Answer to: How Far Would You Go to Accommodate non-Verbal Colleague?

I would fire you. You aren't communicating to the deaf/mute person with Slack, which takes 5 minutes to learn how to use. and doesn't know that you are a speaking individual (if you are communicating via chats). Additionally, you have spent a lot of time trying to work around a gatekeeper instead of working with them like your boss told you to do. He can communicate via Slack chats (we have a flexible-hybrid working environment, with 3 days in office) but cannot take calls You are an engineer, this means in theory you should know how to type words onto your computer. I mean you posted a question on Stack Exchange and everything, clearly you know how to type... Why can't you just communicate with this individual using Slack? They appear to be your company's standard line of communication. Even when face to face, we have to communicate by typing on our respective keyboards and looking at each other's screen. Or you could communicate to him via Slack. Which is how everyone else on your team probably does. Sounds like deaf mute guy (DMG) is being extremely patient/accommodating with you. If I were him, I would have asked my boss to retrain the new guy on how to use Slack to communicate with people, because the new engineer clearly doesn't know how to use it, and is typing messages on their own screen to share them with me instead of messaging me on Slack. And I cannot talk to him and a third person at the same time obviously, as he cannot hear or respond to any verbal message. So there is this app called Slack that allows you to communicate with multiple people at the same time using a chat, which is one of its many cool features. Maybe you should use it? Just a thought. Or do you think I am in the wrong to think that it affects the team's productivity? It certainly is affecting your productivity... But you are the new person on the block, still on probation, it shouldn't be that hard for them to replace you with someone who can spend the 5 minutes it takes to learn how to use a communication app. Finally, this colleague is not a DEI hire. They are the company's sole DevOPs engineer, trusted by your boss (and their superiors) to moderate / approve production deployment which is a sign that this individual is trusted, and their judgement is respected. TLDR: DMG has been at the company longer than you have, you have been there 6 weeks?. And DMG's performance/hard work has led them to being the sole DevOps guy in charge of the CI/CD pipeline. It’s likely that DMG stood up the CI/CD pipeline/Kubernetes clusters. While about all you have managed to do is refuse to use a communication app that you can learn how to use in 5 minutes. And have wasted a lot of time working around the deaf mute guy, instead of with him like your boss told you to. As a side note, deafness/muteness isn't catching, communicating with this individual won't make you go deaf/mute.