Iain, nice to hear from you after all these years!
I still say the weirdest shit ever, but now more in line with my value of honoring people above all else. I indeed, by the grace of God, have made massive strides in my behavior thanks to friends like Gabe Greenberg from G2i.co (where I worked some time ago) and others.
Your response to Iain suggests that his account of your interaction with a new female colleague (“You know you're a slut, right?") is generally accurate.
Do you really think of that as “saying the weirdest shit ever”? Most people I know would call it overt sexual harassment.
I’m struggling to understand how you could have thought that was acceptable conduct.
I don't remember his account ever happening, but I do see a younger version of me doing nonsense like that. I've done similar nonsense if I'm being fully honest.
I also would call that overt sexual harassment and it is totally not OK. Unfortunately, the culture of the organization at the time made it seem OK to where I felt comfortable doing such nonsense. In fact, I have done similar nonsense to get approval from the coworkers there when I otherwise would not have.
I knew it wasn't acceptable in the grand scheme of things, but my team accepting and approving of it (with laughter) was why I did many stupid things earlier in my career.
I hate to pile on, but I listened to the podcast OP linked above. It doesn't make the situation sound any better. It is worse, actually. OP is tone deaf going on this podcast talking about the toxic, racist, misogynistic culture with seemingly no awareness of his contribution to it.
I think his experience of racism and "shitboy" may have desensitised him to the whole thing. He was there for years before I joined and honestly, it was meant to be better then and had a bunch of work on the culture but it was still pretty shitty.
I remember once I semi-joked "You guys talk about a culture problem in IT, it sounds like you have a Tejas problem" and he generally looked like he felt bad about it.
I did feel bad about it. I'm glad you said that, and I'm thankful for how it made me feel. It is exactly that feeling that continued to inspire growth and change. No doubt, I feel it again as people continue to pile on here. This is really good, because it will inspire even more growth, and more positive change.
I still say the weirdest shit ever, but now more in line with my value of honoring people above all else. I indeed, by the grace of God, have made massive strides in my behavior thanks to friends like Gabe Greenberg from G2i.co (where I worked some time ago) and others.
I also talk about our shared company where we worked together and the toxic environment in this podcast: https://youtu.be/muS-wQP2lV4?si=XIVpuzc6TzsLUvpp&t=852 if you're interested to catch up a bit.