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

This - most of them are married to professional women who seem to juggle careers and childcare at full pelt or go part time whilst the husband climbs the rank simply by the virtue of the rugger boys, cricket boys or indeed the nature that they can stay late etc

a few years ago I discovered that I had missed out on a nice meal and paid for drinks because there was a organised cricket match on the Saturday afternoon at a local venue - no women were invited and all the boys went out for a nice meal and drinks after the cricket match all paid for - what a nice way to exclude all the women

when brought up as sexist the nice time they asked for people to sign up for trials no a single women did as we have never ever played cricket and x2 nights a week practice and then Saturday are a bit much when 3 of our women myself included are single parents

I did

I suggested that your assumption was the least likely

I think it's a problem partly of bullshit and partly of industries being too management-heavy.

Men are more inclined towards bullshitting and will gravitate more towards jobs where you are rewarded for coming out with absolute bullshit. There is way too much bullshit in the professional world (corporate buzz phrases, trendy management ideas, vacuous concepts) and men are responsible for most of it.

The mediocrity problem is because, in a lot of tech fields especially, you will quickly hit a brick wall in terms of promotion/salary unless you want to be a manager or "people leader" or whatever it is. So a lot of technically capable people end up becoming mediocre or poor managers/"leaders" just so they can progress their careers. And it's mostly men because men are more likely to overestimate their capabilities in this area and really big themselves up at interview time. If there was a non-leadership career path that was equally rewarding, they might have done that instead.

The working world is jam packed full of well remunerated men who have made a career out of promising the world with absolutely zero regard to or interest in how it's going to be done - because they know as soon as they've gone back to their office, actually achieving it is going to batted down the line for a bunch of women to deal with. And then the men absolutely take the credit when it happens and sidestep the blame by passing it onto them when it can't.

The Mediocre White Male only comes unstuck when there's a good (new, could be male, could be female) boss above them who listens when the women below finally have enough and refuse to be chucked under the bus yet again. Which is the point where said Mediocre White Male scuttles off to another, better paid, job in a place that doesn't have an astute boss/interviewer of their own to see straight through him and his largely apocryphal CV.

I see it all the time in my profession (barrister). Women and racial/ethnic minorities earn less at all levels of the profession up to and including KC. It’s not “just” at the point where women are taking or returning from career breaks (and that doesn’t apply to BAME men anyway). It is also not in “stereotypically male” practice areas either. Women are also less well remunerated than men in traditionally female-dominated areas like family. Female KCs are paid lower hourly rates and chosen less frequently by the Government Legal Service which of all instructing solicitors ought to know better. (This all comes from research carries out by the Bar Council BTW - it is not anecdotal).

So it is absolutely endemic - white men are better remunerated than everyone else. Since all barristers are self-employed that means they are being chosen by solicitors for more and for more high-profile well paying cases, and are being paid higher hourly rates for equivalent work. I absolutely refuse to believe that across the board at every level and in every specialism they are valued more highly because they are better at the job or better at negotiating their fees. White men are valued more because they are white men. Therein lies the explanation for why so many of them are promoted and valued way beyond their mediocre abilities.

It's why workplaces are do stressful.
My last proper boss fought me all the way as I tried to get the department out of million pound hole , created by him. He constantly undermined and talked shit about me to every contractor and boss for the two years it took, right up until the financial reckoning where I'd recouped and renegotiated 998k back and then of course it was all his idea, he should get a bonus.

He just sucked up to the right people and was upper middle class white dude totally incompetent. They are everywhere. It sucks

They are married to women who believe themselves unable to work because their husband's job is so important and stressful, and their life's work is to support him to build his career. It always makes me wonder just how inadequate the guy must be if he couldn't hold down his job without the full time support of his wife.

And not a single one of them ever does a night with the baby 'because I've got to work'.

I’m sick of this message - in four different companies I have seen management use that excuse to push out exceptionally talented women - and men who wanted anything more than 2 weeks pat leave or who didn’t want in on the old boys club. Assuming women will want families (and therefore be useless, in their eyes) or when they do assuming it’ll make things awkward. But not all women want to give up those jobs - they’re chucked out and sign settlement agreements if they’re wise to what is going on.

There are SO many women who join the workforce yet so few women make it to top level positions. Lots of women never have children or if they do they don’t want to leave their jobs. Where do all these women go? They’re pushed out.

I don’t believe women are pushed out @Backstreetsbackalrightdadada I’ve never seen that in nearly 30 years in corporates. And I’ve seen women progress, if they really wanted it.

I do see that’s it’s incredibly competitive and you’ve gotta do the networking, be available all the time and probably just generally do the bullshit.

Women progress at my workplace, but only the ones who aren't mothers. Our CEO is female, along with 3 other exec directors. All of them childless. Every single one of their male exec colleagues is a father.

It boils my piss.

Quite similar in my experiences too - the very high up women are childfree/childless (not sure of their specific circs) but it doesn't surprise me. Very early on in my career I had a mentor in my workplace who openly told me that to get to where she is her husband was a SAHM - she earned in excess of 200k so could comfortably support her family but she was very honest about the fact she couldn't have got to where she is without her husband pretty much doing everything at home. In 10 years she'd attended 2 parents evenings one of which was a phone call. She said it was a trade off - her husband had wanted children so that was the deal as she wasn't willing to 'take a break.' I was pretty speechless though that might have had more to do with being 19 and her very frank approach to it but it's always something I've remembered.

Mothers are absolutely pushed out. The more I hear people blwat on about the drop off of women in senior management. I just think LOOK AT YOUR ORGANISATION and you will see exactly where it goes wrong. This is not rocket science. It's sexism. Making assumptions.

I don't think it's just men; I've encountered women like this too, particularly in the NHS.

But I've also encountered some excellent managers, of both sexes, yet some people (generally considerably less competent) still moan about them and try to undermine them and not co-operate.

So I don't think it's a matter of either sex or seniority.

That’s pretty demeaning to parents who do pick up on incompetency.

However, I do know for certain. I’ve worked with some of them previously (teaching). They all have reputations among fellow teachers of being incompetent. My best friend is the head teacher, she confides in me about their incompetence. As a parent, I see their incompetence. Unfortunately where I live, once they get a permanent position in a school it’s very difficult to remove them.

All of this.
Men are less likely to take time off work to care for sick children. Even when doing the exact same job as their spouse.

One of the truest statements I’ve read on mumsnet 👏

Infuriating.:.:
took me until a late age to get my act together and switch to a typical “ mans job “

highest paid I’ve ever been and least responsible job 🤷‍♀️

I’d love to know where you work!!

Myself and friends in real estate, tax, accounting, legal and consultancy work have seen it a LOT.

I was actually a long time denier - not on my radar, and with colleagues it never happened in chunks or like swathes of redundancies, and anyway it was hushed up with sensible stories as to why different women had exited. Some men were chucked too at times, but very disproportionately women. There wasn’t a set year cut off, but women with kids just weren’t taken seriously (presumption of no interest in management, that they could never overcome). And women without kids never really got promoted. The crazy thing is that the year I joined the workforce, in my field of work more women than men were coming in at entry level. Now (I’m not yet 40) there are so few women left. Lots of mediocre men being promoted, who basically rinse the junior staff members.

Just last month - one of my friends who works at a competitor was being fast-tracked to management, but had a lockdown baby and her employer has had a massive change in attitude and been saying lately it’s just “not working”… well last month they called her in for an impromptu feedback session. Not scheduled - she wasn’t given notice - and they told her she just wasn’t up to scratch. Her clients love her, she has brought in lots of new work - and they’ve hired two guys at her level just recently, who they say she can transition that work over to. They say colleagues aren’t happy with her work - despite her annual review a few months back being glowing, and awkwardly a week before that meeting she finished a project with perfect feedback across the board (including from one of the men who has just changed his mind and is leading her exit). And fyi she has a nanny and her other half is on pat leave, she came back early from mat leave. Anyway she has spoken to an employment lawyer who is helping her with a settlement agreement, he said it has kept him happily in business for 20 years.

I’m now the only woman from our cohort left in our original field. (I don’t have kids) In terms of networking and opportunities… I am in the same boat as the woman mentioned, on track to promotion. Until I suppose I ever have a kid! In big organisations, they can easily get rid of you and tell your clients some bull story - and clients never leave the big service-providers, so I couldn’t get the clients to leave with me.

Btw one friend is a project manager for a large multinational (think consumer and tech). When they need ANY advisors, she looks at their management (or those who will be leading on advisory). If it’s not 50-50 m-f and showing inclusion then she raises it as a point of feedback.

One thing I’d love is an independent body that reviews issues like this, is there one?

Eg friend being pushed out - the first time this happened to one friend, she was so mortified and believed the “bad feedback” story she was being told, she left very quietly and nearly immediately and found a much lower job just out of shame and a feeling that she must be a poor performer. Now this has happened so many times to friends (f and some male), friend who is going through it now is wise to it. She knows they’ll get rid of her anyway, so she immediately got references for good lawyers, lawyered up, they’ve discussed remuneration and what she’s entitled to (and how she could bring a suit, to threaten against them). By the way, of all the women I know who have been pushed out - only the small minority ever had kids (and of those, none had more than one kid).

Now I used to think… bring the law suit! Get these bad employers in court! But those women then basically backlist themselves from future employment.

However if everyone signs settlement agreements then things never reform. And you want to scream to the junior staff and those coming in at entry level… don’t bother! Or at least, know what this is really about and how to rinse it for your benefit.

Also - there was an interesting article in maybe the FT or a Bloomberg columnist a while back, about why people SHOULD care about sexism in the workplace. A) you’re not getting the best people and B) it shows lax standards in other areas (apparently a correlation between sexism and AML issues, for example… essentially indicative of bad practice all round).

So if it’s a culture thing.. maybe some places are great and others are total wastelands of opportunity. But if there isn’t a non-litigious way of knowing that, then so many people waste their time at these bad places (and throw away their careers if they don’t know the game).

For me the easiest way of knowing where is worth spending career time, is looking at how male the management is.

I think the thing we should do as a society is not overly reward management above the core creators of the business offering. Rewire the compensation structure of business to compensate best those who contribute most to the business offering.

On a simple level teachers should get paid better than those who manage them. Nurses should get paid better than those who manage them. In these sectors it might sound idealistic and naive to propose this, but in newly forged businesses I don't see why it shouldn't be that way. The creator should be paid more than the administrator. The inventor more etc. We still need good managers but the concept of a career ladder and being in charge of others should be abandoned. If you are good you are good, stop moving around.

We must recognize that gifted, competent and productive people often have zero interest in giving up what they are good at and managing the time of less competent underlings. Why enter teaching to not teach? Same applies for all business that runs on human capital, the real talent can't be motivated to move away from what they are good at to management roles.

Anyone who is going to start a business please consider a new organisational design that does not compensate a managerial class or hierarchy as we currently do, and create an open transparent pay structure that rewards the people who make your actual business offering - the thing you promise to your customers. If we do this over diversity this will be a better solution to the problem the OP flags up.

So yeah, there are a lot of mediocre men... agreed, and they are definitely overly confident but keeping the same salary increase incentives for management roles and just diversifying the people into those roles will not necessarily fix the problem. Weight the pay incentive toward talent, productivity and competence for the business, industry or sector. Soon enough a real meritocracy will emerge. It will be painful for some and that's probably why we aren't doing it.

That's the trouble, though - not seeing that there are very knowledgeable, technically competent people who are responsible for keeping the organisation functioning whilst the person who has the big ticket title gets the rewards. A teacher doesn't bring in the income in a school - people who run admissions, do marketing, coordinate the census, get the data right, does. A doctor doesn't run the admin, the facilities, the finance, the staffing. The people who make it work aren't getting the reward whilst the man with the title does.

This.

I worked for an organisation that tried to do this. They realised all the best paid jobs were managers so people wanted to be managers even if they werent good at it or left. They created tecnical grades to sit alongside management grades. It did help quite a bit. It meant managers were more suited to managing and people stayed longer.

I think it's simplistic to think there's a clear split between those that do the work and those that manage. A new graduate knows nothing, they need a hands on manager to train them up. Our innovation work is lead by experienced scientists who are hands on in the lab but who are also directing a team of scientists. An organisation that separates out the functions so much that a manager is viewed purely as an administrator is failing.

Oh gosh yes, every successful company has to have a grade of job called technical specialist. And they don't manage people, but get work done. As not everyone can or should manage teams.