Retaliation, part 1
From senior leadership
After my manager told on me to AL2, AL2 asked me to meet with her to discuss my concerns about her unethical conduct. I said no to that, and stated that it was because AL2 was directly involved in my concerns, and that I was not open to discussing them with her. I stated that explicitly, because I thought that maybe my manager somehow had not conveyed to AL2 that she had a conflict of interest in addressing my concerns, and AL2 honestly didn’t realize it when she reached out to me. I thought that once AL2 was aware that she had a conflict of interest, she would follow the Dispute Resolution Program as stated in the WMF Staff Handbook, or at least not pressure me to go against it. That didn’t happen. AL2 continued to pressure me to meet with her to discuss my concerns about her unethical conduct. She said that it felt unfair for her to be accused of unethical leadership without being allowed a chance to respond. There’re a couple of problems with that statement.
For one, at no point did I accuse her or her leadership, or my manager. Instead, I specifically stated many times that I had concerns about specific instances of their conduct and not their persons or their general leadership. This distinction may seem trivial to some, but, as far as I could tell, it was very important at WMF and could easily be used as a trap when WMF staff attempts to raise concerns about problematic conduct by WMF management. Basically, it seemed that at WMF, if an employee’s concern about leadership conduct was successfully framed as a personal verbal attack or accusation, then it would be dismissed and the employee raising the concern would become the problem, though probably not for long, given the frequent firings, constructive discharges and PIPs at WMF.
So, throughout all of this, I was very deliberately following to a T this distinction between raising concerns about conduct and accusing individuals, thinking that I couldn’t afford to cross it. My manager and AL2 made many attempts to conflate my concerns about their conduct with verbal personal attacks on them, and I felt that I had to take the time and care to correct them on this every single time they did it, as much as I could. This felt repetitive and exhausting. I could see how colleagues who tried to speak up before me could get worn out by tactics like this and give up. In my opinion, navigating this kind of repeated misrepresentation takes advanced English language skills, way beyond what is needed for professional-level English at WMF. I think that having to navigate this would be unfairly and unfeasibly more difficult for non-native English speakers and some neurodiverse folks, of which there’s a large proportion among WMF staff.
And two, there’s nothing unfair about an employee raising concerns in good faith about a manager’s behavior and reporting them to HR. Once such a report is made, it is up to HR or a designated objective party, or at least someone who was not directly involved in the concerns raised, to conduct a fair investigation. It is not up to the employee or the manager to determine whether the conduct or the raised concerns were valid or fair, it is up to the investigation. The main responsibility for fairness in this process falls on the investigation, and not on the employee, the person with the least power in this situation. The idea that a manager is entitled, in the name of fairness, to preemptively talk to the employee about their concerns that implicate the manager, in order to pressure the employee into not making a report, is ridiculous. If this were true, then it would make it very unlikely that any employee would ever feel safe to raise concerns about a WMF manager to HR, because they would know that they would have to talk to the implicated manager first and be pressured not to report.
When I turned down AL2’s request to talk about the concerns I raised, I emphasized that I was happy to discuss anything work-related with her, and was looking forward to our scheduled meeting to discuss a work project on the following day. My initial plan was to file a complaint with HR and let them handle it through an investigation, and keep my day-to-day work separate from my complaint. AL2, on the other hand, said that she would not talk to me about work until we “clear the air on this”. She then proceeded to cancel the work meeting we had scheduled on the following day. AL2 explicitly stated that she canceled the work meeting with me because I refused to meet with her to discuss my concerns about her conduct. My manager was also scheduled to attend that canceled meeting. She was aware of AL2 canceling that work meeting in response to my refusal to talk to AL2 about my concerns.
AL2 also offered to schedule a call with HR for us. Since it would include AL2, I said no, because I wanted to reach out to HR separately, which was supposed to be an option available to me, according to the Dispute Resolution Program as stated in the WMF Staff Handbook.
AL2 then told me that she informed AL1, another senior leadership team member, of my situation. I am not aware of any efforts by AL1 at any point to stop or mitigate any of AL2’s or my manager’s behaviors I describe in this blog.
AL2 frequently told me and others that everything she did was in the service of the Wikimedia movement community. Personally, I fail to see how these behaviors were in the service of the community. To me, they appeared to benefit only AL2 and other managers who behave this way at WMF. It seems blatantly dishonest to claim that these and other unethical behaviors I described earlier were done in the service of the Wikimedia movement community.
Some issues with the above
To me, it seems obvious why many of the behaviors I described above were wrong, but given my experience at WMF, it appears that to WMF management, leadership and HR it might not be as obvious, unfortunately. So, I will explain here what I think was wrong.
If you, dear reader, also find it obvious that it is problematic and unethical for a senior leader at WMF to pressure a subordinate into discussing with them their concerns about the leader’s problematic conduct instead of letting the subordinate report to HR, and then punishing them for refusal by obstructing their work, then you are welcome to skip this and other similar sections because you will probably find them redundant.
Unfortunately, through my experience of raising concerns at WMF, and through hearing the stories of my former colleagues about their attempts to raise concerns at WMF, I have learned that stating these concerns in plainer language, with less detail and less over-explaining, would likely be countered with manipulation and PR anti-patterns.
Through my language choices and writing here, I am trying my best to convey the information that I think at this point belongs to the Wikimedia movement community and to WMF workers, in the way that I hope minimizes risk to myself and the former WMF colleagues who took a chance on sharing with me their problematic experiences with WMF management (if you are that former colleague, thank you again for your courage and honesty). It feels risky and intimidating to say any of this stuff knowing that it will likely displease a very large and reputable organization that has a really big halo super-glued to it via the work of so many volunteers, an organization that has a big legal team, a huge communications team, and a very difficult to quantify (at least to me) PR front.
For anyone who is reading this in good faith, thank you so much for your patience and perseverance in making it through my giant walls of text and overly cautious phrases. I know they’re probably frustrating to read, but I learned the hard way that I need them here. If it’s any consolation, writing in this style is no picnic either.
Pressure to meet with involved party
I don’t think that it was ok for AL2 to repeatedly ask me to meet with her, or with her and HR, to discuss my concerns about her conduct. AL2 was directly involved in my concerns and therefore had a conflict of interest in discussing them. I informed AL2 that she was directly involved in my concerns, and that I did not want to discuss them with her. Per the WMF Staff Handbook, I supposedly had options in reporting my concerns, but AL2 actively pressured me to address them with her, or with HR in her presence, and punished me for saying no by canceling a work meeting and refusing future work collaboration with me. I think this was unethical, and I think it went against the Dispute Resolution Program as stated in the WMF Staff Handbook.
This was unethical, because the action of a senior manager at WMF pressuring a subordinate not to report that manager’s problematic conduct is highly likely to benefit the manager at the expense of both WMF as an organization and the Wikimedia movement community. The manager’s benefit here could be that by preventing the employee from reporting to HR and forcing them to “practice curiosity” with the manager, the manager would get to leverage their power differential to force an agreement that no problematic conduct occurred and control the narrative, while also preventing HR or other objective 3rd party from conducting an investigation. This way, the manager could get to control and reinforce their positive image, avoid accountability for their problematic conduct, and continue practicing that problematic conduct for as long as it benefits them.
The potential organizational cost for such conduct by management is threefold. For one, there’s potential damage to company culture and employee morale, because through such experiences employees may learn that speaking up at WMF is hopeless (unless you are a high-ranking tech employee, or at the very least are on the Product & Tech team), that their input is not valued unless it is sycophantic, that Wikimedia values are practiced at WMF by contorting them into whatever WMF management wants them to be and not by living up to what those values truthfully mean to the employees, to the Wikimedia movement community, to humanity. Case in point: in my opinion, what the value of curiosity means to WMF employees, the Wikimedia movement community and humanity has not much in common with the “practice curiosity” practice so frequently leveraged by WMF management.
Two, the manager’s problematic conduct could continue, to the potential detriment of the organization.
And three, as the manager’s problematic conduct goes on unchallenged and observed by other managers and employees, it is likely to become normalized. Other managers and employees could pick up and replicate the problematic conduct, propagating and normalizing it further. As the problematic behavior becomes normalized, it becomes more and more difficult to challenge it, especially for a low-ranking employee. I am sad to say that I am guessing this is how the problematic conduct of disparaging community critics may have become so normal among WMF management and some employees (emphasis on “some” here, because many WMF employees, if not most, would never ever do this, including me). As an individual contributor at WMF, I found it very difficult to speak up against the disparagement of a community critic. My speaking up was met with hostility and gaslighting, and I felt like I was instantly marked as a troublemaker because of it.
The community cost for such obstructions to managerial accountability at WMF in the long run could be loss of trust, damage to the relationship between WMF and the community, misalignment of WMF goals and community needs and values, ineffective support of the community, reduced engagement, and so on.
Given that 3 managers in total (my manager and two senior leadership team members) either repeatedly told me to meet with AL2 to discuss my concerns despite the conflict of interest, or were made aware of it and did nothing to interfere, this appears to be a systemic problematic behavior pattern within WMF management rather than a single instance or a behavior limited to a single individual.
Weaponizing values and intimidation
I don’t think it was ok for AL2 to claim that my raising concerns was unfair unless she got a chance to respond in a conversation with me. It felt like AL2 was weaponizing the value of fairness to get me to do what she wanted. For some employees, it could be very intimidating and discrediting to hear from a senior leader that the employee was being unfair in raising their concerns in good faith. It could also be intimidating to hear that if they raise concerns about a senior leader or manager, then they would have to talk to that senior leader or manager first before they could report to HR. To me, this feels like an intimidation practice that would discourage many employees from raising concerns about managers at WMF.
Punishment through work obstruction
I don’t think it was ok for AL2 to cancel a work meeting and refuse future work with me in response to my refusal to discuss my concerns about her conduct with her. To me, this seemed like workplace punishment in retaliation for my attempt to raise concerns in good faith. I think this was very unethical. If management is entitled to punish an employee for trying to speak up in the workplace by canceling the employee’s work collaborations or obstructing their work, then no employee would feel safe to raise concerns because it could directly harm their ability to do their job.
The work done by employees at WMF is done to serve the Wikimedia movement community. When WMF management obstructs that work just to punish an employee, to me, this seems to show in action just how much respect WMF management has for the Wikimedia movement community and for the work and the workers that support it. When it comes to their words, WMF management does write very compelling, empathic and virtuous emails and posts, and speaks just as compellingly in presentations, talks, fireside chats, etc., but sometimes even relatively small actions can speak louder than words. To me, senior WMF leadership punishing a subordinate through work obstruction for raising concerns about a senior leader’s unethical conduct is a very telling action. Especially given that the unethical conduct in question involved manipulation of the Wikimedia movement community and disparagement of a community member.
Again, more than one WMF manager either participated or was made aware of this conduct by AL2, suggesting a systemic breadth of this behavior among WMF management: my manager was invited to the canceled meeting and hence was aware of it, and I was told by both my manager and AL2 that AL1 was kept informed of my situation.
My manager also told me that she kept HR informed of my situation. To my knowledge, HR did nothing to interfere with AL2’s behaviors I described above, despite being made aware of them. To me, this spoke volumes about WMF HR.
It seemed to me that my manager and AL2 were very comfortable with HR and not very worried about HR getting involved in my case. When my manager would tell me that she kept HR informed of my situation, to me it sounded derisive and overly confident about HR taking my manager’s and AL2’s side. It seemed odd and made me a bit skeptical of going to HR. Because of that, I asked several colleagues about their experiences with raising concerns about WMF management to HR, and they all said that going to HR with concerns about WMF management’s conduct was unsafe.
I really wish that there was a trustworthy party at WMF who had the authority to help me out in that moment. As far as I could tell, WMF HR wasn’t it. When I asked my colleagues about talking to the CEO or the BoT, their answers were not exactly uplifting either. Based on all that, I felt that there was no one trustworthy I could ask for help at WMF. I think that had there been an official union at WMF, it would have helped me. Maybe it would have even protected my job. I hope that in the future, WMF employees will have a trustworthy, official resource at WMF that will help them and advocate for them in difficult situations like this. They work very hard, and they do it to support the Wikimedia movement community and the mission of free knowledge. They deserve to have a resource they can trust at WMF.