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.

Read Careless People for the reality of working with Sandberg. The author
is not allowed to speak about her own book due to metas gagging order against her. “Lean in” not enough 🙄 in the world.

I no longer take advice or read books by men about creative writing (a hobby). It tends to boil down to : get up early, leave the house and focus on your work. There seems to be little mention of family life. There’s the assumption you’ll have someone to do the work at home.

I find it similar in men who write about time management. Again, get up at 5am, work out, etc. if I got up at 5am, my kid would too. Then who watches them while I work out?

I went to a women's networking thing once and the speaker was a neurodivergence coach who I was really interested in hearing as I had recently been diagnosed with ADHD. Her advice?...Do what she did and bugger off to Bali for 12 months to 'find herself'... I'll just leave all my kids here to fend for themselves then shall I?

on a related note I have started to hate all these “Women in xxx” events and posts on LinkedIn.
just about women doing everything possible no matter what the cost to their personal life to be highly successful senior leaders in their careers. I wish we could hear from the average woman who is happy and mildly succesful….much more representative and relatable.
A colleague posted something on LinkedIn lately that was all about if you are 100% ready/suitable for a role - then you are not pushing yourself enough and won’t grow. Why can’t we just do a job that we know how to do & hopefully enjoy or at least tolerate. Why does society/corporate world want us to be always striving to be uncomfortable and pushing ourselves. I want to clock off at 5 and have energy for a life outside of work.

Do we think it’s age / menopause that make us see through these types? As a young woman I would have been impressed but now at 50 I am deeply cynical. Totally agree with questioning the constant striving. Who can be bothered with that.

I worked at a train company where the HR organised really leftfield speakers. The most memorable one was a woman who had accidently killed a fellow pupil at school when they were throwing the javelin. Basically how ahe coped afterwards. It was impressive. There was a second speaker a few months later, also I think with a theme wirh a death angle. But you can definitely get some interesting speakers if you do enough research.

I think once we've been through the ordeal of working, childcare, schools, events etc etc , and then we are presented with either a female who had nannies or a man with a sah wife, telling us how hard they had it yet they still pulled through....well they are lucky we dont rugby tackle them on the way out

My friend has a fairly successful career.. not pass remarkably so. But when she decided that she wanted to retrain and worked out the logistics she made huge sacrifices. She held down FT work while studying at night for 2 years but needed to do a few months work experience too. Once she started the process she sold her car and moved into a mature student house share, 4 sharing a bathroom in a run down house. She saved like crazy for about a year and had enough to support herself during her unpaid work experience and for the first few months of low pay in her new role. It's a good example of someone making real sacrifices for an end goal and I admire her so much more for it. Of course that's not possible with kids but it's something that most people are not prepared to do