Society needs static glue that holds it together AND dynamic change to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances (MoQ) To my thinking, these archetypes conform to male/female dichotomies that just simply ARE and to argue over them is distracting from the main project which is how to blend both together in harmony and take on the real problems of the community, or the company, or the world.
I'm a man and so I've faced different obstacles and learned different lessons. My biggest obstacle was my own lack of conscientiousness and addictive personality (which led me to lack focus and consistency and integrity until I was 1-2 years into sobriety). My second biggest obstacle was probably DEI. I know that I lost a position with the FDNY in 2014-2015 due to DEI (and so did everyone who took our civil service exam). I've interviewed for probably 100 jobs since then and have had very little success, despite being an articulate and experienced veteran with multiple degrees. There's obviously no way to know for sure, and I rarely consider the matter. It is what it is.
(I now have a very good editorial job, given to me by another former soldier and ex-prisoner).
To women I would say that asserting yourself and being honest about your feelings is probably a good way to go. These are things which many women seem to struggle with. They simply WAIT for recognition or raises, and they tend to stew and sit on their anger or their slights, becoming passive aggressive, and gossiping. This can have a deleterious effect on team dynamics. Women tend to be very conscientious and sociable and focused and productive, in my experience... but until you can speak to people directly and feel capable of ORDERING others to do things you'll never achieve a leadership position. If you're productive and not assertive, you'll often just end up exploited.
To men I would say that consistency is important, and integrity is crucial. It might not help you at work, and it could hurt you, but it's what being a man is all about. Women often seem more concerned with maintaining appearances, or being kind. Someone has to uphold standards and anchor values in truth. I've come to believe that this is a core function of men in society... like it or not. There's far too little integrity these days and far too much ambition and compromise.
Also to men: status is paramount. Be ambitious and try to build something. It will help in life, and in romance. I never cared about status much when I was younger. Now that I'm looking to get married I understand how important it is for women. Women often "don't care" about your job... but they care about confidence, ambition, organizational discipline, and assertiveness. These are all ciphers for status. Women care deeply about status in romance, I think, but they seem to apply a little social desirability bias in their presentation and deny that. I'm not exactly sure why this is but these kinds of appealing myths seem to be everywhere in the dating scene. "I'm looking for a good communicator." "I want someone who can call me on my bullshit." "The way to my heart is to just be yourself." These kinds of claims are ubiquitous, as far as a I can tell. I'm not saying people are lying but these are never accurate representations of the people making the claims. How many male nurses do you know who are dating female doctors?
You're well ahead of your time. A lot of your writing strikes me as taboo-yet-obvious criticism of what we could call "toxic feminity" — aspects of feminine culture that are maladaptive. My interpretation of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels is that they do the same, but with more subtlety through the "show don't tell" lens of fiction.
I'd bet that five years from now a lot of the taboo criticism you write about will be conventional wisdom. And I'm curious how culture and politics will react. Early writing about toxic masculinity was an important corrective, but then it got applied to everything and became meaningless, provoking a backlash. Could the same eventually happen around the discourse of toxic feminity?
One more thought: Reshma Saujani wrote a piece arguing that the most machismo men are the likeliest to be unhappy. I wonder if the same holds true for the same feminist women and if it has to do with resentful zero sum thinking.
Great piece again. I think you and I and my wife are in very similar types of work (I am in financial services, my wife is in B2B healthcare, both doing “data” work). My wife reports that her experience is similar to yours: that she has had many male champions as managers and coworkers, and that her worst experiences were at the hands of other women doing underhanded things.
I do think there are some biased dudes out there still, I suspect some in my workplace of being thus, but I also think they are on the way out or toward being less numerous at least. My worst manager was also the only female manager I ever had in corporate.
We’ve both also worked with numerous great women who lifted others up and didn’t do underhanded stuff. Great essay again.
This is what younger women need to understand about success, and they're NOT getting it from much of today's feminism. It's all about merit and success and a lot less about what's between your legs. It may still be a man's world but it's a lot less so than it was even 25 years ago when I observed corporate leadership and team pages in which white male faces predominated, then a few white women in more feminine C-suite roles (CMO, Chief Communications Officer, Chief HR Officer). Now I see female CEOs, CFOs and other female officers and execs and they're not all so blindingly white, either. This ain't yer Mad Men era anymore. Competent, motivated, assertive women who can work with men without a lot of drama and meet them on their own plane will do much better than those who hang back. Well spoken, Radha, and thanks for the reminder!
This has 100% been my experience as well. I’ve even gone so far as removing myself from competition for management roles, because I don’t have the emotional energy to deal with relational aggression; and it doesn’t seem to help: I’ve had my phone broken while on a project, ideas taken, clothing stolen (we live in campaign houses), and a couple of particularly nasty rumors started. If there’s a balance of men and women on a team, it leads to professional interactions; but if there’s either a large majority of women, or only two or three women among a dozen men, it triggers this bizarre behavior. I’m not sure why. It’s definitely scarcity and fear-based, but HR will never put a check and balance on it.
Thought provoking, as always. You bring up things I could not have, due to our differing perspectives, which I find incredibly valuable. Your general premise applies to anyone. Your four points on analytical skill, etc, is pure gold for anyone in leadership.
Your insights into women:women interactions is truly enlightening. It makes me think back on situations that I did not understand at the time in a new light.
You are 100% that all I ever cared about was results. If you produce results, I was happy as tour manager.
There is one situation in which a female coworker went off on another female coworkers hierarchy of people they listen to (implying that my opinion was taken because I a white guy, so top of their hierarchy). I see this now as both a social justice treatise in a complaint as well as an indirect way to deal with another woman.
There was a lot of bullying, whether direct or not. Passive aggression from female leaders to their female staff (and vice versa). Very little direct communication (and from my perspective, problem-solving) as it related to interpersonal dynamics. The only concept I applied to it was 'dick measuring/pissing contest', but that feels like a more male construct for disagreement after reading your piece.
This is basically me. I work in marketing and most meetings are about 60-80% female.
I rather like it since everyone is supportive and agreeable. It’s not a high pressure environment, which suits me. There is a massive tilt towards enforced positivity which could lead to serious blind spots, as we selectively just say good things about what is happening in the business.
I prefer working with females, but if I am doing something in my personal life that is ambitious and requires vision, I much prefer to work with men or do it alone.
Working or succeeding with men is ridiculously easy. They are object-oriented. That means they focus on the work, almost exclusively. If the Work is succeeding, they won't care if it's a "Good" person or a "Bad" person, or the person did something wrong once we can hold over them. They won't care if you're a man or a woman, so they immediately cede half the field, while being work oriented means the majority of men have a bias to stay put in the competency of their present task. Being promoted would mean they would have more human interactions, which they are not likely to prefer, being work and object-oriented.
Now here's your problem: if men are work oriented and women are different, then .... women are what? In some shape or manner, not "work" oriented, not "task" oriented, not "success" oriented. They are relationship-oriented. It's okay for the project to fail and the company to lose money if the right friends prosper and the right people are happy. Disney is a high-profile example right now among hundreds, losing billions with one debacle after another, not the slightest impulse to change. The companies will, ultimately, cease to exist on this basis, because, physics. I'm not sure the opposite is true, but let's change venues and point out if man's "object orienting" were the primary approach in family and society, everyone might be fed...but they wouldn't know why they should be, and that would be an equal-scale failure.
It’s true, but the former is more of a constant presence in my life than the latter, and it’s not like women would wield power any better. My point is that one can behave badly regardless of sex, and we shouldn’t assume women are all wonderful just because they haven’t waged war. I was once a far shittier person to other people than I am now. I do hear you.\
I don't think she was saying that women are nicer, but that they don't have the work oriented focus needed to make war.
My epiphany came, watching women play rugby. Without belaboring the story, they seriously lacked situational awareness, and this was about a self-selecting a sample of butch women as one can get.
Women are more risk-averse than men, on the whole. I don’t think that’s debatable (or necessarily a negative) and I think that predicts different behavior from men and women in the workplace.(rule following vs. risk taking)
Situationally, I would guess that many women don’t need a higher income. They are either supporting *just* themselves or they are a dual income family. I think this plays out with single men vs. married men as well. Part of wanting to get ahead is the thrill of the hunt. Part is actually needing the money.
Agreed with all this. Women haven’t evolved to be comfortable with competition and will inevitably end up making different choices if they have kids, and feminism sells the lie that you can have it all. We are also risk averse, but then we force other women to behave the same way through indirect aggression.
Interesting essay! Enjoyed reading your perspective.
One thing really caught my eye – why do you think hard skills for 5.5 are most important? I think they’re becoming increasingly less important than soft skills so interested to hear.
It’s a fair question. It’s not that soft skills are irrelevant. In fact, my soft skills give me an edge over people who only have technical ability and vice versa; women would do well to develop their analytical abilities and work with complex tools and organize humans. Meaning, my soft skills became valuable only after I developed hard skills rather than by themselves, because soft skills can’t be measured. And because they are immeasurable, backstabbing and indirect aggression is easily employed by women in these functions against other women; meritocratic competition is suppressed.
Meanwhile, layoffs are going to affect people who are technical without soft skills and people with only soft skills in functions like HR, marketing and other communication heavy functions. If you have both types of skills, you have an advantage over those who only have one type. And women don’t need to code to develop technical ability, just need to understand data and how it moves through systems, and how humans and technology interact. E.g., technically oriented marketers who work with tools will be more insulated than women who work on high level strategy only and don’t get their hands dirty.
In my experience, women are able to control the Overton Window within organizations much better than men. I think this will lead to limited innovation within prestigious institutions as women filter up the corporate ladder and men simply NEET out. How do you think corporations will change or adapt to shifting cultures within their office space and Zoom calls?
I think the men at the top levels know what I’m saying is true, or that there is at least truth to it. The ones who get angry at me for saying it are always women. The overton window is about to move again, despite individual women doubling down on this sort of thinking. Officially, the shift has happened in HR departments with the end of DEI programs, but it’s not resulted in all the women I know considering why, because Trump did it.
It's difficult to predict future events, from sports to the stock market to how your boss might react to something.
On one hand, a lot of people are fed up with the overfeminized, "safetyist" HR Karen types that have filtered their neuroses through corporate culture.
But once something is there it can be hard to root out, and as I note in my latest article this veneer of niceness can be a very useful tyrannical shield to hide your "not-so-nice" business practices behind.
O yes. Women are also much better at the bureaucratic infighting that takes place in lower and middle management.
Anyway, success within an organization has little to do with competence. The attached link is long, but i assure you that there hardly a dull or uninstructive word in it.
I started my biz twelve years ago after facing what you described in this article in 'corporate america' as a ... male. My spouse has had her unfair share of run-ins with semi-violent women, and one or two men (not physical, but 'wear-you-down' types). All sociopaths!
I ran into several sociapaths along the way to my own independece (work-wise), one male and one female. I can spot them a mile away now. They run on a spectrum of attributes. They also work in various ways, and timing is critical. The end goal is to either stop you in your tracks or sabatoge your efforts...which feels the same.
You could a separate article just on that as many books have been written on it (Sociopath Next Door is a good one). As you mention, it's best to surround yourself with a network of 'trustables', and keep your head down with remainder. You don't need to connect or be friends with everyone you meet and some will turn out to be best friend for life, while others will continue to let you down, intentionally or otherwise.
Keep up the great articles! Love the thought exercises.
Society needs static glue that holds it together AND dynamic change to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances (MoQ) To my thinking, these archetypes conform to male/female dichotomies that just simply ARE and to argue over them is distracting from the main project which is how to blend both together in harmony and take on the real problems of the community, or the company, or the world.
I'm a man and so I've faced different obstacles and learned different lessons. My biggest obstacle was my own lack of conscientiousness and addictive personality (which led me to lack focus and consistency and integrity until I was 1-2 years into sobriety). My second biggest obstacle was probably DEI. I know that I lost a position with the FDNY in 2014-2015 due to DEI (and so did everyone who took our civil service exam). I've interviewed for probably 100 jobs since then and have had very little success, despite being an articulate and experienced veteran with multiple degrees. There's obviously no way to know for sure, and I rarely consider the matter. It is what it is.
(I now have a very good editorial job, given to me by another former soldier and ex-prisoner).
To women I would say that asserting yourself and being honest about your feelings is probably a good way to go. These are things which many women seem to struggle with. They simply WAIT for recognition or raises, and they tend to stew and sit on their anger or their slights, becoming passive aggressive, and gossiping. This can have a deleterious effect on team dynamics. Women tend to be very conscientious and sociable and focused and productive, in my experience... but until you can speak to people directly and feel capable of ORDERING others to do things you'll never achieve a leadership position. If you're productive and not assertive, you'll often just end up exploited.
To men I would say that consistency is important, and integrity is crucial. It might not help you at work, and it could hurt you, but it's what being a man is all about. Women often seem more concerned with maintaining appearances, or being kind. Someone has to uphold standards and anchor values in truth. I've come to believe that this is a core function of men in society... like it or not. There's far too little integrity these days and far too much ambition and compromise.
Also to men: status is paramount. Be ambitious and try to build something. It will help in life, and in romance. I never cared about status much when I was younger. Now that I'm looking to get married I understand how important it is for women. Women often "don't care" about your job... but they care about confidence, ambition, organizational discipline, and assertiveness. These are all ciphers for status. Women care deeply about status in romance, I think, but they seem to apply a little social desirability bias in their presentation and deny that. I'm not exactly sure why this is but these kinds of appealing myths seem to be everywhere in the dating scene. "I'm looking for a good communicator." "I want someone who can call me on my bullshit." "The way to my heart is to just be yourself." These kinds of claims are ubiquitous, as far as a I can tell. I'm not saying people are lying but these are never accurate representations of the people making the claims. How many male nurses do you know who are dating female doctors?
I think my biggest obstacles was bringing conscientiousness and lack of agreeableness to academia.
You're well ahead of your time. A lot of your writing strikes me as taboo-yet-obvious criticism of what we could call "toxic feminity" — aspects of feminine culture that are maladaptive. My interpretation of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels is that they do the same, but with more subtlety through the "show don't tell" lens of fiction.
I'd bet that five years from now a lot of the taboo criticism you write about will be conventional wisdom. And I'm curious how culture and politics will react. Early writing about toxic masculinity was an important corrective, but then it got applied to everything and became meaningless, provoking a backlash. Could the same eventually happen around the discourse of toxic feminity?
One more thought: Reshma Saujani wrote a piece arguing that the most machismo men are the likeliest to be unhappy. I wonder if the same holds true for the same feminist women and if it has to do with resentful zero sum thinking.
https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/feminism-essay-reshma-saujani/
Great piece again. I think you and I and my wife are in very similar types of work (I am in financial services, my wife is in B2B healthcare, both doing “data” work). My wife reports that her experience is similar to yours: that she has had many male champions as managers and coworkers, and that her worst experiences were at the hands of other women doing underhanded things.
I do think there are some biased dudes out there still, I suspect some in my workplace of being thus, but I also think they are on the way out or toward being less numerous at least. My worst manager was also the only female manager I ever had in corporate.
We’ve both also worked with numerous great women who lifted others up and didn’t do underhanded stuff. Great essay again.
This is what younger women need to understand about success, and they're NOT getting it from much of today's feminism. It's all about merit and success and a lot less about what's between your legs. It may still be a man's world but it's a lot less so than it was even 25 years ago when I observed corporate leadership and team pages in which white male faces predominated, then a few white women in more feminine C-suite roles (CMO, Chief Communications Officer, Chief HR Officer). Now I see female CEOs, CFOs and other female officers and execs and they're not all so blindingly white, either. This ain't yer Mad Men era anymore. Competent, motivated, assertive women who can work with men without a lot of drama and meet them on their own plane will do much better than those who hang back. Well spoken, Radha, and thanks for the reminder!
This has 100% been my experience as well. I’ve even gone so far as removing myself from competition for management roles, because I don’t have the emotional energy to deal with relational aggression; and it doesn’t seem to help: I’ve had my phone broken while on a project, ideas taken, clothing stolen (we live in campaign houses), and a couple of particularly nasty rumors started. If there’s a balance of men and women on a team, it leads to professional interactions; but if there’s either a large majority of women, or only two or three women among a dozen men, it triggers this bizarre behavior. I’m not sure why. It’s definitely scarcity and fear-based, but HR will never put a check and balance on it.
Thought provoking, as always. You bring up things I could not have, due to our differing perspectives, which I find incredibly valuable. Your general premise applies to anyone. Your four points on analytical skill, etc, is pure gold for anyone in leadership.
Your insights into women:women interactions is truly enlightening. It makes me think back on situations that I did not understand at the time in a new light.
You are 100% that all I ever cared about was results. If you produce results, I was happy as tour manager.
Appreciate this, Matt. Curious if you can share any examples of those situations.
There is one situation in which a female coworker went off on another female coworkers hierarchy of people they listen to (implying that my opinion was taken because I a white guy, so top of their hierarchy). I see this now as both a social justice treatise in a complaint as well as an indirect way to deal with another woman.
There was a lot of bullying, whether direct or not. Passive aggression from female leaders to their female staff (and vice versa). Very little direct communication (and from my perspective, problem-solving) as it related to interpersonal dynamics. The only concept I applied to it was 'dick measuring/pissing contest', but that feels like a more male construct for disagreement after reading your piece.
I would love to read that essay about being in a female dominated field with a analytical brain
This is basically me. I work in marketing and most meetings are about 60-80% female.
I rather like it since everyone is supportive and agreeable. It’s not a high pressure environment, which suits me. There is a massive tilt towards enforced positivity which could lead to serious blind spots, as we selectively just say good things about what is happening in the business.
I prefer working with females, but if I am doing something in my personal life that is ambitious and requires vision, I much prefer to work with men or do it alone.
Working or succeeding with men is ridiculously easy. They are object-oriented. That means they focus on the work, almost exclusively. If the Work is succeeding, they won't care if it's a "Good" person or a "Bad" person, or the person did something wrong once we can hold over them. They won't care if you're a man or a woman, so they immediately cede half the field, while being work oriented means the majority of men have a bias to stay put in the competency of their present task. Being promoted would mean they would have more human interactions, which they are not likely to prefer, being work and object-oriented.
Now here's your problem: if men are work oriented and women are different, then .... women are what? In some shape or manner, not "work" oriented, not "task" oriented, not "success" oriented. They are relationship-oriented. It's okay for the project to fail and the company to lose money if the right friends prosper and the right people are happy. Disney is a high-profile example right now among hundreds, losing billions with one debacle after another, not the slightest impulse to change. The companies will, ultimately, cease to exist on this basis, because, physics. I'm not sure the opposite is true, but let's change venues and point out if man's "object orienting" were the primary approach in family and society, everyone might be fed...but they wouldn't know why they should be, and that would be an equal-scale failure.
I believe Ursula K. LeGuin pointed out that, while women are capable of astounding cruelty, only men and ants are capable of making war.
It’s true, but the former is more of a constant presence in my life than the latter, and it’s not like women would wield power any better. My point is that one can behave badly regardless of sex, and we shouldn’t assume women are all wonderful just because they haven’t waged war. I was once a far shittier person to other people than I am now. I do hear you.\
I don't think she was saying that women are nicer, but that they don't have the work oriented focus needed to make war.
My epiphany came, watching women play rugby. Without belaboring the story, they seriously lacked situational awareness, and this was about a self-selecting a sample of butch women as one can get.
Work-oriented focus?
From earlier comments. To do Whatever It Takes to get the job done.
Women are more risk-averse than men, on the whole. I don’t think that’s debatable (or necessarily a negative) and I think that predicts different behavior from men and women in the workplace.(rule following vs. risk taking)
Situationally, I would guess that many women don’t need a higher income. They are either supporting *just* themselves or they are a dual income family. I think this plays out with single men vs. married men as well. Part of wanting to get ahead is the thrill of the hunt. Part is actually needing the money.
Agreed with all this. Women haven’t evolved to be comfortable with competition and will inevitably end up making different choices if they have kids, and feminism sells the lie that you can have it all. We are also risk averse, but then we force other women to behave the same way through indirect aggression.
Interesting essay! Enjoyed reading your perspective.
One thing really caught my eye – why do you think hard skills for 5.5 are most important? I think they’re becoming increasingly less important than soft skills so interested to hear.
It’s a fair question. It’s not that soft skills are irrelevant. In fact, my soft skills give me an edge over people who only have technical ability and vice versa; women would do well to develop their analytical abilities and work with complex tools and organize humans. Meaning, my soft skills became valuable only after I developed hard skills rather than by themselves, because soft skills can’t be measured. And because they are immeasurable, backstabbing and indirect aggression is easily employed by women in these functions against other women; meritocratic competition is suppressed.
Meanwhile, layoffs are going to affect people who are technical without soft skills and people with only soft skills in functions like HR, marketing and other communication heavy functions. If you have both types of skills, you have an advantage over those who only have one type. And women don’t need to code to develop technical ability, just need to understand data and how it moves through systems, and how humans and technology interact. E.g., technically oriented marketers who work with tools will be more insulated than women who work on high level strategy only and don’t get their hands dirty.
Solid read.
In my experience, women are able to control the Overton Window within organizations much better than men. I think this will lead to limited innovation within prestigious institutions as women filter up the corporate ladder and men simply NEET out. How do you think corporations will change or adapt to shifting cultures within their office space and Zoom calls?
I think the men at the top levels know what I’m saying is true, or that there is at least truth to it. The ones who get angry at me for saying it are always women. The overton window is about to move again, despite individual women doubling down on this sort of thinking. Officially, the shift has happened in HR departments with the end of DEI programs, but it’s not resulted in all the women I know considering why, because Trump did it.
It's difficult to predict future events, from sports to the stock market to how your boss might react to something.
On one hand, a lot of people are fed up with the overfeminized, "safetyist" HR Karen types that have filtered their neuroses through corporate culture.
But once something is there it can be hard to root out, and as I note in my latest article this veneer of niceness can be a very useful tyrannical shield to hide your "not-so-nice" business practices behind.
O yes. Women are also much better at the bureaucratic infighting that takes place in lower and middle management.
Anyway, success within an organization has little to do with competence. The attached link is long, but i assure you that there hardly a dull or uninstructive word in it.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Enjoyed the article and all the comments + ribbonfarm link, especially this:
https://ribbonfarm.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hughMcLeodCompanyHierarchy.jpg
I started my biz twelve years ago after facing what you described in this article in 'corporate america' as a ... male. My spouse has had her unfair share of run-ins with semi-violent women, and one or two men (not physical, but 'wear-you-down' types). All sociopaths!
I ran into several sociapaths along the way to my own independece (work-wise), one male and one female. I can spot them a mile away now. They run on a spectrum of attributes. They also work in various ways, and timing is critical. The end goal is to either stop you in your tracks or sabatoge your efforts...which feels the same.
You could a separate article just on that as many books have been written on it (Sociopath Next Door is a good one). As you mention, it's best to surround yourself with a network of 'trustables', and keep your head down with remainder. You don't need to connect or be friends with everyone you meet and some will turn out to be best friend for life, while others will continue to let you down, intentionally or otherwise.
Keep up the great articles! Love the thought exercises.
It’s funny, you’re the second person to mention Rao to me. I suppose it’s time to dig in.
There should be a marble statue of him, buck-ass naked, for his teachings on corporate organization and sociopathy alone.