Disappointed in the comments I'm seeing here on DN.

Maybe it's not the perfectly written post, maybe she should not have had that relationship, but have you really not seen this kind of behavior in the workplace? This is not uncommon, and I don't just mean towards minority women.

Why are all of you so ready to dismiss what she has to say when thousands of other women and men are saying the same thing? No this is not a new problem, workplaces have been abusive since the dawn of employment, but at least our society has gotten to a point where we can talk about it.

We need more women on Designer News, this is depressing.

Presumably this story is about racism in the workplace, but it's filled with anecdotes about all sorts of things that detract from the point.

I've never understood this urge to speak up and victim blame. Publishing something like this is TERRIFYING and no one in their right mind would intentionally subject themselves to disgusting things like Internet shaming and this comment thread for kicks.

Amelie is a friend and certainly in her right mind. There's a person who's been seriously, actually suffering from this for years (during and after), and your instinct is to criticize her writing and content, and question whether she's telling the truth.

It's not your job to be judge and jury, definitely not as a group of predominantly white men who've never been held back by systematic racism and sexism. Who've never been held up for years as colleagues got ahead regardless of your hard work. Who are you to decide that this is not "legitimate" workplace discrimination? Stop talking, start listening.

Takeaway: Avoid workplace relationships, as usual.

Thank you for sharing your story.

Over 5 years, and nothing was ever their fault. Convenient.

Interesting read. Unfortunate the series of events but it clearly seems both parties made some tough (or bad) decisions and ultimately the previous employee was the who got the short end of the stick.

While this situation sucks it feels a little "entitled" when reading. Not the racism part, that was fucking terrible. But the relationship part, the expectation of projects based on company history, the trash talking, etc.

I do realize this article is focusing solely on how terrible Squarespace (SS) treated her, especially "Kelly", but I can understand why other commenters find it hard to pull apart the author's acts vs SS. I too feel that maybe she could've handled it differently (relationship part, attitude part) but that does not provide SS reason to hire (or empower) shitty managers (talking about Kelly again). Also sounds like the "HR" guy (Finance dude) was terrible.

If I could ask the author any question it'd be this: given the state of things in tech, what led you to report it when you did verses immediately? Did you feel "Kelly" was actually not purposefully making an unsavory/racist comment and gave her the benefit of the doubt?

Hindsight is 20/20 so all of us are basically blowing smoke up someone's ass but its hard. HR makes it feel like they protect the employee when they really just protect the employer. And given the environment the author described, I'd probably either walk on egg shells or throw glitter in my bosses face and peace.

If all true, at the very least it seems to paint Squarespace as a highly disorganized, political company, which possibly explains why things seem to move slowly with regards to their product innovation. It also lends weight to the idea that having a poor company culture can lead to lots of inefficiencies and wasted resources. Either way, it seems like they handled this specific situation poorly, and overall it’s a bummer because they seem to be default recommendation for anyone who doesn’t want something completely custom.

Negative press for SquareSpace is fine by me.