To think the professional world is full of middle aged men of very average abilities who still seem to have gone far

Yeh a former manager got brought in for us on a £900 day rate, absolutely hopeless. Me and coworker would just send pics of waffles to each other every time he spoke.

I work in a company that doesn't have many of these which makes it even more disturbing when you suddenly have to deal with one that has managed to slip through the net. So manager A is super smart and creative, manager B is very focused, organised and has great people skills, and manager C has clearly been promoted into a job where they can't do any damage. Why?

To be fair to the white middle class men I've also worked with incompetent managers who are female and who are not white. We clearly are an equal opportunities employer 😁.

Thankfully not in my industry. I'm sometimes taken aback when I realise the qualifications of some of the men I work with, they downplay a lot of it. I do find that they are exceptional technically or business / HR minded, not many that do both week but that applies to the women I work with too.

You've only just noticed????

@JaninaDuszejko
Equality is when there are as many mediocre women in senior positions as mediocre men!

Omg £900 day rate?! Laughed my ass off about the waffles

I've never had a boss with more qualifications than me. Never had a female boss. It's a correlation for sure.

The British Government is a good example.

And has been for a good few decades now.

Men hire other men in their own likeness.
Male, pale and stale (mostly).

Yep see this a lot in the third sector. Mediocre bloke CEO propped up by a team of women who actually get shit done as opposed to going to meetings & talking about it

Why does this pass down the ages? And who is to blame? Mother, father, both?

Why is it a thing to under estimate girls and not boys?

I know just the type OP. And more often than not they come in with grand ideas and all these ambitions and acronyms. Then after 18 months or so, when it becomes obvious that all their ideas are unworkable and they have no idea what their doing, they move on to another job/organisation. Which probably pays more than their previous one as they successfully bullshitted their way through the interview.

?

But yes, broadly

Yes!

Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote Why Do So Msny Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men

I've seen it in teaching too! Two particular men come to my mind straight away one became an assistant head and was absolutely abysmal at his job.

Oh my god yes! In my ex industry we were all self employed creative, all worked together for 15 plus years on different projects.

A lot of the men were lazy, did the bare minimum, rarely contributed to meetings or had any ideas. Basically kept their heads down, didn't screw up. None of the women were like this at all including me. The men would moan about things, agree with me for example if there had been poor treatment of us etc. But then when issues were brought up would keep quiet.

I've calmed down since Monday. Handed over a perfect relevent USA industry contact to the head of a TV Production Company, to explore as a strategy for the UK. (It's a crazy perfect fit.) He looked at me like his collie dog had just learned to talk. I felt like I was just a freak in the circus rather than a professional niche industry player.

From now, he can fuck off.

Yes, it's bloody depressing.
The worst one I had was a guy who came in to the company, started using bollocks-speak for everything (think "synergy", etc), sold most of the company this idea he was changing everything and adding tons of value, treated the experienced staff like shit, kept saying we would do stuff that we knew couldn't be done and eventually left the company to be paid even more money, having delivered nothing of what he promised. Presumably he said a lot of impressive sounding bollocks in his interviews.

On the other hand, one of the best bits of feedback I ever had was a member of my team saying she liked working for me because I actually get shit done and sort stuff out, unlike the men 😂

TenTonTessa I feel you definitely! I work with all men and have been at the same company for many years, it seems the less you do the more likely you are to be promoted, it's all about staying after hours and arselicking, that gets you places, very frustrating.

@OP83

Er, maybe its the fact that many of us "white middle-aged mothers" have first-hand experience of white males of a certain generation being over-promoted and being paid far more than us despite working far less hard. Maybe its because we've all been talked down to by these people, or seen them rise to positions of extraordinary seniority despite appalling competence. Any woman who has worked for any length of time in a corporate setting will have seen this.

There is also research to back this up. It isn't just a figment of a febrile imagination. There's tons of empirical evidence that men get paid more for doing less and get promoted much faster.

Another PP made a really important point further up which is that men are rewarded for applying for and winning things over their competence level (its seen as a sign of ambition and confidence) whereas women are pilloried for biting off more than they can chew.

There's also the huge fact that women are much more likely to take time off to have children or to have childcare responsibilities which limit their ability to work even if they are working FT. And prevent them doing the all-important boys' club networking (unscheduled drinks, golf etc).

It is changing though. I've just turned 50. The industry I work in is rife with Oxbridge old boy network clubbery in the generations of my age and slightly older. Not only is it sickening it leads to real undperformance because the same people pass jobs back and forth to one another. But there are people coming through in their 30s and 40s who are challenging this. Far higher proportion of POC and women and the sector is become much more professional and meritocratic. The narrative about diversity being better for business is starting to be heard and I'm feeling quite optimistic about it. I think the next generation is really starting to crack this.

This is definitely rife in the NHS. The men at the top bounce from Trust to Trust, gaining promotions, status and salary uplifts every time. They achieve nothing, solve nothing, make nothing any easier or more efficient for either patients or staff.

Particularly galling in areas where the workforce is 99.5% female...except right at the top.

Although, in the interests of fairness, my current immediate line manager and my 'big boss' are both female and both entirely, utterly incompetent.

Until this job, I've been lucky enough to work mainly for excellent, talented and hardworking female bosses, though.

Its changing a lot in my industry. There's increasing accountability, and old fashioned types like these are rapidly vanishing.