Female company president: "I'm sorry to all the mothers I worked with" by Katharine Zaleski
PowerToFly President Katharine Zaleski admits: “I didn’t realize how horrible I’d been – until I had a child of my own.”
I still am embarrassed by this memory. Five years ago I walked into an office on the twenty-fifth floor of the Manhattan headquarters of Time Inc. (which owns Fortune.) I was there to meet with Time.com’s then managing editor and pitch a partnership idea, but once I took a seat and surveyed the endless photos of her small children spread across the airy space, I decided this editor was too much of a mother to follow up on the idea.
I still went through with my proposal, but I walked out sure I would never talk to her again. She wasn’t the first and only mother whose work ethic I silently slandered. As a manager at The Huffington Post and then The Washington Post in my mid-twenties, I committed a long list of infractions against mothers or said nothing while I saw others do the same.
I secretly rolled my eyes at a mother who couldn’t make it to last minute drinks with me and my team. I questioned her “commitment” even though she arrived two hours earlier to work than me and my hungover colleagues the next day.
I didn’t disagree when another female editor said we should hurry up and fire another woman before she “got pregnant.”
I sat in a job interview where a male boss grilled a mother of three and asked her, “How in the world are you going to be able to commit to this job and all your kids at the same time?” I didn’t give her any visual encouragement when the mother – who was a top cable news producer at the time – looked at him and said, “Believe it or not, I like being away from my kids during the workday… just like you.”
I scheduled last minute meetings at 4:30pm all of the time. It didn’t dawn on me that parents might need to pick up their kids at daycare. I was obsessed with the idea of showing my commitment to the job by staying in the office “late” even though I wouldn’t start working until 10:30 am while parents would come in at 8:30 am.
For mothers in the workplace, it’s death by a thousand cuts – and sometimes it’s other women holding the knives. I didn’t realize this – or how horrible I’d been – until five years later, when I gave birth to a daughter of my own.
Within her first week, I became consumed by the idea that my career was over. It was almost as if my former self was telling me I was worthless because I wouldn’t be able to continue sitting in an office for ten hours a day. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to get drinks at the last minute.
I was now a woman with two choices: go back to work like before and never see my baby; or pull back on my hours and give up the career I’d built over the last ten years. When I looked at my little girl, I knew I didn’t want her to feel trapped like me.
I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, thinking it would motivate me. It only depressed me more. To me, the message was clear: put up with the choices made by a male-dominated work culture if you want to succeed. I re-read Anne Marie Slaughter’s piece on “Why Women Can’t Have It All.” It just painted another reality that I had contributed to until it became my own problem.
While I was on maternity leave from NowThis News (a startup funded by members of The Huffington Post team), still wrestling with these thoughts, I was approached by my now co-founder, Milena Berry. She told me she had an idea to launch a company that would match women in technical positions they could do from home. I decided to quit my job and leave journalism, realizing this startup had enormous potential for the one billion women entering the workforce over the next ten years.
If the developer placements worked, then other fields might follow. By enabling women to work from home, women could be valued for their productivity and not time spent sitting in an office or at a bar bonding afterwards. Mothers could have a third option that would allow them to either remain in the workforce or be a part of it even from areas with few job options.
All the tools exist for remote work – Slack, Jira, Skype, Trello, Google Docs. Research shows remote workers can be more productive. Furthermore, millennials – with or without kids – want that flexibility, a Harvard study found.
With the help of an awesome team that’s 50% moms from around the world, Milena and I are building PowerToFly around our lives as mothers. We’ve processed over a million dollars in paychecks for women who work from home across five continents and that number is growing fast. The stories we hear are thrilling.
Before we found Nedda, our CTO, she was commuting to London from her home in Bulgaria every week. Nedda’s daughter would hide in her suitcase on Sunday nights in an attempt to be with her mother during the week. Now she gets picked up from kindergarten by her mom everyday. Nedda traded a very expensive ten-hour weekly commute (not including time on the London tube) for a thirty-minute walk with her child each afternoon.
I wish I had known five years ago, as a young, childless manager, that mothers are the people you need on your team. There’s a saying that “if you want something done then ask a busy person to do it.” That’s exactly why I like working with mothers now.
Moms tell me when a project can be done and they give me very advanced notice when they have to take time off work. If they work from home, it doesn’t matter if a kid gets sick. Yes, they might not be able to Skype with me as often through that day, but they can still be productive because they can work from home while keeping an eye on their child. (And, like me, many have childcare. There’s no way you can work from home without support, usually from another woman.) Moms work hard to meet deadlines because they have a powerful motivation – they want to be sure they can make dinner, pick a child up from school, and yes, get to the gym for themselves.
But, I know there are still a lot of people like my 28-year-old self – they undervalue mothers’ contributions because they count hours logged in the office and not actual work. Most mothers lose if that’s the barometer for productivity.
It’s time to break that cycle, and it starts with the people doing the hiring. The way I acted in my twenties had a lot to do with denial. If I didn’t embrace or recognize the mothers on my team, then I didn’t have to think about what my future would be like. I see the same behavior in young women I talk to who are in charge of hiring, especially in the tech space. They are hard liners – and passionate lecturers – about women being in the office so they can be part of the company’s “culture”.
They don’t realize how that “culture” pushes women out because it’s too often set up around how men bond. Many of these young women are just toe-ing the company line. I don’t begrudge them. I feel sorry for them.
They’re hurting their future selves. Just like I did.
These women can help pave the path for their future selves if they start acting like allies rather than deniers. Instead of just smiling and saying you’re sorry that a mom can’t join for office drinks, ask her if she’d rather do lunch. If there’s a comment you over hear that disparages a mother because she wasn’t at her desk at 7pm, then speak up and point out that she was there at 8:30am, or completely available on Skype of Slack at 7pm.
There are so many ways we can support each other as women, but it starts with the just recognizing that we’re all in different positions at different times in our lives.
One thing is clear. Motherhood is the future for most women. Over 80% of us will become mothers by the age of 44, according to the US Census Bureau. So embrace your future and support it at work!
Now I know who I am. I’m mother who can manage a large team from my home office or on a business trip, raise money, and build a culture for women to succeed. I’ve never been more productive, satisfied and excited about my future and my daughter’s. I wish I had recognized this years ago.
For that, I’m sorry to all the mothers I used to work with. Which brings me back to that managing editor I dissed at Time. Her name is Cathy and she has three kids. The deal never went through for a variety of reasons that included editorial fit, but we started talking six months ago. Cathy recently joined PowerToFly as our Executive Editor. She has taught me a lot about how to be more productive than I was before motherhood. I’m now looking for more Cathys to join PowerToFly because I know they can manage households, multiple schedules and very high business goals.
My male manager took three months parental leave. We have more people in my group that are parents and need a few days notice to make post-work drinks than we have young carefree singles. Oh, and those singles don't necessarily want to hang out with coworkers post-work either. They have lives.
It was not an article that inspired me to nod along with the author.
I definitely think people can be jerks to moms. I've even seen it from older teachers, who used to have young kids themselves, saying things like, "Oh you're taking off early today, " when I leave at 3:30. Never mind the fact that I was here at 7:15 and my bag is full of grading and schoolwork that I'll do after the baby is in bed.
I hate the mindset of just change your schedule or work from home. Leave early - come in late. Work after the kids are in bed. A lot of jobs can't do that. Doctor, nurse, bank teller, cashier, butcher, teacher, and on and on. I do agree that she was a bitch before. My SIL went to a job interview and it came up (gap in her resume) that she had kids and had lost her husband. They asked her what she would do when they had deadlines but she had to be home for her kids etx. It pissed me off because there is no way a man would have been asked that. (And of course the whole - that's illegal part)
I will say in my experience (seems not reflective of CEP thread) most men I know take advantage of workplace flexibility too. My direct boss leaves early a few times a week to take his kids to activities (his wife also works). My boss's boss with a SAHM wife also leaves fairly regularly for children's activities. Both are under 40. I like to think things are changing and this isn't an anomaly.
Unfortunately, it's TOTALLY rare in my office. Most of our management are males, who despite being dads and understanding what it was like to have kids at home, spend an inordinate amount of time with their butt in their seat at the office. I thought that my VP understood, especially since his daughter is my age and a mother of two, but recent events say otherwise.
I agree with others that she seems like an ass and was trying to push her company. But the underlying sentiment struck a chord for me personally based on those same recent events.
I mean, i kind of see what she is saying. But she was a jerk before. I think everyone, parents or not, ought to have the option of a flexible work arrangement when possible. Too bad it took her being in a position where she wanted and needed the flexibility to realize that zomg, others might want that too.
Im not a fan of how she left dads and other men out of the equation totally. Great that she found a solution, but men need to be part of the solution too if we are ever going to really change anything.
Post by imojoebunny on Mar 3, 2015 21:08:51 GMT -5
I think she is a self absorbed executive. I know women in her shoes, they don't work from home, their DH's step back and support their families by being at home. My experience as an over educated, overly experienced, successful career person who now "waste my life" SAH and supporting my DH in his executive position is that women like her don't value women or men like me. The truth is, if she had a man like me at home (or allowed him the opportunity) it is unlikely she would feel the need to subjugate her career by running a company that has only $1m in revenue (on a very small margin business). She would be running a company more like CNN digital, like the woman who actually does who has an amazing SAHD as a partner.
I have looked at some of those sites, though not hers, they all are low pay for the work/education required. If anything, they undermine the ability to be flexible and support yourself by undercutting what the full cost of the education and experience are.
If she was looking for free advertising it backfired. Their site is currently down due to all the traffic the article generated. That is very poor planning. When you go to sign up you get an email that says
"Thanks so much for signing up!
Our site is currently down due to all the interest around Katharine's piece in Fortune.
We are collecting your emails here and will send you a link to sign up for PowerToFly as soon as we're up again!"
She's really weird. It's like she's the first person EVER to discover other people have value and a POV.
Newsflash: My FATHER in the 1970's went to work super early, in the dark, every day, to get out in time for dinner, with his kids, at 6 pm. 40 years ago, he had to brow-beat co-workers to get their shit together so he could leave at 5 pm.
I used to think like her. I didn't work in a corporate setting, but I judged people with families and kids very hard for skipping out on things. They only attended stuff if it was of the "mandatory-or-else-you-won't-graduate" variety.
Having my own kid has made me very conflicted about who I used to be and who I have to be now.
I will say in my experience (seems not reflective of CEP thread) most men I know take advantage of workplace flexibility too. My direct boss leaves early a few times a week to take his kids to activities (his wife also works). My boss's boss with a SAHM wife also leaves fairly regularly for children's activities. Both are under 40. I like to think things are changing and this isn't an anomaly.
My husband definitely uses his work flexibility to be a part of activities and things even though I SAH. His boss does as well.
Good for her that she left the sinking ship of journalism to be the CEO of neverheardofit.com. I hope she doesn't face the same kind of discrimination she tolerated towards other women.
The most valuable take away for me from this article was the stark slap in the face reminder of just how poorly mother's of small ones are often viewed in competitive environments. I've been out of the loop where people would talk this kind of shit around me, but I'm having flashbacks now.
But I can say that I try my hardest as a working professional to make sure that I come into the office for my dedicated 40 hours. I am on a contract and we can not exceed 40 a week. I get here every day at 8:00 am or earlier. Take a 30 min lunch and leave at 4:30. I was asked by my co-worker why I don't work from home and I try to explain the perception of being a working mother and when I NEED to work home I will. But I actually like leaving my home and coming into the office.
All of my coworkers seems to take the flexibility to the extreme and non of them have young children they are dealing with.
I think nice become a more reliable, efficient employee since having a kid. I'm here at 8am every morning because the kid loves routine and we get up at a regular time. I work hard (other than GBCN) during my time here because I want free time at night.