This post came across my linkedin feed last summer; a lengthy indictment of the values and practices and the workplace trauma inflicted by the venerable IDEO design firm.

I couldn’t help but wonder what was the deciding factor between abuser and victim, certainly more than race (likely gender, sexuality, you name it- tick-all-boxes) in the the many cases the author cited, anonymously. I do believe their accounts. (and, the author has provided an up-to-date prologue now, addressing feedback from his original post along with a wee bit of backpedaling.)

I’ve never worked directly for IDEO, but have asked them respond to a proposal or two in my career, which shows you exactly how a design firm works and staffs up. And of course, how much they charge for their services, which in IDEO’s case is at the very tippy (ahem, over the) top of the range.

Now I’m at a firm where a former IDEO staffer is a major player. The other day he shared with me the how fun it was, back then, to bring insights to their top-dollar clients about their own customers or to bring a prototype to life using something as basic as cardboard if needed. Clients were so easily impressed. I couldn’t help but wonder if he were marginalized, due to his sexuality, or, if it gave him the competitive edge to get ahead. He was much younger and perhaps still in the closet then (if he ever was?). Now, in his mid career, he’d just shared with me that he and his husband, lacking a womb of their own, had been privileged enough to become parents to two kids now, and he was grateful to even the most toxic of employers he’d had over the years for these benefits.

He didn’t drop names, but then again, he didn’t have to.