Thursday Oct 04, 2007
One of my favorite transgender jokes is that I ought to be able to lose weight easily by avoiding foods containing trans fats (a concept that works much better in theory than in practice). In fact, humor abounds when it comes "trans" prefixed words in English. I always smile when I see businesses proclaiming themselves to be "transmission specialists."
Transparency, however, is a pretty serious subject in the context of working for Sun.
Corporate transparency is all about being open and honest. It means telling people the truth about what you are doing, whether those people are shareholders, employees, partners or customers. Failure to do that has led to some impressive and broadly harmful corporate implosions over the last several years.
Transparency is also a part of the big picture of Social Responsibility, which covers a wide array of subjects including eco-responsibility, corporate governance, employee and supplier diversity, public policy and giving back to the community (which, at Sun, means everybody). It's all about doing the right thing. Consistently.
Sun really walks the walk on Social Responsibility. Not only is it in everything we do - from our business policies to our products - it is also in our objectives and our self-evaluation. Sun actually sets objectives for Social Responsibility, measures its success against those objectives and keeps raising the bar to drive constant improvement. You can see our most recent results in Sun's 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which documents our objectives, our successes and our plans for the future.
So why am I blogging about this? Well, as an employee of the company, I think this is pretty cool stuff. It is the sort of thing that makes me proud to work at Sun. But the subject is also relevant because it applies so much to my situation. I transitioned on the job here at Sun, and they have "done the right thing" every step of the way. Further, they are happy to let others know about it... as demonstrated by the fact that there is a link to this blog in that report, under the Transparency subject of the Corporate Governance section.
So if you're reading this blog for the first time, and you got here from the CSR link, welcome. 
(And if you want to see further evidence that Sun is proud about doing the right thing, there is an article about my workplace transition in the October edition of OutNow magazine, which you can find here (PDF).
Wednesday May 09, 2007
Just a quick note of appreciation for the positive comments and well-wishing so far. The support is very encouraging, and does a good deal to ease my blogxiety. Also, thank you to Robert Holt for drawing my attention to mention of my blog over on Joe.My.God. It seems my clever plan to remain obscure by creating a public blog may have a few wrinkles yet to be ironed out...
Oh, and as a bonus for observant readers, I finally got around to uploading a picture of myself. It's that tiny little blob of pixels in the upper right corner.
Wednesday May 09, 2007
When I posted my initial entry, I was a bit concerned about how many people would read it. Mind you, I'm really not that interesting for the most part (just ask my friends), but this is the sort of information that can end up plastered all over the Internet if the right (or wrong) person stumbles across it. As strange as this may sound coming from a blogger, Internet infamy isn't exactly my idea of a good time. Fortunately, my fears - as usual - have turned out to be unfounded. (I'm like an ostrich with a wicked fear of shadows, constantly burying my head in naive optimism until I realize there was nothing to be afraid of after all.) While I don't have concrete data available, it looks like my first post was viewed around 237 times. If you subtract the 17 times I loaded it myself during editing and the 200 hits that were probably automated web crawlers (think Google, not Spider Man), it looks like I had about 20 readers. Yay!
Kidding aside, it is worth noting the real implications of this blog. Most of my legal documentation reflects my new name and proper gender, and I appear to be seen fairly consistently as female by strangers (to my constant amazement and delight), so I could have gone through the rest of my life only sharing information about my past with a select handful of individuals. Now, countless web caching sites have stored copies of my post, and searching for my name will easily reveal my transgender status. That is a sobering thought when you consider that some companies are now searching the web for information on potential new employees before extending job offers. As one friend pointed out, however, I wouldn't want to work for a company that would reject me for being transgender anyway, so perhaps my irrevocable "outness" is a blessing in disguise. As long as society continues to move toward accepting diversity and away from discrimination and prejudice, I ought to be okay. (There I go burying my head again!)
(In a mildly ironic twist, it is quite likely that many of the aforementioned web caches are stored on and/or managed by Sun products, some of which are no doubt running software to which I contributed. Et tu, Kelly?)
Tuesday May 08, 2007
Welcome! This is my first (and, so far, only) post in my first (and, so far, only) blog at Sun. I am admittedly a bit behind on joining the employee blog movement. I used to think that the details of my work - though interesting and rewarding to me - would make for rather dull reading when captured in a blog. Actually, I haven't changed my mind about that. I have, however, come to the realization that there are much more interesting and potentially useful subjects about which I am quite qualified to write. Specifically, as a woman who recently came out at work as being in the process of gender transition, I can share my thoughts and experiences about life and work at Sun in the context of being both transgender and - more generally - one of Sun's many GLBT employees.
The decision to start this blog was not made easily, nor without a significant degree of trepidation. As recently as November of 2006, only a select handful of my closest and most trusted co-workers were aware of the changes I had begun to make a few years earlier (December, 2003). Since then, I have effectively come out to virtually everyone in my work location as well as my director's reports in other regions, which adds up to a few hundred co-workers "in the know". Blogging about my experience might sound easy after that, but the number of people who could conceivably read my posts is vastly greater than the number of people who already know, which is daunting to say the least.
So why start blogging now? There are a host of reasons, but two primary influences deserve mention. First, as a "member at large" of the board for Sun's GLBT employee resource group (GLAF), I have been thinking a lot recently about potential forms of outreach, both to current and future Sun employees and to the broader community of Sun's customers, partners, investors and peers. People in any of those groups might have an interest in what it is like to be a GLBT employee at Sun - after all, we walk among you - so an externally visible blog seems like a natural fit.
The second influence was Christine Daniels, a writer at the Los Angeles Times. Christine recently announced her own transition in her sports column in the paper, which is an act of courage and inspiration far greater - and far broader in scope - than this blog could ever be in my wildest, most fearful imagining. Reading her announcement reminded me that those of us fortunate enough to have gainful employment with companies that accept and respect diversity really ought to be doing what we can to pave the road wider and further for those who come after us, just as those who came before blazed the trail that we ourselves have followed.
I cannot promise that this blog will be entertaining, enlightening or even frequently updated, but I will do my best, and we'll see what happens.
(As a closing note - added after this post was written - you can find Christine Daniels' blog at the LA Times here.)
|
|
|
|
I think the corporate acceptance goes back to Scot...
Just wanted to say I found your blog this morning....