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Black compton hat9/10/2023 It didn’t occur to me that there might be people who look like me or that came from where I came from who worked in places like Microsoft or Apple. One of the takeaways that I had from that movie was that people like me didn’t exist in Silicon Valley. I remember seeing the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” and being amazed by the stories of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as they built their respective empires at Microsoft and Apple. And, eventually, I began to understand my differentness as a liability, as something that needed to be kept quiet between the hours of 9:00 to 5:00. I wanted to fit in as much as possible into the corporate culture and just blend in. I didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to my background and to where I came from. Instead, Compton is mostly known for gangster rap, drugs, gun violence, police brutality, welfare, poverty-all of those things Compton is known for. Compton isn’t exactly known for producing doctors, and lawyers, and mathematicians, and, yes, computer scientists, even though Compton absolutely produces those kinds of people who contribute positively to society. I believed that people would unfairly judge me because of where I came from, because of where I grew up. There were some rough time, sure, but there were also some great times that I had with teachers, friends, mentors-people who were important to my growth and development that taught me lots of things about life and about how to persevere despite the struggles and things that I had been through.Īnd so even though I didn’t hate Compton, I knew what everyone else outside of Compton thought about my city, and I didn’t want the negative stigma around Compton and around growing up in the hood to impact my career as I was seeking to establish myself as a software engineer, and as a developer, as a programmer working in corporate America. And it’s not that I hated growing up there or anything. Now, I hate to admit it, but early in my career, I was kind of ashamed that I came straight out of Compton. There’s some stuff that you want to leave at home, you know I’m saying? But the idea is that you want to bring your best self to work-those things that are going to help you do your job well and help you work on a team.įor me, I really struggled to understand what it meant for me to bring my best self to work. You want to bring your best self-you don’t necessarily want to bring everything, you know. Whatever it is, companies want their employees to feel like they belong as part of the culture. These are sort of the “soft skills” or the hard to define attributes that are informed by your life experiences or the things that you’ve been through and endured, or preferences-things like that. Nowadays, companies talk about bringing your best self to work, and what they mean by that is that you-as an individual, as an employer, as a worker- should be able to bring those aspects of you that sort of go outside the bounds of just the skills that you bring to the table. And you may have wondered, “Why does this dude have this hat on all the time?” Well if you’ve ever asked that question, don’t worry I got you. Whether I’m going to work or visiting a school and talking to students, whether I’m doing a video, giving a speech, whatever it is, I have my hat everywhere. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that I wear my hat everywhere.
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