Now, this is not to say the people have become immoral. I'm just saying their thinking has been corrupted much like a software code. And whereas in the past principle, honor, integrity and personal morality would self-govern individuals to "make the right choice" now it is self-preservation that determines what choices we make, even if it is the "wrong" choice.
Like I said, the theory is not solidified yet (and I would love your commentary to help me solidify it), but for example when I was a credit analyst at a bank, my job was to assess and measure the risk of the proposed loans. The "right" decision to make was to recommend these loans be turned down. It was moral. It was just. It would be in the long term interests of the bank. It was just the plain truth. However, there was an incredible amount of pressure for me to re-write these loans in an unrealistically better light. This would be the wrong choice.
Now, my personality being moral, honorable, ethical and right (fools call this "stubbornness") I made the "right choice" and resign my position. However, there were thousands of other credit and risk analysts who just capitulated under the pressure and made the "wrong choice" and kept their jobs. Now keep in mind, I'm not accusing them of immoral behavior. I'm just saying they probably had no choice. If you are a father of 3 or a mother with a child on the way, you cannot afford to all of the sudden become moral and put in peril your job and living. But regardless of the morality of the decision, it is here that the corruption creates that fundamental flaw that I theorize plagues most of corporate America.
In other words (or as in the words of my father) "it is better to be nice than right."
Now, this does not just apply in terms of banking and assessing the risk of loans. But because it is in the people's best long term interests to do what they're told and not necessarily what's right, corporations and employers of all stripes, if unwilling or incapable of listening to criticism, run the risk of having nobody to sound the alarms and act as if everything is hunky dory even though the ship is sinking.
Another perfect example would be the auto unions. I can only imagine my intellectually honest UAW worker equivalent saying, "hey, hey, hey. We're killing to goose that laid the golden egg here. We got to reign in health care compensation otherwise we'll ALL lose our jobs."
I'm sure he was shushed up real quick.
Regardless, the larger point is that corporate America, which is staffed and headed up by Americans, do not like conflict, they do not like challenge, they do not like bad news, no matter if that bad news is reality. And in sticking their fingers in their ears and singing Jimmy Cracks Corn and I Don't Care, or worse creating an environment where any kind of rocking the boat is punished, they then undermine, if not guarantee their demise.
Now, how does this relate to women making better employees? Naturally you have all seen the data showing that this recession is affecting men disproportionately more than women. Men face an 8.8% unemployment rate, while women only face a 7% unemployment rate.
And while they cite the reason for the gap is industries that employ more males have suffered the most during this recession (construction, finance, real estate), I cannot but help but wonder if at least some of that difference is because women make better employees.
Now understand, by saying "better employees" I mean "better soldiers." People who follow orders. People who don't give their commanding officer any guff. They do what they're told and that's it. And not that I have any empirical evidence of this, but I have heard enough stories from my female friends that suggests this may be the case. One female lawyer friend of mine works at a law firm where all the partners are males, but all the staff lawyers are females. She said "they tried to hire a male lawyer once, didn't work. Egos were clashing." She also mentioned how emotions can run high and it is not uncommon where the female lawyers end up crying. If it ever came to that point with a male lawyer, he would just quit or at least be less likely to tolerate that crap.
Another female friend of mine, god bless her soul, she's a moron. A complete ditz. However, she keeps getting promoted at work. Again, not because she comes up with new and great ideas, but because she is just a good soldier, a good cog (he grandfather also happened to have been one of the founding members of the company).
Regardless, there are more anecdotes, but in general men's tendency to be more aggressive, confrontational, and blunt make them worse employees, at least in the eyes of a corporation that wants compliance, conformance and obedience above profitability and morality. Additionally, corporations are moving away from the swashbuckling, Captain of Industry, Hank Rearden, Andrew Carnegie, Tony Stark, progress-at-the-speed-of-light industrialist and towards a more politically correct emasculated "good corporate citizen"/entity that is there to provide jobs for people and sell only green products. And if you're going to keep staff on during a massive recession and in this environment, you're probably going to keep the "yesmen/women" while you fire the firebrand males who (no matter how right) are rocking the boat and disturbing the corporate America serenity.
Ergo, why unemployment for men is higher than women today.
Thoughts? Observations?
You'll probably get lynched for saying things like this, Captain.
ReplyDeleteIt's also possible that with men usually making more money than women in the same jobs, they're more likely to get fired first when firms are looking to cut costs.
I really don't know.
This goes back to your recent post about women's salaries.
ReplyDeleteWomen do, in fact, earn less than men, on average. But that's because women choose jobs that:
- are more secure
- are less dangerous
- are less likely to be unionized
- involve less travel
- are based more on salary than commission
- have better working conditions
All these factors contribute to higher pay for men, but they also result in lower levels of employment. As women have moved into jobs more traditionally occupied by males, their pay has increased and they've suffered all the same ills that men suffer such as workplace injuries, stress, job dislocation, and layoffs.
My boss and one of my co-workers are female. They're great workers and leaders. More generally, whether women are better or worse than men, on average, depends upon the job and what's expected from them. People have comparative and absolute advantages, just like countries.
Men and women are built differently and think differently. They can't be expected to perform, on average, the same at every task. Whether one set of characteristics is "better" is a normative question, requiring value judgments.
Ryan, I get lynched for looking at people funny and breathing. But I'm getting sick and tired of worrying about walking on eggshells and don't give a damn what people say. I'm curious about whether there are inherent differences between men and women that make them more/less employable. If that makes me a sexist or a poopey person then it will only be a matter of time that according to leftists breathing will make you sexist and so you might as well "live dangerously" and live life and be able to enjoy independent thought before its outlawed.
ReplyDeleteI would need more data before I agree with you. I think the current unemployment discrepancy is due to the factors listed by most economists, e.g. construction and factory jobs.
ReplyDeleteBut I have noticed trends at jobs I've worked at that fit in somewhat with what you say. In retail and restaurant biz, store managers are almost always men but mid-level management is dominated by women. And I have noticed that women are better at following orders than male employees. But I think that says more about how our culture has degraded, how we have either no fathers or poor fathers, nobody is being taught how to be a man. Even men with dads are being prepped by them to be star athletes or to go to college to "get a real job" instead of just being taught to be a real man and let these things happen automatically.
Strength of domestic economy will sustain the external challenges. A nation should maintain confidence so that economy will remain afloat.
ReplyDeleteAw, you're so cute Peter. "We're going to survive because we're Americans and that's why we're great, because America is great and if we believe in ourselves then we'll be great once again because this is America!"
ReplyDeleteMost women I know don't want to work with other women; my wife included. I most often hear that women are backstabbing, gossipers, catty, etc. I've only come across three female mechanics in my entire career, and the one that I actually worked with was fairly incompetent, but that doesn't, by any means, represent the entirety of female workers.
ReplyDeleteThe real reason that I am writing this, though, is I have had enough of this "green" crap (referenced in your original post). I love the TV show 24, but I am sick of being preached to by them (thank God I DVR it...). Last night, we were watching "In Plain Site" on USA, another of my favorites. The "USA" logo was green. And their "Characters Welcome" catch phrase was altered, also. "Environmentalists Welcome."
I think I need to vomit. Is vomit "Earth Friendly???"
It's worse than you think Cap. I left the Army because real leadership was replaced with an acronym LDRSHIP (loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage).
ReplyDeleteAll those traits are great, to be sure, but when you reduce leadership to an acronym and reward incompetent yes-men who talk the talk but don't walk the walk, then all things fall apart. The new generation will lack role models. Who are our role models now: Obama, Bush, McCain, Kerry, Gore, Clinton? None of them are worthy of getting hit by my shoe.
The Reardons, Carnegies, and Pattons of the world are already shrugging. (Great book, BTW)
I thought 911 would wake us up but America just grumbled a bit, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I'm sitting on a financial district bus with 60 losers, half hoping a terrorist bomber takes us all out (and this is one of my better bus rides).
I read some data that showed that single women who never married and never had kids make more than single men who never married and never had kids. When all things are truly equal, women make more.
ReplyDeleteEQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. MEN'S RIGHTS NOW!
Capt,
ReplyDeleteYou are such a butthead about women lately. Jeez.
In my opinion, unless you come from a family that is in a family business, the only place kids learn professionalism is sports. You learn that it doesn't matter what problems you have in school, on the court you are all working for the same team and if you don't buy into that you are by god going to run until you throw up. So knock off the crap!
Well, women's/girl's participation in sports is encouraged by pretty much everyone, and seems to catch a large majority of female students. This has resulted in a large majority of the currently employed female population having a large grounding in professionalism, or, "how not to be a troublemaker". They are also experienced with being yelled at.
At the same time, men's sports have moved away from sacrifice for team in general (professionalism), towards sacrifice for self and for buddies within the team. Also, more often with men than with women, boys tend to play and excel in multiple sports, decreasing the number of available spots for all boys. This has led to a large number of men who have no grounding in how to act professional as well as not being able to take being yelled at (unless they faced it at home).
Additionally, women are generally coached by both males and females, meaning they are comfortable taking orders from both, while it is still rare to have a female coach of a boys sports.
The end result is that there are a large pool of female employees who do indeed make better "soldiers", or employees. They are this way not because of greed or stupidity, but because they are open to criticism and orders from above. Even if there boss refuses to tell them what it is they did wrong, they will be "yeswomen" because, when it comes right down to it, part of your job is doing what your told.
Captain, usually I can see your point of view pretty well, but you kinda got a little ... spoiled-kid with this one. I grew up on a farm, and I learned that you do what you are told by your boss, even if it sucks. So you don't want to get out of bed at 6 am to shovel out a bin, tough crap. So you don't want to go chain stumps to the 4-wheeler and haul them to the burn pile while everyone else sits around drinking beer and bs'ing, welcome to the bottom of the totem pole. You're the employee, and if the boss gives you a direct order, you do it.
Now, admittedly, I totally concur with your adamant refusal to sugar coat/falsify a report when it's your signature at the bottom, or to do anything else unethical.
But there is no reason to be an employee who is "aggressive, confrontational" in the work place. Your at work. Put on your big boy pants and knock that crap off until you get out the door and are on your own time.
Now, lets have a bit more even bashing of the sexes for a while, shall we? Let's have posts about how men need to make sure they bathe regularly before they go dancing and such like.
Please....
Interesting thought captain. A more precise definition of this compliance/malleability factor would make it easier to measure. I do think there may be a discernible difference in this evidenced by how in the Myers-Briggs personality test it sort of tests for this with a thinking vs feeling aspect, "Those who prefer thinking tend to decide things from a more detached standpoint, measuring the decision by what seems reasonable, logical, causal, consistent and matching a given set of rules. Those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation, looking at it 'from the inside' and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved." For Americans tested women are more likely to be feelers while men are more likely to be thinkers. However I think that what you are describing is that ability to ignore authority and go with what you think is right, only a small percentage of the population has the ability to this as evidenced by the famous shock therapy experiment where in spite of great misgivings people continued to do what they were told.
ReplyDeleteAlso saw this on the wiki, while a sample of 26 isn't very scientific it is still an anecdote worth considering.
ReplyDelete"Charles Sheridan and Richard King hypothesized that some of Milgram's subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking, so they repeated the experiment with a real victim: a puppy who was given real electric shocks. They found that 20 out of the 26 participants complied to the end. The six that had refused to comply were all male (54% of males were obedient[23]); all 13 of the women obeyed to the end, although many were highly disturbed and some openly wept."
This isn't about the gender difference, but just to concur with your point about professionalism, my wife is thinking of starting a restuarant and one big hestitation is knowing how hard it will be to find kitchen and wait staff that have a professional attitude.
ReplyDeleteMy most recent position was one in which speaking up about deficiencies, however politely you did it, was discouraged highly unless you had a sponsor well up in management.
ReplyDeleteI don't know for sure that this is "feminization" of the workplace, but it certainly was infuriating. You wanted to get ahead, you were a yes man. I think they pushed out a lot of quality people that way.
I have been mulling over this "do women make better employees" post and a number of the observations about corporate culture are bang on in my eyes. And they tie in with something I started noticing about a year ago that I call 'smart but spineless'.
ReplyDeleteWith a couple of big companies I have to deal with I have gotten to know some very smart people, who work hard, do their homework, and are seldom wrong. Because of this I respect and value their opinions. But I've also notice that when they see the higher up's making bone headed, short term, sometimes immoral decisions, they don't push back very hard if even at all. At first I thought it was some kind of a self confidence or nerdy psychological kind of thing left over from high school, but I now realize it has more to do with self preservation.
Like you said companies aren't looking for people to challenge their ideas to make sure they're on the right track, they're looking for good little soldiers that know when to shut up and take orders. I've seen good people get fired for trying to get their company to do the right thing, and the smart ones who are still there have realized that their job depends more on toeing the line than overall performance. The higher ups are too stupid to realize that they have created an incentive (job security) for their employees to play dumb.
I think *people* who make better employees tend to be employees.
ReplyDeleteBut I do think men and women play differently.
Good men who find their employer's policies immoral will probably fight louder then leave (probably with a bang).
Good women will fight quietly (probably trying to fix one little wrong at a time) and then quietly leave.