What does it mean to be yourself at work? 🏳️🌈
In a Nutshell
Being yourself at work means speaking openly about your life and relationships without self-censorship or fear of judgment, freeing mental energy for actual work rather than constant identity management. Hiding LGBTQ+ identity creates exhausting self-monitoring that compounds other workplace stresses like language barriers. The core message is that authenticity requires psychological safety where people can reference partners, families, and personal details without calculating social consequences.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Being myself at work is kind of easy mode. It's as easy as it gets for someone at a company. I need to be able to express the kind of more silly parts of myself alongside like a few smart bits. Feel safe to ask questions, being comfortable enough expressing my honest thoughts and opinions. When I trust people around.
Talking about my life without censoring simple details like the name of my partner. I feel like that would just be really tiring and I'm very exhausting. I would probably constantly have these thoughts in my mind about not doing this, not doing that.
The use of the word partner has been adopted by many people specifically because it's a gender neutral thing. Bringing my family to a company event without worrying what people will think.
I don't think I've ever even thought about it before. This can be very isolating. Yeah, it's just something that restricts you a lot. The point is that you're supposed to go and be like, "This is my partner. I'm so proud of them." I think it should not be the case to even think of how others think of your family members.
Not having to hide the parts of myself that signal I'm LGBTQ+. We spend a lot of time at work. So, imagine the pressure of hiding who you actually are, especially at a company like JetBrains. A lot of people have English as their second language. That already takes something off you. If you're then having to censor the way that you speak on top of that, it's hugely draining.
It's self-censorship. You'll always have to, you know, consider is it safe to show this? Is it not safe to show this? Can imagine that this is really hard. How are you supposed to feel energized if you're constantly under pressure to just have this facade?
No, we are going to be treated differently after people find out who I am or who I love. So, everybody should feel okay with, you know, just being authentic and true to themselves. This is not about sexual orientation at all. This is about like respect for other people in general. I feel it's embarrassing that this statement is there. We should grow up a bit.
Being myself at work to me means being able to talk about my life openly without stopping to wonder how it will be received or whether I will be judged. It's the freedom to be honest about who I am and focus on my work, spend my energy on ideas, and not having to hide parts of who I am.
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