Henry, A. (2022). Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized. Rodale

Abstract

Years of experience working as a Black man in largely white (and, to be sure, white-collar) spaces inform longtime tech and productivity journalist and editor Alan Henry’s first book. As the book’s subtitle suggests, Seen, Heard, and Paid should be read as a series of specific and practical recommendations for marginalized workers who find themselves in similar situations. Henry directly addresses many facets of how white-collar work still operates on outdated racial, gendered, and class-based hierarchies that center and promote white men at the expense of their co-workers who are from underrepresented identity groups. His advice confronts many largely unspoken expectations about success on the job and he formalizes and codifies the kind of advice that has often circulated in worker whisper-networks about how to get ahead at work without becoming ‘the office mom,’ someone who does necessary but unglorified work to keep the office going, or without earning an unfair reputation for supposedly being selfish, or loud, or not a team player when a worker stands up for themselves. (Intersectional analyses of workplace dynamics have long documented how these reputations are nearly always gendered, classed, and racialized—often all three working in tandem at the same time.) Threading the needle of protecting one’s self and achieving personal success and satisfaction without becoming further marginalized already presents a rather fraught set of challenges on its own for women, queer workers, and people of color. In addition, most marginalized workers have higher work expectations with lower ceilings of promotion, and also experience higher rates of burnout, as well as daily microaggressions, as his book adroitly demonstrates.