I feel like I need to out myself for promotions and to be more visible

Yeah this is sort of the problem with equal outcome. Even the people who get the roles complain that they feel like they didn’t get it because of their skill.

I’m in a similar boat where I’m actually Bi but don’t want to broadcast that to the world. I would rather have my work speak for itself.

I want to challenge your assumptions. I work at a place where last year 2/3s of all candidates had to be a disadvantaged group. But I, a white dude, never felt held back in my career possibilities. It might take a bit more effort, but I still feel like I have as much opportunity as I can sink time into.

This could have more to do with how you've been tackling the problem or a bad work environment only doing diversity for diversity sake

What actions are you considering/have you tried outside of outing yourself? Some things to try:

- Build skills in a specialty that you're interested in. Maybe you're great at optimizing native code? Or really great at certain frontend stacks? Or have demonstrated a lot of leadership and mentoring of junior devs? Whatever the projects you want, focus on building street-cred in this area and seen as an authority.

- Build street cred _outside the company_: blog, speak, do open source, etc in that specialization to build your brand. Share what you create liberally internally and externally. If you're a public enough presence in the tech space, you'll stop being spammed by recruiters. Instead you'll be contacted by technology leaders (internally/externally) with specific opportunities.

- Just switch jobs... Control your destiny and just find another place to work that seems more likely to give you the opportunities you want.

I would immediately quit if I found myself working in such a discriminatory/ toxic environment.

I don’t want to dismiss anything you’ve said and am sorry you feel that way.

Though I would say I worked at a company where I saw many people promoted into high paying and high responsibility jobs who I felt were not particularly deserving.

Looking back I know that I tried to find reasons they could have deserved it or ways I did not or ways that they gamed the system. Resulting in me feeling quite bitter.

Now I would say promotions are largely random. I’ve seen some very capable people shoot to the top, some forced out.

I now simply refer to Alan watts for career advice: https://youtu.be/6Wwj6eNXgVo

It’s a ladder, it’s ordered sometimes other it’s chaotic and makes no sense. Focus of yourself. Your knowledge. What you can learn, how you can improve. Compete with yourself. People tend to see this in the end. It is also better for your psyche.

As a fellow LGBTQ I'm surprised you feel held back by passing as a 'regular dude'. Though it sounds like you work at a bigger company with actual diversity initiatives? My experience is with smaller companies, with no such efforts. Ironically I find them to be quite meritocratic and fair to everyone regardless how they identify or present.

But in any case, I do hear you and I'm sorry that you need to play a certain role in order to advance there. If you're like me you've done enough negotiating, questioning, doubting yourself, you don't want to have to open that back up and possibly transgress the boundaries you've set in order to play the game.

I'm honestly not sure what to say. In corporate America I think we all have to play the game to an extent, identity notwithstanding. Maybe look at a smaller company, and also don't pin your self-worth to what happens in your career. You are so much more than that.

Also, I'm curious if you find this experience to be as potent when working remotely (assuming you do/did?). I find that levels the playing field in a certain way, because I can let go of certain expectations on appearance/behavior and just truly be myself behind a computer screen.