It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who NO's you.

• Workplace Unfairness
• Male
• Asian
• Heterosexual
• Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations
• Left & is now Self-Employed
• Banking - Retail
• Double Standards
• Insubordination
• Uncredited Responsibility

I have a pretty elaborate skill set in the high tech industry. My skill set is very diverse. My father had his own computer business. I was always involved in computers growing up. No matter how much I knew, I was NO'ed at the end.

When I started working out of college, I applied as an office administrator for an up and coming internet advertising company. They started me out at $20,000/yr. After the first 2 weeks, they had expanded my responsibilities to office manager, network manager, internet inventory manager, and front desk administrator. A regular day for me was putting out fires. It seemed I was the ‘Go To’ guy. I was making settings for sales people and manager’s computers. I was making orders for supplies for the office, opening a bank account for the office, hiring a signage company to make signs for our front door & marquee, filling in for internet administrators who left for vacation, etc. About 3 weeks after I was hired, they brought on board an assistant to the VP of Marketing (our boss). She had no experience in computers, let alone typing. She had no formal training or education outside of high school. I was training her how to use the computer, how to use basic programs (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Outlook, etc). About 2 months, she was still clueless on how to use the computer. She asked me, “How come it looks even when I space it out on the computer, but it comes out uneven when I print it?” I looked at what she was doing for a few minutes, and it was obvious. I replied, “Use the TAB key to space out each column instead of the space bar.” She jumped up with joy and said, “This is why we hired you.” Later on, I found out she was getting $30,000 MORE than what I was getting. I was placed under her supervision and she was supposed to direct me on what to do. Later on I was terminated trying to save the company money by finding a cheaper vendor to put up a sign in front of our office. I was terminated for insubordination when in actuality, I was just doing my job. I later found out that the VP knew this lady and was doing her a favor by hiring her on and giving her quite a large salary compared to her skill set. There were only two of us who had Asian ethnic backgrounds in that company office, who did a big bulk of the operations work, and were paid the least by lesser trained individuals who had the same or positions higher than ourselves. I guess it's not what you know or who you know, it’s who NO's you.