In a now-deleted TikTok, two young female Product Managers, Darby (@durbinmalonster on TikTok) and Callie, describe their jobs overseeing engineers and designers for software products. The controversy? They're working at the pool, laptops mere inches from the water. Darby alludes that this is not a typical video for her, saying, "if you've looked at my TikTok, you'd never guess I had a job."
This TikTok, which circulated on Twitter following its deletion, sparked controversy about if the women featured were doing "real jobs." In response to the video, one viral tweet hypothesized that most white-collar workers are essentially paid to sit around and do nothing all day.
Other commenters had various takes on the usefulness and necessity of the Product Manager position. Darby even chimed into one poster's comment, clarifying that they were on a work-sponsored trip and claiming it was absurd for him to judge her competence as a PM simply from a video made for a target audience of non-tech workers.
Despite significant outrage directed towards these women, many posters came to their defense, saying that if two men were to do the same thing, the response would be very different.
Before she deleted the TikTok, Darby responded to some of the particularly sexist comments on the video. One read, "We all know why you have your job. Don't kid yourself," implying she was only hired because of her looks. She expressed disappointment that the fun one-minute video "has turned into this Product Management tech sexist hate thread…What you don't see is that we didn't spend that long in the hot tub, moved to the shade not long after, and we were back in the hotel room in meetings for the next several hours."
