differ for this group versus someone who do not have that
00:13:31
Speaker
I don't think there's enough of study showing that this is safe for people who are perceived or expected to like not saying no. But I start going back a little bit on that like upbringing concept areas.
00:13:48
Speaker
I know like when I'm growing up, or I was like, I know a lot of my friends, like growing up in China, a lot of the education that I got is more like a penalty education, meaning like, I will get penalized or penalized not doing something. Whereas here, like a lot of my American friends were having this encouragement kind of like rewards kind of a style, like, then very, very like a positive affirmation there.
00:14:17
Speaker
And I don't know if that has also something to do with this is like, we always trying to avoid that penalty in front of us versus like here is like, once you get something down, you're getting so much of a rewards out of it. And you're more likely to say no, because you just don't want to do it. And there's no penalty on that. Does that make sense?
Impact of Continuous Work Pressure
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah. Echo, you got me thinking a lot about
00:14:43
Speaker
all these different like branches and decisions, right? And I'm thinking about like where I was like eight, nine years ago versus where I am now, whether I can say no to certain things. Can you, do you say no to things at the workplace these days? Oh, Ash, let me see.
00:15:01
Speaker
This new job I'm not saying though because I'm onboarding it. I'm saying yes because I think it's fun. Not because I, you know, like I have to do it. I make it, I make it moved into the whole engagement survey, which isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. I may say yes, because I think that's fun. Not because I feel like
00:15:24
Speaker
I need to do it, but more so I want to do it. Okay, I think that's an important difference. If you're saying yes to things because you're interested in it, you want to grow, you want to see how engagement service are done in this organization. Yeah, I would say that there's a period after I was laid off, a couple weeks later, there's a couple startups that are looking for someone in my role. And I told them, I didn't tell them no, I did tell them
00:15:52
Speaker
I'm a little bit tired, and I need a couple months to rest. Conditional, no. I told them that should I still be interested, you know, when I'm rested, I'm back to full or 80% health, I'll reach out. And I just never did because there's a part of me that just didn't want to continue this lifestyle, this work style that
00:16:17
Speaker
put me to the grind. I think I've worked hard and I've proved myself to give myself to give myself that liberty or afford myself the ability to say no and not care about it. Did you were you the one who asked it about how this affects other minority groups as well?
Countering Stereotypes in Professional Settings
00:16:40
Speaker
So I have done a little bit of research on this. And I do know that I've done a lot of qualitative work and talk to people about what it's like being a Latina woman or an Asian person or a Black professional in the corporate workplace. And I do know that a lot of the Black professionals that I speak to talk about the concept of bulletproofing. One example that comes to mind is this female engineer that I spoke to, Black engineer. She was the only woman on her team, the only Black person on her team.
00:17:10
Speaker
And she was going to send something in to a conference, like an abstract. And her boss was just saying, oh, you can just send something that that's incomplete because they'll give you an extension. And what she told me was I told my boss, I can't do that because I am not a man. I am not white. I have to send something in that's completely complete from start to finish. And that theme came up a lot among a lot of the people of color that I spoke to, especially among the black professionals.
00:17:41
Speaker
So I think that it does come up for them, like the idea of bulletproofing and overcompensating because they don't want to know what's the stereotype that people have about incompetence. Yeah. Incompetence, you know, the affirmative action bias stereotype that people have about, you know, exactly. And so they feel like I can't afford to this up. Yeah. Now you said this, I wonder, like for Asians, the aspect that we were compensating could be different. So for example,
00:18:10
Speaker
I think what this entire conversation went from was I asked you to correct my pronunciation. And because that has something to do with like, oh, you're being like a foreigner to this country, you're being like Asians and you're being like not being seen as like a native speaker, like how does that really like speak to you?
00:18:34
Speaker
And so I have to be this like perfect in my pronunciation, in talking to other people. So I do think that has a lot to do with like where that aspect that we were trying to compensate for. So like Asians being like non-social, so some people will actually overcompensate being like extrovert. I definitely did that, especially when I was in Colombia, not Colombia, the school, but the country.
00:18:57
Speaker
because I could already tell.
Breaking Stereotypes in Academia
00:18:59
Speaker
And maybe this is just my own self-conforming bias. But when I walked into a classroom, I could see that there was a lot of just like black faces like, oh, she's going to be a
00:19:11
Speaker
They call them karaoke professors, as in they're just going to read off the slides. That's what they say. But then I come in and I'm peppy. I'm like, hey, how are you doing? And then everybody's face lights up. So I definitely overcompensate to break that stereotype of the impersonal, robotic, high on competence but low on warmth.
00:19:33
Speaker
stereotype that people have about Asians. Yeah. I think I kind of did that in the PhD program a little bit as well too. I think I came in with the IO background and people typically think that IO very quad-heavy.
00:19:48
Speaker
And that's what they do. That's what they stick with. And I'm like, well, let me see if I can do follows. Yeah. Just to showcase that, you know, I have this skill set, this range of skill set, not just this one skill set. I didn't want anyone to really pigeonhole. It's funny because I was just about to say that. Could you explain the concept of pigeonholing?
00:20:10
Speaker
It's one of the things I'm really afraid of. And this is like, you know, when people think these are your competencies and what you're good at, they assign you work that's related to that, right? Could be staff to be doing certain things in Excel. And what may happen is that because you get assigned that work, right? You don't get these other stretch rules that allow you to network, learn from other folks, learn other skills in the workplace. And you end up only really refining that skill set that you're already good at.
00:20:39
Speaker
And then now the only path that you have is the path that you're really good at, not all these other paths that you've branched out on. Maybe we can plug our study that is under review. We're not going to give the whole thing away, but one of the things that we found was that Asians, well, one of the stereotypes that people in the workplace have about Asians is that they are quant savvy, right? They're very technical. That's what popped into my mind when you were talking about pigeonholing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a part of you that
00:21:09
Speaker
I maybe was aware of that and didn't want to perpetuate that. So I went out of my way or get away from roles that were just like, or only that. Oh my goodness, Doug. Now I just realized maybe I wonder if that's why I said yes to all those roles within the program. Like I said, yes, to being.
00:21:27
Speaker
the comp coordinator, the PC liaison. It was very front-facing. It required a lot of interpersonal skills, not just punching data. So I'm wondering, was I overcompensating for that thing? Were you? I don't know. Maybe I was. Or maybe I was. I just put those two things together right now.
00:21:53
Speaker
Echo, what about you? Well, for me, I think the story is a little bit different. I do think Kwang's related stuff gave me a niche. Even when I first go into this program, I know at the time, we need to find an internship in order to fulfill the requirements from the program. Echo never has a problem finding a job.
00:22:19
Speaker
Like the lady in the career survey is like, Echo, you used to be an engineer, so you must be good at math. And you need to highlight that.
00:22:30
Speaker
You're cringing, you're cringing. And so now I'm reflecting that journey, like all those roles that I ended like finding are like program analysis or like analytical roles. I've presented a lot at SIOP, which is a conference for IO psychologists, for those of you who don't know, it stands for Society for? Yes, through an organization of psychology. Yeah. And I've gone to a lot of your panels, Echo.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah so I do feel like at a certain degree that I do want to break that stereotype but also at the same time I know that I enjoy that stereotype on me so I give me an edge but then when you're hitting like a certain point you realize now you're now down with all those like Alex stuff and you wanted to move to other new things.
Leadership and Stereotypes in the Asian Community
00:23:16
Speaker
So what I'm hearing is it can serve you well early on, but when you want to start climbing the corporate ladder, it might not matter so much because the question then becomes about, can this person motivate and lead people? Can this person, does this person have the interpersonal skills to lead? And usually people, when people look at Asians, the answer is what? No, no.
00:23:39
Speaker
middle management. That's where you're good at. That's what you're good at. That's where you stay. And maybe that's one of the reasons why I know that's one of the reasons why we don't see a lot of Asians in senior leadership positions. You know, there's a in a way, this is kind of ironic, right? Because in a way, as the three of us who are speaking in this podcast, in a way, we are the leaders.
00:24:01
Speaker
Oh yeah. In this. And I want us to take a moment and kind of recognize that. We are thought leaders on this topic. Yeah, because we actually want to bring the conversation to this and to focus on this to see, is this what you want? If it's not what you want, reflect upon it and make changes in order to get what it is that you want.
00:24:22
Speaker
In a way, what we're doing for folks right now is to allow them to soak in our experiences and reflect on themselves to see, am I, am I being pigeonholed? Am I playing to my strengths? Am I more than what
00:24:39
Speaker
other people think I am, I think it's fantastic. Yeah, let's just savor that moment. I love that. We are thought leaders. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say who are the leaders, I would say we are the leaders in this. So I want to make sure that we call each other out on them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of downplaying what we do. Yeah. We do it to each other. And I know, Doug, you've been calling us out. They say, hey, let's not minimize our work. You know, we are doing this because we are subject to our answers. We are leaders on this. We are leaders on this. Yeah.
00:25:07
Speaker
I love that. So maybe you could think about middle management, but you can also think of as Asians as leaders as well, too. I mean, in certain communities, there may be a lot of different leaders. That's quite all right. It is there. I think we just forget it and think of just leadership in organization. And I think we do that. We may be short-selling our own community.
Breaking Norms in HR Leadership
00:25:29
Speaker
This entire, like a pigeonhole story that might meet the recent news. So Apple just hired their first chief HR officer for the first time. They've never had a CHRO before? They have never had a CHRO before. And this person is an IO psychologist. Really? What's his or her background? It's her. It's a her. Okay. I want to make sure that I'm getting my pronouns right.
00:25:54
Speaker
It's her, her name is Carol Sophie. She worked in PepsiCo before two other like chief CHR role. And then I do think what this tells us is like, I think very early on that we even like to talk about like, hey, as I always, we claim that we know everything in HR, but none of us are become the chief HR officer.
00:26:19
Speaker
And at a certain degree, like I wonder if it because we pigeonholed ourselves to be this person behind the scenes, we worked off all those like signs behind it, but we never like get there upfront. Because we know like, as like a chief of HR offices, there's also so many other things that are involved to be one, right? So this entire like a pigeonhole conversation remind me like, hey, there's something that we shouldn't like limit ourselves to do.
00:26:49
Speaker
I love it. Not limiting ourselves. Do you want to hear what chat GPT says about us?
Conclusion and Reflection on Leadership
00:26:56
Speaker
Break free from the mold. Embrace your unique journey. Flourish on your path. That's a great way to end the episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll catch you later on our next episode of Hidden in Plain Sight, your podcast for all things Asian in the workplace.
00:27:19
Speaker
you
00:28:19
Speaker
So,