The problem isn't sexism. It's corruption, and it's all throughout business. Most of "business" has nothing to do with discounted cash flows or customer needs or building new products, but about leveraging the emotional vulnerabilities and drives of corrupt humans with more power than they deserve. That's 95% of it. That's why more is learned in MBA school at the bar than in the courses.
Aside: the above also explains why being a non-drinker (like me, for health reasons) impedes your career. When you get sloshed, you see a much wider range of human behavior (some people hitting their worst) and you learn things that are otherwise impossible to learn about guarded, intelligent, 25+ year-old people with a lot to lose. You can read about that stuff (how to negotiate enormous deals with irrational humans) in books; or you can get hammered with 10 other people and interact with it, on a smaller scale where the points (unless you get severely fucked up in a bar fight) mostly don't matter.
The problem is that most of the work isn't hard, and doesn't require talented people. If the work is legitimately hard (i.e. someone might fail) that's viewed as a management failure. This means that anyone can be "groomed" to appear as a leader and as a success, which means that the whole process is already (justifiably) under suspicion. Ergo, the promotion of a woman (even if she's the most talented, because it's impossible to tell in most cases) raises doubts. People assume she was mentored because she was female and pretty, and not because she had the most potential. It's wrong, but you can expect those kinds of attacks in a system where everyone already knows that corruption is the norm. People will use whatever they have to discredit someone who rose faster than they did: female and pretty, boss's son, "had something" (i.e. extorted his way into the sun). It doesn't have to be true.
The sexism battle here is a minor one, really, in the much grander theater of corporate dysfunction. What's more obvious is that the corporate world is not a meritocracy. Most people are forced to work 3 levels below their ability and become deeply resentful, and anyone who gets promoted on potential is immediately thrown into suspicion.
The sad thing is that the companies that were coming closest to fixing this are the ones prominently using open allocation: Valve and Github, the latter now under attack. (To make it clear, I'm not taking sides because it's pretty clear that almost none of us have any real information at this point.) With managerial power being a major source of corruption in the past, it seems wise to get rid of it. But it's also clear that getting rid of all management functions is a non-starter. Even if you do everything right in a no-management company, people will distrust you (was HR asleep on this? you mean there was no HR?) as soon anything goes wrong.
Aside: the above also explains why being a non-drinker (like me, for health reasons) impedes your career. When you get sloshed, you see a much wider range of human behavior (some people hitting their worst) and you learn things that are otherwise impossible to learn about guarded, intelligent, 25+ year-old people with a lot to lose. You can read about that stuff (how to negotiate enormous deals with irrational humans) in books; or you can get hammered with 10 other people and interact with it, on a smaller scale where the points (unless you get severely fucked up in a bar fight) mostly don't matter.
The problem is that most of the work isn't hard, and doesn't require talented people. If the work is legitimately hard (i.e. someone might fail) that's viewed as a management failure. This means that anyone can be "groomed" to appear as a leader and as a success, which means that the whole process is already (justifiably) under suspicion. Ergo, the promotion of a woman (even if she's the most talented, because it's impossible to tell in most cases) raises doubts. People assume she was mentored because she was female and pretty, and not because she had the most potential. It's wrong, but you can expect those kinds of attacks in a system where everyone already knows that corruption is the norm. People will use whatever they have to discredit someone who rose faster than they did: female and pretty, boss's son, "had something" (i.e. extorted his way into the sun). It doesn't have to be true.
The sexism battle here is a minor one, really, in the much grander theater of corporate dysfunction. What's more obvious is that the corporate world is not a meritocracy. Most people are forced to work 3 levels below their ability and become deeply resentful, and anyone who gets promoted on potential is immediately thrown into suspicion.
The sad thing is that the companies that were coming closest to fixing this are the ones prominently using open allocation: Valve and Github, the latter now under attack. (To make it clear, I'm not taking sides because it's pretty clear that almost none of us have any real information at this point.) With managerial power being a major source of corruption in the past, it seems wise to get rid of it. But it's also clear that getting rid of all management functions is a non-starter. Even if you do everything right in a no-management company, people will distrust you (was HR asleep on this? you mean there was no HR?) as soon anything goes wrong.