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nonplussed

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That's odd they would ask you to resign although 2 levels lower is weird.

I had something similar happen to me last year. When receiving an offer, I was told I would be at L6 but found out after I was hired at L5 (both levels are considered Senior Engineer). The title is the same and the comp was as agreed, just that I thought the level would be higher.

Lesson learned for next time. Always get something like that in writing.

One of the toughest things about discrimination is being able to prove it. I'm a white man, but I spent time living in Japan where I was an obvious minority.

Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a particular way because of my race. But then others were not so clear cut.

For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people do and didn't have any reflection on me personally.

Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race, etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where that does happen. But there are also situations where a white man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the same way. As a minority though, you only have your own experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily communication.

My Life in E-Ink 5 years ago

https://youtu.be/ObtjXO_hEPw

This was a pretty thorough traffic analysis of their Max Lumi device. I think it would be pretty similar with the Note Air. I bought a Max Lumi after this as there didn't seem to be much concern.

I can't stress the the "ideally successful" part enough. I've worked at a couple startups where the entrepreneur was serial but this was their first "success". I felt I learned very little. Both companies reached a comfortable point and then the founder didn't know what to do beyond that.

I came to understand why there's a lot of stories of VCs forcing out the founder and bringing in a new CEO who had experience in growing a company.

Paraphrasing an Elton John quote: "People think it's easy for me to know what will be a hit because I've had so many. The truth is I've written songs I was sure would be a hit and nobody ended up listening to. I've also written songs that I didn't think would do anything and I even hesitated to include on the album and they turned out to be my biggest hits."