One time, my Chinese ESL co-worker was getting humiliating comments on his code review. The reviewer in question would never speak to a White native English speaker this way1. Nobody deserves this level of humiliation and disrespect in the workplace. “This isn’t proper English and I cannot understand what you were trying to say.” It was cruel and uncalled for.
So I escalated over email, speaking up that this wasn’t right, even though the reviewer was a level above me. To my knowledge, the situation was played off as a simple misunderstanding by management, but I’ll never forget the hurt in my co-worker’s eyes when he showed me his code review comments. I saw the same hurt and humiliation that my anti-mentor imbued in me. Nobody deserves that. Nobody.
You deserved better, co-worker, and I’m sorry for not having done more.
- To be absolutely clear: these code review comments were not from my anti-mentor. ↩︎