AIBU to find career advice from privileged speakers tone deaf?

[Bake]

We had a speaker at a work network event talking about her highly successful career and giving women advice about how she made it to where she is.

She talked about a difficult time in her life, she had small children, one who didn't sleep well, she was grieving, stressed, experiencing peri-menopause symptoms etc. These circumstances are so close to my current experience that it really piqued my interest, I couldn't wait to hear how she made it through this tough time and how I could use her experience to help me through.

I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry when she said how she made it through. I'm glad I had joined in Teams rather than being in the room. She quit her job and took 7 months off work. 😳

I understand she was there to talk about her experience, and she was fortunate to be in a position to do this, but I just don't see how it's helping the majority of the audience. After 7 months, she was asked to come back by her old boss, only agreed if it was on her terms, set up a consultation business and returned to the same job but on a day rate she set. It's not the first time we've had a speaker like this. Another man, who has given the same talk to two different teams in the business, came to teach us about burnout. He'd experienced it and had to take a year off work to recover.

I understand that there is a range of salaries in our organisation. But am I being unreasonable to think this is tone deaf to what most people can do? I would be in financial hardship if I took even a week off unpaid.

Sometimes you have no choice. Leaving your job to recover isn’t something done easily. My husband is currently on month 5 of unpaid sick leave and it’s been the hardest, most terrifying year of our marriage but he had no choice.

I think dismissing their brave decision to make it work for their own health is quite close-minded. You have no idea if those 7 months were incredibly challenging and scary for her.

We were saving up to try for/have our first baby. Now that money is gone.

I read a similar article by Richard Branson's mother. Apparently when she was living in poverty (her husband was training as a barrister) she just simply got a contract to supply Harrods with ornaments she sourced from overseas.

Martin Lewis did a good speech at a graduation basically saying a huge part of success is luck which is totally true.

My career looking back is actually mental. I ended up in a place many would kill to work by weird series of events. Rags to riches within 4 years. Dh did it the correct way but we both ended up in the same place!

This is really dismissive and totally underplays the importance of networking and connections.

This woman made herself visible and convinced senior leaders that they needed someone to do X/Y/X job. This is actually valuable advice: not all opportunities exist when you start looking for them but you do have the option to create the need and push for them (which she apparently did) rather than just wait from them to be posted.

I’m sure she worked hard in those roles, I’ll give her that.
But she had an awful lot of luck fall in her lap, as well.

Where I work you might get one or two of these opportunities crop up, throughout your time there. It’s not what you know, etc…
But not year, after year like she did.

‘Creating a need for a job’ is such bullshit.
Unless you have the ear of a director, or the head of a department, you simply don’t have that hotline.

The guy with burnout, if he properly had burnout I don’t think is the same- if you fell down the stairs tomorrow (touch wood!), you wouldn’t be able to work, same with burnout. She took time off, he couldn’t work. Saying that you could say that people who got fired/ made redundant etc and retrained because they couldn’t find jobs, they couldn’t afford that but it had to be done so technically if people have to manage they do

I do think most of these people have a couple of good tips but probably in the Q&A not the talk.

The good ones do acknowledge the structural advantages they have. But probably not to the extent that ‘if people without these advantages do what I did, they are actively punished for it.’

When I was still in med school, one of the speakers at some careers event was a female consultant neurosurgeon (very rare) who also had 3 kids (incredibly rare). When asked how she managed, the answer was basically "have a husband who works in finance, so you can afford a live in nanny and private school."

At least that’s realistic I suppose @SockQueen, not as in realistic advice for others but realistic in what she needed to do that.

A friend who became a consultant anaesthetist with 3 kids worked part time, and to do that she had three nannies on rotation.

Having worked in media and events for a long time, the vast of majority of those "inspirational" speakers are insufferable, pathological narcissists. There's always a sob story of how their life became increasingly difficult and they ended up being diagnosed with ADHD.

If they make a huge selling point about coming from a working class family, you can bet everything they're actually married to a millionaire now but they will obviously never mention that.

If they make a huge deal about having children as well, they're actually terrible mothers and leave their kids in childcare 12 hours a day or with their partner and nannies while they go off travelling to events.

So yeah, all smoke and mirrors. It's totally exhausting to make your own life story into a product to sell and you need a special level of self-absorption to do that. All these keynote speakers and motivational speakers give off an icky vibe when you meet them in real life.

Ergh this!
I listened to one where a billionaire was saying how he struggled and sofa surfed, put every penny he had into his business. All the while he had a newborn. Who was obviously looked after by the mum not sofa surfing and paying for everything for their child career obviously impinged whilst he was completely absent. They were not a couple. He said how hard it was for him and what a wonderful relationship he has with his now adult child now he he is a billionaire. He was completely oblivious to the fact had he been the mum in that situation there would be no option to just comfortable know your child was taking care of whilst you put all your focus on a business.
Ofcourse his advice was anyone can do it if you want it enough 😴

Although I remember going to a session at work (civil service) about being a woman / mother and juggling work. One of the seniors (who was bonkers anyway) offered up ‘marry a man with no ambition and let him stay at home and raise the children’. Obviously not that helpful for those who had already chosen their husbands……

This reminds me of when Beverley Turner called out her ex husband the Olympian, James cracknell when I think he talked about his success without mentioning her. He was only able to have that success whilst she kept everything ticking over at home. So many very successful people only are able to be that successful because they have a partner at home holding it together. If you are a single parent or one where both of you are working full time, it isn’t as easy to juggle everything and be successful, particularly if your salaries doesn’t stretch to a team of flexible nannies.

Oh I can top that!

Back in the late 90s there was a very prominent male surgeon in the SE who had been a traditional posh male trainee (public school, med school rugby team, then married a nurse who became a SAHW to look after his kids and house while he was working 90 hours weeks. Became a consultant, healthy private practice, golf, etc). He then transitioned in his late 50s after 15 years or so as a consultant, when his kids had left home. Good for him, living his best life etc, obviously hadn’t actually been very happy despite following the “template to success” to the letter.

Except that other male surgeons then used him as a shining example of “how women can succeed in surgical training”. Apparently all women needed to do to succeed in surgical training was be a man while they were doing it. Infuriating.

(to be clear, the trans surgeon was not holding themselves up as a beacon to women - it was the same male surgeons who would tut about female surgeons deskilling on maternity leave).

The cynic in me wonders if she had much more of the director than his ears…

Ahh, a kindred spirit, i see. I share your cynicism, my friend.

A man I worked with told me that he didn’t agree with wfh (this was about 12 years ago).
He didn’t need it for childcare, blah, blah.

I asked him ‘what does your wife do for a living?’.
Yep - you guessed it! She was a SATM.

I was genuinely irritated by such a witless statement, so i rather tartly said: of course you didn’t have childcare obligations, if your wife was doing all of it!’

I felt a bit embarrassed about it afterwards, cos i wondered if I was a bit too ‘tart’ for the office. But he had annoyed me with his sweeping pronouncements, when he knew fuck all about it.

I thought it was just me. We had inspirational talk from a woman who had been a heroin addict and prostitute then used that grit to get to an amazing height. Except all of us had background checks that flagged family members with criminal records and any time out of the country more than 3 weeks. No way she’d have got an entry level job which a former prostitute and heroin addict with no education would be applying for to get the chance to show their grit. Her take away seemed to be that we’d all had it too easy and being successful relied on a tragic back story.

Reminds me of on mumsnet when people talk about someone they know who did badly at school and got minimal qualifications but earns far more than they do who is well qualified. It's always a man they're talking about.

This is similar to a story I heard at a women in banking conf. One of the panel was a very successful head of European sales, her husband also worked in Investment Banking. They had 2 young children. Alot of the conf discussions were about childcare. She was great, then another panel member piped up. She had told him backstage that to get it to work they employed TWO nannies, a day nanny and a night nanny. 2000 women gasping is a strange sound!

i roll my eyes whenever I read articles about ‘superwomen’ with high flying careers and lots of kids. You are either at work or with your kids, you can’t be both. Make a choice, no judgement but they make it seem like I run a billion dollar company and still make all my children’s football games and I’m like, no you really don’t.

I find your post tone deaf. Do you realise how bad burnout is? My dh was off work for a long time. Couldn't drive. Probably will never fully recover. As he recovered I got cancer. Was I also lucky to get time off?

I'm actually a consultant anaesthetist too! Only two DC though. Limped through the last years of training part time, relying on non-medic DH to do nursery runs etc. Obviously took a pay/career progression hit to do that, but I've got there in the end. Still wonder if I've got the balance right - but I don't put myself in front of panels as an example of how we can "have it all!"

As well as having the nannies around the click as backup, I bet these sanctimonious inspirational speakers also had their mum or MIL nearby at their beck and call. They never acknowledge this to other mums struggling without daily, free help.

I agree with you. It’s usually from people of the generation above mine who have been able to take advantage of lower house prices, lower cost of living in general, and none or low student loans which they probably paid off ages ago. Meanwhile, we have a decent household income, but one DC in nursery and one that needs wraparound at school, high student loans that we’re still paying and high mortgage costs. Any pay rises goes on student loan increases and gets more than wiped out by nursery fees rises. I’m battling young DCs, I have ASD and ADHD (and DC been referred too), and entering peri years, work in a professional intense job 4 days a week and no, I can’t afford to take time off work for half a year.