Turn the volume, not the station.

This is for you if you've just got the offer. A spring week, a summer internship, a year in industry, a grad scheme: somewhere you've wanted to be for a long time, and somewhere that, if you're honest, doesn't look much like where you're from.

I've already written about how I lost myself and found my way back, and a part of that piece was about work. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it deserved its own space, written to you rather than about me. Because the first time you walk into one of those rooms, you're not thinking about identity in the abstract. You're thinking about Monday.

So here's what I wish someone had told me before mine.

01The calculation nobody else is doing

On your first day you'll probably look around the room, and you might catch yourself counting. Not on purpose. It just happens. How many people here look like me? Then the questions start, quietly, underneath everything else. How do I come across? Is my voice too much for this floor? Was that joke all right? Should I mention where I'm from, or what I did at the weekend, or just keep it vague?

The people around you are thinking about the work. You're thinking about the work and running all of that at the same time.

There's a name for it. Researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review describe code-switching as adjusting the way you speak, look, behave and express yourself to make other people comfortable, in exchange for fair treatment and opportunities. Their research found something I think every black professional already knows: it can genuinely help your career, and it genuinely costs you. It takes effort, it takes energy, and over time it takes something out of you.

I'm telling you this first because I want you to know that the tiredness you feel at the end of a long week in a new office isn't just the hours. Some of it is the calculation. It doesn't mean you're weak, or that you don't belong. It means you've been doing two jobs, and only one of them shows up on your timesheet.

02Know which list you're on

The single most useful thing I learned was to split everything I was adjusting into two lists.

The first list is ordinary professionalism, and it applies to every single person in that building. Turning up on time. Dressing to the standard of the room. Speaking differently in a client meeting than you would on a night out. Not telling your manager everything about your weekend. None of that is you selling out. The person sitting next to you, whoever they are, is doing exactly the same thing, and nobody would call it inauthentic. It's just work.

The second list is different. It's the things nobody should be asking you to change: your name and how it's pronounced, your hair, your culture, your faith, your opinions, the way you were raised to treat people. When you feel yourself adjusting something on this list, notice it. Sometimes you'll still choose to, because you're new and you hold very little power in that room yet, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But choose it with your eyes open. The danger isn't adjusting. The danger is adjusting so much, for so long, that you stop noticing which list you're on.

A word about your hair

I'll be straight with you about this one. Hair is the one that comes up again and again, and it's the one that sits most awkwardly between the two lists.

Here's what's worth knowing. In the UK, treating someone worse because of a hairstyle linked to their race can count as race discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. And since 2020, a group of young black campaigners called the Halo Collective has run the Halo Code, a pledge that schools and employers sign to say staff can wear Afro-textured hair and protective styles, from afros and locs to braids, cornrows, twists and headwraps, without being penalised. Some of the biggest law firms in the country have signed it.

So before you start, look up whether your firm has. It takes two minutes, and it tells you something real about the room you're walking into. If they have, that's a promise you can hold them to. If they haven't, it doesn't mean the place is hostile, but it does mean you're relying on the people rather than the policy.

And knowing your rights is not the same as having to fight for them in week two. You're allowed to pick your moment. You're also allowed to decide that your hair isn't up for negotiation, full stop. Both are legitimate. The only thing I'd ask is that it's your decision, made on purpose, and not something you drift into because you were scared to ask.

03The conversation at home

There's one battle nobody warns you about, and it doesn't happen in the office. It happens at home.

A lot of us have had some version of it. You mention your hair, and you're told your hair isn't going to get you a job. You laugh too freely, or talk the way you talk with your friends, and you're told you can't carry yourself like that in a place like that. Tone it down. Cut it short. Don't give them a reason. I've had versions of these conversations myself, and I'd bet you have too.

I want to be fair to our parents here, because it comes from somewhere real. Many of them built their lives and careers in rooms that were far less welcoming than the ones we're walking into, where the rules really were that strict and standing out could cost you everything. They learned to get through those rooms by blending in, and they pass that on because they love us and don't want to see us hurt. That isn't nothing. A lot of what they taught us, the manners, the standards, the work ethic, is exactly why we're in the room at all.

But the rooms have changed, and I don't think they always see it. Firms are working harder than ever to bring in people from different backgrounds, some because they genuinely want to and some because they know they have to. The Halo Code exists. There are networks, mentors, and people who look like you a few levels up. More and more, the version of you that you're being told to hide is the version firms are actively trying to hire.

That's what makes this battle hard in its own way. It's one thing to feel you have to shrink yourself for strangers. It's another to feel it from the people who were meant to teach you to be proudest of who you are. You can end up feeling held back by your own family, and then guilty for feeling it.

The way I see it now, you can respect where the advice comes from without living by all of it. Keep the parts that still hold: the standards, the professionalism, never giving anyone an easy excuse. Let go of the parts that belong to a world that's moving on. And then show them. Sometimes the best answer to "you'll never get the job like that" is getting the job, exactly like that.

04Turn the volume, not the station

The way I think about it now is a radio.

When you're new, you might turn your volume down a little. You listen more than you talk. You read the room before you fill it. You save some of the energy, the stories and the jokes for when you know people better. That's fine. Everyone does a version of it in a new place.

What you never do is change the station. Your values, your opinions, the way you treat people, the things you care about: that's the station, and it stays exactly where it is, whatever room you're in and whoever's listening.

And the volume isn't set for good. That's the part people miss. The longer you're in a place, the more trust you build and the more room you have, the more you can turn it back up. If you're still at week-one volume a year in, something's wrong, and it's worth asking whether that's you or the room.

05Let your work buy you room

Here's the honest truth about the start: at first, people don't know you. They've got a name, a CV and a first impression, and that's all they've got. You can't control what they bring to that first impression. You can control what they see next.

So let your work go first. Be the one whose numbers are right, whose emails get answered, who says they'll do something and then does it. It sounds boring. It's the opposite. Every bit of trust you build is room you've earned, and room is exactly what lets you be more of yourself. People give a lot of space to someone they trust. They give much less to someone they're still working out.

I don't mean you have to be twice as good to get half as far. I hate that idea, even though I understand where it comes from. I mean that credibility is a kind of currency, and you get to decide what you spend it on. Some of mine I spent on being more myself, and it was the best money I've ever spent.

06Find your people, in every direction

You need more than one person in that building, and they don't all have to look like you.

Look sideways first, at the other interns and grads. They're as new and as nervous as you are, and some of the friendships you make in your first month will outlast the job. Then look up a level or two: someone close enough to remember what it was like, senior enough to know how the place actually works. Most large firms also have a network for black and ethnic minority staff. Find out if yours does and go to something early, even if you just sit at the back. You'll learn more about the culture of a place in one hour with people who've navigated it than in a month of guessing.

And keep an eye out for the person who's already doing what you're scared to do. On my placement, that was one of the graduates. He was completely himself, and he was brilliant at his job, and I noticed that those two things weren't in tension at all. If anything, the second gave him the room for the first. I've written about him before, so I won't repeat it here. What matters for you is this: one person like that changes what you think is possible. If you can't find one, you might end up being one.

07Give them more than one thing

Here's something I didn't understand until I'd lived it. When you're one of very few black people in a room, it's easy for people to know you by one thing. You become the black intern. Not because anyone's being cruel, but because if that's the only thing they've got, that's the thing they hold onto.

The answer isn't to hide it. It's to give them more.

Tell people what you're into. The side project. The places you want to travel. The sport you play, the book you're halfway through, the thing you're quietly obsessed with. On my placement, people knew I was building Ritual, and that one detail did more for me than any amount of careful, neutral small talk. It gave people something real to ask me about, and it gave me something real to talk about.

Do the same back. Ask the questions you're actually curious about. Some of those conversations won't belong at your desk, and that's fine; take them to a coffee with someone nearer your level. But have them. The more things people know you by, the harder it is for anyone to reduce you to one.

08When it isn't on you

I'd love to tell you that if you do all of this, nobody will ever make a lazy assumption about you. I can't. Someone might touch your hair, or comment on it. Someone might mix you up with the only other black person on the floor. Someone might be surprised that you're articulate, and think it's a compliment.

When that happens, remember whose problem it is. If you've done good work, treated people with respect and been good company, and someone still sees a stereotype, that says something about them, not about you. You don't have to shrink to make their assumption fit.

You also don't have to absorb it alone. You can let a small thing go if that's genuinely what you want. You can correct it lightly in the moment. You can talk to someone you trust, your network, or HR. None of those is the wrong answer, and you're allowed to choose a different one each time. What I'd steer you away from is pretending it didn't happen and quietly carrying it home. That's how the calculation gets heavier.

09The proof for whoever's next

Here's the part I think about most.

When I walked into my placement, I watched someone who'd made it inside without leaving himself at the door. I didn't copy him. I just took him as proof, and that proof gave me permission to be more of myself than I'd been in years.

One day, sooner than you think, someone will be watching you like that. A first-year on a spring week. A new intern on your floor. A kid on an insight day who's counting the room, the way you might on Monday. They won't remember the deal you worked on or the model you built. They'll remember whether you looked like you belonged there as yourself.

So walk in. Turn the volume wherever you need it at first, keep the station exactly where it is, and do work good enough to buy yourself the room to turn it back up. Then, once you're in, leave the door a little wider than you found it.

10How Ritual helps

11Questions

1. The Costs of Code-Switching: Harvard Business Review, 2019
2. The costs of code-switching: University of Michigan, Department of Psychology
3. Equality Act 2010, section 9: race: legislation.gov.uk
4. The Halo Code for workplaces: The Halo Collective
5. Linklaters adopts the UK's first Black hair code: Linklaters, 2021

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