Neil Hopcroft

[Audiobook]

The Broken Rung – When the career ladder breaks for women and how they can succeed in spite of it by Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee and Maria del mar Martinez.

I was trying to find a business book written by a woman – there seems to be a huge collection of books about how men make the business world terrible which provide a little guidance on how to navigate around some of that terrible. This is one of those books, and I cannot argue it is wrong about the terribleness wrought by my kind.

Clearly I am not the anticipated audience for this book, so sometimes it sits a little uncomfortably in the way it talks to me as the listener.

The content itself largely addresses an audience of white women, with some asides about women-of-colour in a very American centric view of the world. It is built around a core of anecdotes and stories of women who have been successful in the business world. And in doing so I feel it misses the point, in the same way many (male targeted) business books do – the vast majority of people do not end up in the kinds of high-flying roles these books purport to help you obtain. We read the books to dream of what might have been, if only we’d been born to a truly privileged family, not because they actual help us in our careers.

That said, it does call out some behaviours seen commonly in men, with a discussion about microaggressions, which are something I’ve observed many times and tried to fight where the setting is appropriate, they are more pervasive and more damaging than I had recognised.

There are some useful observations, especially about the value of building ‘experience capital’ and how making bold moves from one role to a totally different role can accelerate the accretion of such capital. Such observations are applicable to all, not just women in the male world.

This is not the book I wanted – I wanted a book written by a woman explaining how I, as a man in the tech industry, can make life better for everyone. I’m a strong believer in diversity and have in the past taken jobs because of the diversity obvious at interview. I want to use my white male privilege to support people who don’t have such a big voice – frequently the quiet ones are the ones worth listening to, if only they could be heard. This book was not a waste of my time, I don’t feel a pressing need to read/listen to more of the same genre – I would like recommendations for other female-written books that address topics of allyship.