Corporate life as 40s female in management is crap?

[Sammi83]

Hi

My DH suggested i post here as he thinks the way i feel is just life and to suck it up so here goes

Im 40 and basically not had a few good years work wise. The constant thinking : worrying about situations and low level disatisfaction is spoiling my enjoyment of life. We live in london and could move out and downsize and pack it in but be very hard up and get no benefits / no pension. Have 3 expensive DC (9+) one with ADHD & mortgage going up £500 from July

Work details examples:

• promoted to management around 5y ago. Immediately jealous female direct report makes life a misery refusing to do anything i ask as angry wasnt told about role. Boss says needs a dev plan. Puts in grievance. I won but took a year of huge stress while team split up during covid hospifalised with stress for a week

• after this moved to diff role in same place, huge team busy but ok. But toxic sexist culture (FCA investigating). Won constructive dismissal after being forced to be a sexist whistleblower (told I had to be). Then bonus slashed. Workload inc. team taken away to make unwell. Had burnout for 4m and a psychotherapist. Work made it look like i was fired and people told not to contact me so couldnt say goodbye after working there for 7yrs

• after burnout took what was told as temp to perm head of dept role for 10m as contract (unwell and needed to get work asap). Then work merged another company and told go perm feb then on hold. Then maternity cover came back 4m early (June rather than Nov due to merger panic when baby 4m old- mad). Is rude to me, shouted at me during handovers (embarrassingly had to escalate to her boss as doesnt seem to he coping). Deleted me from my team meetings and not thanked me publicly.

Have a shared boss who is following up with her but now i am still contractor, perm on hold til xmas. Told new role no team due to merger. No hol pay over summer so out of pocket. Boss does really like me and his boss.

AIBU corporate life just unsatisfying

or is this corporate management (as a woman, treated as less than)

Or is this a poor series of events over last 5yrs and next 5 likely to be much better? Thanks

It's no better in your fifties, trust me.

I didn’t read your full post as it is so negative and anxiety inducing.

It’s lifestyle v living.

If you and your DH can downsize without being stressed financially I know which I’d choose. You will always be replaceable at work. You are not replaceable at home. This must be having a hugely negative affect on your whole family. Look after yourself.

I hear you op! Unless you are very lucky with those you manage you get resentment from you direct reports, who collectively critique you behind your back. They all think they could do your job better.
Senior management make unreasonable demands that put you in awkward positions with your team. You always have to be the bad cop but rarely the good cop.
Then you take the flack from customers and clients.
Nobody notices the good work you do but anything negative is picked up on and remembered forever.
Not fun

I'm in my 40s in corporate management and nothing of this resonates. You need to move jobs.

So sorry to read your post OP.

I'm a senior female in my 40s in a corporate role and don't recognise your experience as being anything like mine. i do work in a supportive leadership team (to a point). If I experienced any top down unpleasantness I would get legal representation immediately though. Where I have experienced team dysfunction (including grievances) I've managed it without feeling too stressed about it.

Maybe change sectors? Is your expertise transferable?

My life has been made immeasurably better the more senior I have become because I've had more control over my diary and I set my department culture.

I wouldn’t say it resonates but I have seen the kind of behaviours you have identified (as have my contemporaries). But I have now been around long enough to know that it means I need to leave an organisation with crap culture/team because there are better ones out there.

What area do you work in? You mention fca regulated but investment banking vs asset management vs financial advisors vs insurance all have quite different cultures. As do specialisms - e.g. IT vs investment managers.

What do you do? Is this just the culture of your whole sector?
Work out your transferable skills and move sector! Not everywhere is like this

Thanks for thoughts!

Retail banking technology (UK brands)

Sounds like a very crap unsupportive corporate environment to me in the past and you haven’t recovered from the last 5 years mentally. The next 5 years might be better if you like your current role, but the cost of living mortgage situation may hang around for a few years.

You need to figure out how to recover from all this stress.

I’m late 30s in senior management at a corporate and without meaning to sound smug or rude, I’m afraid that your post doesn’t resonate. I really enjoy my job, have respect from colleagues and don’t have a toxic environment.

Yours sounds tough. I suspect it’s more about the job itself than being a 40s female. If you’re in banking tech I’m sure there will be many other roles available to you.

The fact that the FCA are investigating suggests that your firm is worst than most. Can you look for a similar role in another firm?

I'm sorry to hear that you have had a tough time.

To me, it sounds like you've been unlucky to move to places with poor management culture. It's hard to scope out a job before you move, but there are things you can do, such as finding people on LinkedIn who have quit, and asking them what it is really like.

You need to look somewhere else. Your workplaces sound terrible and they do not resonate with my experience, those are nightmare scenarios. Frankly, I left a job that was turning a bit like that way before it got even close to a stage where grievances would need to be made. I think you were unlucky but complaints etc don't work. You need to quit, a toxic environment doesn't change, ever. The company always wins, it doesn't matter what it says on paper. I don't really understand why you would stay at those places as long as you did.

To confirm i am at a different firm- FCA are investigating due to the case.
Lots of women there being demoted, managed out, sexist comments, tech boss got his PA pregnant, the works. No way of knowing internally

Now in never land of merger and being told made perm but no team, vague role i keep having to write pitch docs for. Embarrassed to see people as obvious just being fobbed off.

Looking externally but takes months going through the interviews and is it just similar elsewhere. Sounds like possibly not :)

Poor cultures are not universal but they are common. I am stuck in one now. As a late 40s woman I feel like I’m everyone’s mum; we’ll bring you all the tricky problems, if you don’t solve them you’ll get the blame but if you do you sure won’t get credit or acknowledgment. Because that’s your job, isn’t it mum? Fucking sick of it tbh

It seems from reading your posts that you don’t seem to have, or feel like you have, much control over events. This can be very stressful if you feel everything is done to you and/or you don’t have choices.

I found it really empowering to be able to detach and give less shits at work when I knew I had options and wasn’t dependent on a crap situation to pay my mortgage. If you’re already looking for new jobs then that’s great. I’m in a different industry so I can’t comment on how widespread the poor corporate culture is in yours, but I certainly don’t recognise it in mine, so keep looking for a better company.

I'm in senior management in my early fifties and although there are general niggles and frustrations, I really like my workplace and haven't experienced anything like that OP.

Time to change industries if possible?

Anyone can have a nasty person working for them, regardless of age. So that I think is bad luck. The other aspects I think are downsides that many women in management face.

Sounds like you’ve been exceptionally unlucky. 50s female here, senior in finance, very different experience.

Have you considered consulting? RB tech skills are in high demand, and I suspect you would be a very attractive candidate for a Big 4 or similar. PM if you’d like any insights.

I demoted myself from a management role to my previous more ‘doing’ role and a few years later got promoted to a more senior ‘doing’ role on a better salary than the management role. I realise this is unusual but could you do anything like that?
I could not handle the toxicity and pointlessness of the management role. Also I was late 40s with teens probably perimenopausal and I just didn’t have the emotional energy for the corporate bullshit
im much happier now that I feel I actually achieve something instead of faffing about with spreadsheets and tedious endless meetings.
i don’t think life has to be like the way you describe.

It’s difficult to understand exactly what happened from your post but when I worked in the city it’s a very competitive environment and people being pushed into compromise agreements to leave isn’t at all unusual. I think it’s a bit worse for women than men, certainly but nothing you’ve said sounds exceptional. Maybe it’s just not the career for you or maybe you can get a better job elsewhere. You need to decide which

Sounds hideous.

I'm 50 plus and luckily never experienced anything like you describe.

I'd change industries too!

“not thanked me publicly.”

Thanked you publicly for what? Covering her job during her maternity leave? If so, that’s really not the stuff of public thanking!

It sounds to me like a mixture of environment and then how you’re reacting to it / dealing with it.

In the first role, it sounds like an awful place to work. But after a week off hospitalised with stress, in a known toxic place, you didn’t move on. So was the 4 months off with burnout so surprising?

Now you’re in an other role that’s problematic for you. The temp to perm messing about isn’t about you, it’s about the merger. So you either need to be someone who can wait that out without feeling overly stressed - or recognise it’s not for you, and get out. That doesn’t require an all or nothing move out and downsize! Can just be moving to another company.

When you’ve had such a poor experience before, I think it’s easy to spiral downwards. Like thinking it’s all like this… so it’s good you’ve asked. No, it’s not my experience - corporate management in my 30s/40s and now 50s.

Thanks all, hoped this year would be settled after left other place and not been that way. Had psychotherapy maybe need more help

Publicly thanked. I mean re maternity cover coming back, not even said thank you to my face, just acting entitled and not said anything nice to me.

After the hosp stress i was promoted and moved somewhere else in the same firm, i did apply for external jobs and got one but Glassdoor said culturally misogynistic and avoid for senior women so decided to leave it. Dont know if a mistake probably was.

You have had very bad luck.

I hope you find a good business soon. There are good businesses out there where colleagues are supportive and appreciate your work.

Of course the reason they appreciate it is that it’s long hours of hard work and how willing and effective you are makes a huge difference to the rest of the team.

Thats a different stressor, but less emotional, and appreciated by everyone else in the team who also feel it.