Before I wrote a single line of code, I was writing office birthday cards.
“I wanted to chat about your retirement party,” Morgan said, her voice bright with enthusiasm. “The team thought it would be nice if I coordinated it, since I’m the new engineer.”
Twenty-five years melted away. I was suddenly back at my first software engineering job, staring at an email asking me to plan yet another office celebration.
The familiar mix of guilt and resentment rose up like muscle memory. I knew exactly why they’d asked Morgan. It wasn’t because she was new — it was because she was a woman, just as it had been with me.
“No,” I told her gently. “That’s not your job.”
She looked startled, then relieved. I recognized that relief. I’d felt it myself, a quarter century ago, when I finally spoke those same two letters.
Becoming the default party planner
It was 1999, and I was one of two female engineers on a team of thirty. The division leader’s 40th birthday was coming up, and a group of colleagues debated who would plan the celebration.
Without thinking — or rather, thinking exactly how I’d been trained to think — I volunteered.
A surprise gathering, his favorite chocolate cake, a handwritten note from every team member. The appreciation felt like validation. I belonged here. Or at least, I belonged in the way they wanted me to — not as an engineer who could solve complex problems, but as a woman who could solve their social ones.
Then came the next party. And the next. Promotions, retirements, team-building events. Requests trickled in, then poured. I didn’t notice the shift right away. How the calendar reminders, vendor contacts, and decoration orders started filling the spaces where my technical work should have been. How the respect I earned through code was slowly replaced with admiration for my ability to order catering and remember everyone’s food preferences.
My first performance review noted my “strong organizational skills and attention to detail.” No mention of my technical contributions. At the time, I took it as a compliment.
Later, I recognized it as the warning sign that my professional identity was being erased one party at a time.
Invisible labor and gender expectations
Across industries, women take on a disproportionate share of workplace “housekeeping” — the tasks that make offices run smoothly but rarely lead to promotions.
Party planning. Taking notes in meetings. Mentoring. The kind of work that needs to be done but is rarely valued.
I watched it play out in every meeting that first year. While my male colleagues immersed themselves in architecture discussions, voices carrying with the confidence of those who never questioned their place, I juggled cake orders and RSVPs.
When I mentioned the imbalance to a coworker, he laughed. “We just know you care more about these things than we do.” His casual dismissal revealed volumes about who gets to choose their priorities.
These dynamics weren’t unique to the late ’90s tech world. Looking at Morgan’s face now, I see the same eagerness to please, the same willingness to take on any task that might make her presence more palatable in a male-dominated field.
The hidden price of being helpful
Even in that first year, each celebration extracted its toll. Time spent coordinating vendors meant late nights catching up on code. Hours spent managing party logistics replaced hours that should have gone to skill development.
The professional cost accumulated like technical debt — invisible until it became impossible to ignore.
The mental load followed me home, taking over the spaces meant for rest and recovery. Budgets, seating charts, dietary restrictions — these details invaded my thoughts during dinner, during workouts, during conversations with friends.
My boyfriend at the time noticed before I did. “I thought you were hired to write code,” he said one night. His words cut through my carefully maintained illusion that I could do it all without losing anything.
The moment of clarity came during a critical deployment. My fingers flew across the keyboard, tracing a nasty bug through thousands of lines of code. Three monitors displayed cascading error messages. A system crash loomed. A colleague hovered by my desk, waiting for me to look up.
“What color scheme should we use for the holiday party?”
That night, I sat in my parked car long after the office had emptied. I had done this to myself. In just one year, I had made it easy for them to see me as the office mom. One year of reinforcing the very stereotypes I’d fought against since my first computer science class.
I went home and drafted the email. Hands shaking slightly as I typed.
“I will no longer be coordinating office celebrations. Party planning will need to be a shared responsibility moving forward.”
Send.
Resistance to change
Responses came quickly, each one exposing the depth of gender expectations I’d been fighting.
“But you’re so good at it!”
“Who else will do it?”
Some hinted that stepping back would hurt team morale.A few tried to negotiate.
“What if you just handled the big events?”
“Could you at least help us make a checklist?”
The men on my team, in particular, resisted. “I’m just not good at that sort of thing,” one said with a helpless shrug.
Not good at it. Never tried. The privilege of assumed incompetence — a luxury women in tech are never afforded. We don’t get to be bad at things. We don’t get to learn on the job. We arrive perfect or we don’t arrive at all.
Some colleagues took it personally, as if I had withdrawn a kindness they were entitled to. Others ignored it altogether, continuing to send party-related requests that I had to redirect, over and over, until they finally stopped.
Letting go of the role wasn’t just about saying no once. It was about saying no every time someone tried to pull me back in.
Shifting workplace culture
The next few celebrations were chaotic. Details forgotten. Budgets mismanaged. Complaints filtered through the office. Each imperfect event highlighted how much invisible labor I’d been providing. The discomfort was necessary — a symptom of long-overdue change.
But eventually, something shifted. One of the male engineers — one who had previously claimed party planning wasn’t his strength — discovered he had a talent for organization.
Another created a simple database for tracking celebrations. Their innovations proved what I’d always known: these tasks didn’t require feminine mystique, just time and attention.
For the first time, the team started paying attention to who took notes in meetings. Who mentored junior employees. Who cleaned the break room. Conversations about gender dynamics in the office started happening, some for the first time.
Twenty-five years later
Looking at Morgan now, I see both how much has changed and how much hasn’t. Women make up a larger percentage of software engineers, but we’re still fighting the same battles about whose time and energy is considered dispensable.
“I didn’t want to seem difficult,” Morgan admits, echoing my own thoughts from twenty-five years ago. “Everyone said it would be a good way to get to know the team.”
I think about my career trajectory after that first year. About the technical challenges I tackled once I stopped being the office party planner. About the promotions that came from focusing on my actual job. About the younger women I mentored in coding, not catering.
“Let the team handle my retirement party,” I tell her. “You focus on becoming the best engineer you can be. That’s what you were hired for.”
She smiles, relief visible in her shoulders. “What happened after you sent that email? Twenty-five years ago?”
“The parties got less elaborate. The office survived. And I became the technical leader I was meant to be. Sometimes the most important career move is refusing to play roles we never agreed to perform.”
I watch Morgan leave my office, walking a little taller. My retirement party will probably be chaotic, the decorations imperfect. I couldn’t care less.
But I’ll celebrate knowing that one more female engineer might spend her career focused on code instead of cupcakes.
