On My Time as CrowdMed CTO
Transphobia leads to me being routinely targeted by socialists for a former job where I was unequivocally an exploited worker, while the man who exploited me lives large.
Until two-and-a-half years ago, I was the head of technology for a small startup called CrowdMed. They helped patients whose doctors were stumped, a cause I find deeply noble, as it would have saved a girlfriend I had years ago who died after an over two year struggle to get a painful illness diagnosed. CTO does not mean owner, and I was mistreated and exploited heavily by those who did own it. Despite that, much of anti-capitalist Twitter views to this day me as a capitalist villain, refusing to recognize transphobia and exploitation I experienced due to a fancy title.
At a small tech startup, “Chief Technology Officer” is a title that usually just goes to the most experienced technologist, who is then expected to spend most of their time also functioning as a worker. The overwhelming majority of actual coding work done during my time as CTO was done directly by me, with only rare help from contract coders for especially big projects.
For the three years I worked there, I was prevented from taking any time off, despite, in theory, having “unlimited PTO,” because I was “too important.” This intersected with a refusal to take seriously my attempts to get gender-affirming surgery, stringing me along the whole time with promises of time off and better insurance coverage that never came.
Eventually, the founder, Jared Heyman, began getting angry at me for wanting supposedly “special treatment.” Yet I asked for was important healthcare at a company dedicated to “solving difficult healthcare problems.” The trauma caused by this years-long process weighs on me daily. After leaving the company, I pursued surgery, but it was endlessly postponed by the pandemic — a problem I would have never faced if the healthcare company for which I worked let me have healthcare they kept promising me.
Ultimately, when the company went broke in early 2020, they had kept the reality of just how short the runway was getting from me, for fear of spooking me into leaving the company. The company provided no severance to everyone who was laid off that February. Afterwards, the company was sold to new owners who then, with the blessing of the founder, harassed me to do free work for them. I refused.
The entire time, I worked for less than market rate for software engineers with my experience. I certainly was not poor, but I made significantly less than I could just working as a regular coder in a regular job, all while being barred from taking time off for three years and getting surgery that would have greatly improved my mental well-being. This apparently makes me some sort of wealthy capitalist fatcat.
I’m sure that, for years, I will continue to hear about this from online bullies who look for any excuse to vilify and harass trans women, while the man who put me through this nightmare is ignored and allowed to live the life of luxury I can only dream of having, as he serially abandons the people at the companies he founds.