Wall Street, Fintech — A Man’s World?
I have been asked a lot over the course of my career about succeeding in the “man’s world” of Wall Street. My experience is my own, and I recognize that in many ways I have been very lucky. However, here are my thoughts on what seems to be a topic that never dies:
1) I have had some terrific- and some less terrific- bosses over the course of my career. Some were male and some were female. I neither experienced the stereo-typical female boss who doesn’t support her female employees, nor have I experienced the sexist men who are threatened by a competent woman. What I have experienced, for the most part, are hardworking and intelligent people who did the best they could to support me and their other employees. And when I had a boss who I either didn’t respect or felt I could no longer learn from, I moved on.
2) The criticisms that I have received over the course of my career have been largely warranted, and not leveled against me because of my gender, as best as I can tell. It is never fun to hear where you are deficient and it would be nice to be able to blame my own deficiencies on someone not liking me because of my gender, but alas, that is not the case. My list of shortcomings are real- and independent of my gender. What I have found is that, while painful, examining and owning my shortcomings is the necessary first step in improving.
3) I have had really good friends who have experienced real sexual harassment, and assault, in the workplace. By and large these have gone unreported because they know that getting into a “he said, she said” situation is generally no win, takes a lot of energy and potentially legal costs- so they usually just go and find a new job. I know this is a real thing that happens- it just has never happened to me. I have been lucky and I am thankful for that.
4) If you are a regular blog reader you know that I worked at my Dad’s pizza shop when I was a kid. There I saw all manner of bad behavior- from local boys dropping their pants in the middle of the restaurant when I was manning it alone (in an attempt to get me flustered), to some extremely raunchy magazines being passed around. I learned at a young age that there are some things that are better not to dignify with a reaction. There have been times in my career when this has served me well when working on a trading floor. But I think it is important to note that the offensive behavior that I have witnessed has not all been negative towards women. In the last couple of years I have seen young men quit their jobs on a trading floor because they found the environment too coarse and offensive for their taste (which is also interesting considering how much the industry has cleaned up over the last 20 years!), and I have seen at times women being the ones promoting the coarse and tasteless environment.
5) Why aren’t there more women on Wall Street? I don’t know. Maybe Wall Street still has work to do in cleaning up its reputation. Maybe there still aren’t enough role models to give women the idea that it is a good place to grow a career. Maybe, for some reason, it is just less interesting to women who have many more options. I don’t know. I really enjoyed my decades on Wall Street — I learned a lot and got to work on some really interesting things. It is changing, but I believe it will remain interesting.
Now I am in the world of Fintech- where again there aren’t many women. But working at company founded by a female engineer, where a large percentage of the senior staff are women (mostly engineers), it seems like the world is changing everywhere. And it is important to note that the men that I work with today, as has largely been the case in the past, are interested in doing a good job and working with high quality co-workers. I am hoping that this represents a trend that will persist in Fintech — and maybe grow on Wall Street as well!
