Thread by @bernucca, I recently left @Complex after my boss, who has been reported to [...]

I recently left @Complex after my boss, who has been reported to HR and whispered about for his condescension, esp toward women, abruptly told me on a four-minute Zoom call that my pay was being cut by 45% “due to COVID” but also permanently. When I tried to get HR involved,

I was met with severe pushback, including being told by him that they wouldn’t be involved “because I am a freelancer.” I eventually had to request to be laid off, and I guess was lucky enough that they agreed to that (without paying me out for 40 hours of accrued sick time).

In my time there, I was strung along with endlessly delayed promises of a full-time job. When the edit team was looking for a new staff writer, I applied, after a year+ of being an asset to the Edit team, doing things above my pay grade and outside my (vague) job description.

Executive Editor told me I wouldn’t be considered because I “didn’t have the right voice.” This after writing blurbs, profiles, interviews and criticism, all without extra compensation. This after being regularly commended for clean copy and asked to edit staffers’ work.

I worked 40 hours a week, in office, for nearly two years. I received nary a performance review, let alone any sort of genuine interest in my career growth from people who actually had the power to make it happen. I was viewed as and treated by many like a second-class citizen.

Not getting a job is fine. It happens. But the culture that allowed me to be exploited for years is entwined with the culture that allowed for @radioheadass to be dismissed when presenting serious allegations of abusive mismanagement and a literal office drugging. It’s obscene.

Some things I witnessed at @Complex:

- Former GM of Complex making light of 21 Savage’s ICE detainment
- Former Executive Editor telling a woman she was “in the wrong office” if she didn’t like Nas (a known abuser)
- Edit meetings where I was the only non-cis straight man

- Requests for unflattering stories about future Hot Ones guests to be removed from the site
- Two-dimensional “conversations” about how to cover abusive artists that never led anywhere (and huffing and puffing when these conversations were brought up)

- Slack conversations making fun of a mentally ill person on our street
- A CEO whose entire personality is using profanity
- Interns running personal errands for then-EIC @N_C_B, with little to no appreciation
- Ideas being shot down and ridiculed with no constructive feedback

- Employees somehow allowed to be considered talent while also holding an SVP title
- An employee’s Soho House membership being expensed for a time
- Tenured employees consistently allowed to underperform while others picked up the slack

There is no accountability. There is no investment in young talent, unless you are granted access into the cliqueish and often mean old guard that exists there. There is no safety or protection, except for abusive staffers + controversial guest talent who earn the company money.

Casual misogyny lives there. Blatant misogyny lives there. Sexual predation lives there. Unchecked power and influence live there. Above all, misogynoir and anti-Blackness live there. Men uphold these things. Women uphold these things. Enough is enough.

My stories are literally nothing in the grand scheme of how @Complex takes and takes, often from Black + other marginalized creators and employees, and offers next to nothing in return save for a meager paycheck, discouragement and trauma.

Stop acting like media HAS to be exploitative, anti-Black, sexist, homophobic, fatphobic and otherwise awful because “that’s how it’s always been.” Some of you reading this right now have the power to change, to hold yourselves and peers to a higher standard. What will it take?

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